Child Poverty: Asia’s Best Performer

1. South Korea has one of the lowest relative child poverty rates in the 35-member OECD group of developed countries at just 7%.

2. Beyond South Korea, the other four OECD countries with notably low levels of child poverty are Nordic countries.

3. They are: Denmark (3%), Finland (4%), as well as Norway and Iceland (7% each, like South Korea). All data are as of 2014.

4. OECD student surveys find that child well-being in South Korea is very good across most indicators, ranging from home life to educational environment to economic security.

5. However, Korean children do not get much exercise outside school.

6. There are also growing concerns about high levels of dissatisfaction among Korean youth about their lives.

7. This negative feeling was closely linked to the feeling of being an “outsider” at school.

8. Due to different standards of living across the globe, there is no absolute income level to define child poverty.

9. So, the OECD defines child poverty as the share of a country’s population under the age of 18 that lives on incomes that are less than half of the nation’s “median post-transfer income.”

10. This reflects family income received via government programs designed to ameliorate the financial situation of low-income parents and their children.

Sources: OECD and The Globalist Research Center