More children grow up in low-income families

Children.Photo: Gorm Kallestad / NTB scanpix

In the period after 2011, more than 30,000 more children have been living in households with persistently low incomes. The proportion has increased in recent years.

An analysis made by Statistics Norway ( SSB) shows that 10.7 per cent of all children belonged to a household with persistently low income in 2017, compared with 10.3 per cent the year before.

Belonging to a household with persistenlyt low income means that you have relatively little money to spend compared with what is otherwise common in society, explains Statistics Norway in its review of the figures.

In 2017, nearly 106,000 children under the age of 18 lived in households with persistent low incomes. After 2011, the proportion of children in low-income households has increased every year.

The increase is primarily due to the fact that an increasing number of children with an immigrant background grow up in low-income households.

The proportion of children with an immigrant background in the low-income group has increased considerably in recent years and continued to increase until 2017. While only 5.7 per cent of non-immigrant children belonged to a household with persistently low-income in 2017, this proportion was almost seven times as large for immigrant children with 38.0 per cent, according to the central government.

But there have also been several children without an immigrant background who grow up in low-income households. The number has increased from well below 40,000 in 2011 to nearly 47,000 in 2017.

Much of this is due to the fact that more children in the lower-income group have only one parent or one income source. One contributing factor here is probably the weak income development among single parents in recent years, with a decrease in income after 2014 when we calculate in relative prices, Statistics Norway reports.

© NTB Scanpix / #Norway Today