70pc of children live in poverty, survey shows

Dar es Salaam. Seven out of every 10 children in Tanzania are living in poverty, according to a new report by the National Bureau of Statistics.

The report released on Thursday details child poverty in the country on a monetary basis and gauges other parameters such as nutrition, sanitation, education, water, health, housing, protection and access to information.

The Child Poverty in Tanzania 2016 survey shows that 26 per cent of children are from poor households, and are thus deprived of basic needs like health, education and sanitation in what the report refers to as “multidimensional poverty”. 

The report also indicates that 48 per cent of children are from families that do not experience monetary poverty, and yet they experience multidimensional poverty. The third group comprises three per cent of children, who are experiencing monetary poverty alone.

The three categories combine make up 77 per cent of children who are experiencing either monetary or multidimensional poverty or both.

Only 23 per cent of children in the country do not face any kind of poverty, according to the report.

According to the last national census of 2012, there are 24 million children (under 18) in the country, and this means that about 18 million of them are living in poverty.

The study was conducted in three phases from 2008 to 2013 and involved 5,010 households, of which 3,947 had children. Data was obtained from 11,843 children involved in the study.