More than one in four minors lives below the poverty threshold in Spain. They are 2.07 million children and adolescents, 28.3% of those under 18 years old, compared to 19.5% of the overall population. The figure is part of the new study published by FEDEA, prepared by José Ignacio Conde-Ruiz and Marialejandra Garay Aguirre, from FEDEA and the Complutense University of Madrid, based on the microdata from the Survey on Living Conditions.
The problem expands when the AROPE indicator is used, which incorporates not only monetary poverty but also severe material and social deprivation and low household employment intensity. In 2025, 33.8% of minors were at risk of poverty or social exclusion.
The study thus focuses on a question that goes beyond disposable income: what part of the vulnerability of households with children responds to the cost of raising them and which is related to the economic and social characteristics of the families themselves.
Spain leads child poverty in Europe
The comparison with the rest of Europe places Spain among the countries with the highest child vulnerability. According to the data analyzed by FEDEA, in 2024 Spain recorded a child AROPE rate of 29.2%, the highest of the 27 countries in the European Union, compared to the 19.3% community average.
The study analyzes the evolution of poverty and deprivations that specifically affect minors and examines what happens when households with similar characteristics in income, employment, education, age, and family structure are compared.
The conclusion is that having children does not itself generate a uniform penalty. The risk changes considerably depending on the life stage and the composition of the household.
The difference is especially visible between young families and single-parent households. In the latter, the AROPE rate reaches 50.3%, while monetary poverty stands at 41.2%. Severe material and social deprivation affects 19.4% of these households.
Age also marks a difference. Among households where the reference person is under 30 years old, severe material and social deprivation reaches 26.2%, above the 18% recorded in the different life cycle stages analyzed by the study.
Child-rearing weighs more when the household starts from a vulnerable position
The econometric analysis of FEDEA allows isolating the effect associated with the presence of minors once other household characteristics are considered. The result is an average difference of 1.15 percentage points in the probability of suffering from severe material and social deprivation.
But that average hides much greater differences between generations.
In households where the reference person is under 30 years old, the presence of minor children is related to an increase of 7.26 percentage points in the probability of suffering from severe material and social deprivation. Among households aged 30 to 44 years, the difference reduces to 0.71 points, while among those aged 45 years or older it reaches 1.16 points.
The association between children and deprivation is, therefore, between six and ten times greater in young households than in the other age groups.
The data points to a combination of factors: the early years of family life coincide with work stages in which there is still less stability, less saving capacity, and, in many cases, greater difficulties in balancing work and care.
The single-parent household concentrates the greatest risk
The family structure constitutes another of the main factors of vulnerability. Single-parent households present an AROPE rate of 50.3%, compared to the total of households with minors.
The difference is not limited to income. The absence of a second adult can reduce the household's capacity to absorb a job loss, bear the costs of care, or maintain income when family needs increase.
FEDEA also warns that the observed differences cannot be directly attributed to the mere presence of children. The study distinguishes between statistical correlation and a causal effect: that households with minors present more deprivations does not mean that having children is in itself the cause of those difficulties.
To analyze this issue, the authors break down the difference between households with and without minors. The gross gap in severe material and social deprivation is 2.59 percentage points. 42.6% can be explained by observable characteristics such as income, employment, education, or age. The remaining 57.4% remains unexplained by the variables included in the analysis.
This residual component, the study emphasizes, cannot be interpreted as a causal effect of having children, although it is compatible with costs, needs, and constraints inherent to parenting that are not fully captured in the data.
A childhood poverty that is not evenly distributed
The data thus depicts a childhood poverty concentrated in certain family profiles. The most vulnerable situation arises when the presence of minors coincides with a low accumulation of resources, a still not well-established work trajectory, or the absence of a second adult.
The FEDEA study therefore suggests that policies supporting childhood should not be limited to a single formula. Universal measures can cover part of the problem, but the data shows a much greater exposure among young and single-parent households.
Income protection, reconciliation measures, and policies aimed at preventing the economic conditions of the early years of family life from being passed on to subsequent generations appear, in the conclusions of the work, as priority areas for action.
The figure that summarizes the problem remains, meanwhile, intact: 2.07 million minors live below the poverty line in Spain, while one in three is at risk of poverty or social exclusion.