Child poverty will increase sharply unless there is some economic recovery this year, according to new research by the Economic and Social Research Institute.
The research highlights trends in child poverty during the Great Recession of 2008 and simulates the effect of recent Covid-19-related job losses alongside emergency income support measures on child income poverty in 2020.
Accounting for the unprecedented employment losses and the pandemic employment supports, the authors estimate how child income poverty will evolve in 2020.
Without an economic recovery in the latter half of the year, child income poverty rates are estimated to rise from 16.6% at the beginning of the year to 21.1% by the end of 2020 - a one-quarter increase in the