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POVERTY

Ten percent of Norwegian children live in low income homes

The number of children living in families classed as ‘low income’ reached a level of one on ten in 2015, according to Statistics Norway.

Published: 15 March 2017 15:26 CET
Ten percent of Norwegian children live in low income homes
File photo: Håkon Mosvold Larsen/NTB scanpix

Children from immigrant backgrounds make up over half of those in the group classified as growing up under conditions of ‘persistently low income’.

Households classified as being low income had an average income measured per household member at under 60 per cent of the national median during the period 2013-2015, says the Statistics Norway (Statistisk Sentralbyrå, SSB) report.

98,200 children in Norway fell into this category in 2015 – 6,000 more than in the preceding period of 2012-2014.

The development is also a continuation of a trend over a longer period. The percentage more than doubled from 3.3 per cent to 7.2 per cent between 2001 and 2004, remaining close to this level until the beginning of the 2010s when it again began to rise, now reaching its highest level since 2000.

The numerical increase in children living in low income homes is 31,000 between 2006 and 2015, says the SSB report.

Similarly, the proportion of children from immigrant backgrounds in the group has increased from 38.8 to 53.4 per cent in the 2006-2015 period.

Norwegian studies on the effects of poverty on child development have shown that environmental factors related to living in conditions of poverty have significant effects on language development, according to a report by broadcaster NRK.

Children in families with low income also have higher rates of complaints such as asthma, allergies, eczema, headaches, stomachaches and backaches, says the NRK report.

“We must do what we can with integration, which will help with education and language acquisition so people can come out on to the job market, and there must be initiatives for children living here and now to feel that they are included in society,” Minister for Children and Equality Solveig Horne told NRK in an interview.

Hassan Ali Omar, founder of charity Express School (Express skole), which helps underprivileged children with their homework in an effort to get them into higher education and therefore break out of the low income category, told the broadcaster that he also thought initiatives were necessary to break with the current trend.

“Unless something is done about it, we are going to end up with social classes in Norway,” Omar said.

 

POVERTY

Queuing for food handouts: How the pandemic has left thousands more going hungry in Spain

A year after the pandemic hit Spain, the need for food handouts has soared in the country, especially by workers in the sectors hit hardest by the economic crisis that followed.

Published: 19 March 2021 09:22 CET
Queuing for food handouts: How the pandemic has left thousands more going hungry in Spain
Reina Chambi, 39, queues to receive food aid outside San Ramon Nonato parish in Madrid. Photos: Oscar del Pozo/AFP

Although her face is covered by a black mask, Rita Carrasco still wears bright red lipstick. But her easy smile faltered when she had to join Madrid’s “hunger lines” for food aid.

“It was a hard moment. I felt shame,” says the 41-year-old Mexican, who lost her job as a theatre teacher when Spain’s tight lockdown began in March 2020.

Since then, she has not been able to find work and has used up all her savings.

Over the past year, the demand for food packages has soared in Spain, especially among those employed in sectors worst-hit by the resulting economic crisis.

Last year, the Catholic charity Caritas said it helped half a million people who had never before asked for food packages.

Since December, Carrasco (pictured above) has been going every Friday to a soup kitchen in Carabanchel, a working-class neighbourhood in southern Madrid, to collect a box of groceries.

She also helps distribute food as a volunteer.

“Giving and receiving changes your perspective,” she says.

Beans and fruit

Wearing yellow vests, the volunteers hand out fruit, cereal and beans at a church building to those lining up in a narrow street outside.

The neighbourhood has a high immigrant population and many in the queue are Latin American women.

People used to be able to eat a hot meal onsite, but virus restrictions now mean they can only serve food to take away.

It is one of four soup kitchens opened last spring by the Alvaro del Portillo charity.

Before the pandemic, there was only one, which served around 900 people.

Since then the number of people using the soup kitchens has soared to around 2,000.

“As the months have gone by, we’ve noticed things easing,” says Susana Hortigosa, who runs the charity.

“Although the level of demand is still higher than before the pandemic, it has dropped slightly because people have started getting their furlough payouts or have found a few hours of work” as the economy has picked up, although most still need help, she says.

The leftwing coalition government of Pedro Sanchez has unblocked €40 billion ($48 billion) since the start of the crisis to fund the furlough scheme.

But with the administration overrun with claims, it has often taken months for the payouts to materialise.

‘A great help’

Such was the case with Reina Chambi (pictured below), a 39-year-old carer for the elderly whose husband was employed at a hotel. When the pandemic hit, they were both left jobless.

“My husband stopped working completely and they took a long time to make the furlough payment so we had to turn to the church for help,” says the mother-of-two, waiting outside a soup kitchen in the freezing wind in the Vallecas district.

While the payout has given the family some breathing room, the couple are still jobless, meaning they still need food packages.

“It’s a great help because we don’t have to buy milk, chickpeas, noodles, those things at least. And we can spend (the payout) on detergent or meat,” says Chambi, who misses the “stable life” she enjoyed after arriving from Bolivia 15 years ago.

Even before 2019, official figures showed more than one in four people in Spain were at risk of poverty or social exclusion, one of the highest rates in Europe.

And the pandemic has left the most vulnerable even more at risk.

“It’s so frustrating. Each time I try to escape this situation, something else happens,” sighs Amanda Gomez, 53.

Divorced just before the pandemic, she is raising two children on her own, one with Down’s Syndrome, on a cleaner’s tiny salary.

But she’s not ready to give up — a keen cook, she’s looking up recipes online to “make the most” of the food she’s got, and she is also beginning to bake cakes to order and deliver them to people’s homes.

The hope is that one day she might be able to open her own bakery.

“You dream big because dreaming doesn’t cost anything,” she says.

“What I want is to be able to go to the local church without asking for anything. Just to help out.”

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