More than one in four of Europe’s children, aged 0-17, were at risk of poverty or social exclusion in 2015.

Childhood poverty rates ranged from below 14% in Norway to almost 47% in Romania with Ireland coming in at 30.3%.

Figures from Eurostat for 2015 estimate that around 25 million children were living in or at risk of poverty or social exclusion.

Children at risk of poverty are those living in a household with a disposable income below the poverty threshold, which is set at 60% of the national median equivalised disposable income (after social transfers).

Eurostat divides the total household income by its size determined after applying the following weights: 1.0 to the first adult, 0.5 to each other household members aged 14 or over and 0.3 to each household member aged less than 14 years old.

The statistics provided by Eurostat are collated by the Central Statistics Office are contained in the the Survey on Income and Living Conditions (SILC) which is a household survey covering a broad range of issues in relation to income and living conditions.

It is the official source of data on household and individual income and also provides a number of key national poverty indicators, such as the ‘at risk of poverty’ rate, the consistent poverty rate and rates of enforced deprivation.