Indus­tri­al­ized nations are see­ing an increase in chil­dren who are poor, or are under their nation’s poverty line. The num­bers were high even before the global reces­sion. But now that the indus­tri­al­ized nation’s economies are shrink­ing even more chil­dren will become poor.

The BBC pro­duced a great story about Ger­many today, a nation where already 36% of the chil­dren are poor. As we see in the story from reporter Steve Rosen­berg, chil­dren can still get needs ful­filled,. but it is usu­ally through char­ity and not through employment.

The accom­pa­ny­ing arti­cle to the above video, looks at the grow­ing num­bers of child poverty in Europe and the U.S.

The Ger­man Soci­ety for the Pro­tec­tion of Chil­dren is even more worried.

It warns of a “mas­sive” increase in child poverty, once the full effects of the reces­sion kick in.

Ger­many is not alone. Gov­ern­ments around the world appear to be los­ing the bat­tle against child poverty.

In the UK, min­is­ters have admit­ted it will now be “very dif­fi­cult” to meet their tar­get of halv­ing child poverty by 2010.

In the US, which already has one of the worst child poverty rates among indus­tri­alised nations, three mil­lion more chil­dren are expected to slip below the poverty line.

Char­i­ties have been crit­i­cis­ing the Ger­man gov­ern­ment for not doing enough to tackle the problem.

“If we have prob­lems with our banks, or with our car pro­duc­ers, the politi­cians come together to find a solu­tion very quickly. They give money and cred­its,” says Michael Kruse of Deutsches Kinderhilfswerk.

“But when I tell them we have three mil­lion chil­dren who have no future and no money, nobody comes together to help the chil­dren. I think it’s the wrong pri­or­ity of our society.”

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