Despite being one of the richest nations in the world, Australia has witnessed a huge escalation in child poverty figures, which has made it a matter of “national shame.”
Children are every country’s future but Australia seems to be taking the child poverty matter lightly. The Australian Council of Social Service has discovered that over 730,000 youngsters have been facing the impact of disadvantage. The Anti-Poverty Week prompted ACOSS to reveal the figures, according to which it has been found that around 17.4 percent children in the nation are living in poverty.
The data marked a two percent increase in the figures in the last 10 years to 2014. The report also revealed that the children with lone-parent families were mainly the victims of child poverty. The number in this respect has shown a huge hike from 36.8 percent to 40.6 percent.
The child poverty figure is a “national shame” for the nation. While the kids belonging to lone-parent families suffer more, the figures are equally significant in cases of children from aboriginal or indigenous communities.
Not-for-profit organization Marist Youth Care chief executive Cate Sydes said that the nation has been casually handling the child poverty matter and the initiatives to be taken to control it have become worse in the past decade. She added that the kids being brought up by single parents are more at the risk of the national problem. Moreover, the difference in wages and salaries because of the gender pay gap has been acting as a driving force in the escalation of the kids’ poverty figures.
“Families are already at crisis point so (the population) needs the State and Federal Governments to work together for a solution rather than do piecemeal work,” Sydes said as quoted by The Daily Telegraph. “Last year, our youth homelessness services saw the largest group they’ve ever seen, 480 young people … in the last three months we’ve seen 207 cases of young people already homeless or at risk of homelessness,” she added.
Sydes, therefore, has urged the federal as well as the state governments to look at the child poverty matter and take relevant steps to safeguard the interest of the future of Australia.
Online Source: Aussie Network News.
