Income disparity extends even to children

Researcher: "Poverty gnaws at people’s minds day and night"

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Children and the youth are evermore clearly divided into the offspring of the well-off and the poor, claims professor Veli-Matti Ritakallio from the University of Turku.
      Poverty in the family can reflect on the child’s future, for example, through the child missing out on upper secondary education simply because the parents cannot afford the textbooks. The children are also divided into groups through their hobbies.
      Today, 100,000 Finnish children live below the poverty line. The situation for families dependent on subsistence support has worsened in the past ten years. A person on subsistence support has to get by with 11 euros per day.
      "Poverty gnaws at people’s minds day and night", Ritakallio suggests.
     
Many of the parents resort to ignoring their own needs in order to provide their offspring with what other children have. Consumption is part of the youth lifestyle, and a child without a mobile phone and fashionable clothes stands out.
      The financial situation is usually good for families where both parents work. The most common poverty risk factors are unemployment, studying, a large number of children, and single parenthood.
      A family with children can usually cope with one risk factor, but each additional factor makes life more cumbersome, until "the burden gets so great that the back finally breaks", Ritakallio summarises.
      At present, indebtedness is one of the greatest threats to young families. The poorest people are the single adults living alone. Some of them cannot afford the most basic necessities.
     
On the European scale the Finnish poverty situation is still relatively good. For example in Portugal and Spain most children live below the poverty line. In Finland only one out of ten children shares the same fate.
      Veli-Matti Ritakallio was speaking at the 65th Anniversary seminar of the Family Federation in Helsinki on Tuesday.


Links:
  PhD Veli-Matti Ritakallio, University of Turku, Department of Social Policy

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