UNICEF State of the World’s Children 2012: Children in an urban world
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The hardships endured by children in poor urban communities are often concealed – and thus perpetuated – by the statistical averages on which development programmes and decisions about resource allocation are based. Because averages lump everyone together, the poverty of some is obscured by the wealth of others. One consequence of this is that children already deprived remain excluded from essential services.
Where detailed urban data are available, they reveal disparities in children’s rates of survival, nutritional status and education resulting from unequal access to services. All over the world, hundreds of millions of children in impoverished urban neighbourhoods and informal settlements confront daily violations of their rights despite living close to institutions and services. In many countries, children living in urban poverty fare as badly as, or worse than, children living in rural poverty when it comes to undernutrition and underfive mortality.
