poverty

Some 16 percent of children in the Netherlands are growing up in a single-parent household, a substantial 48 percent rate increase compared to 20 years ago. Fewer than 11 percent of children lived with one parent back in 1999, and the rate steadily grew over time, according to Statistics Netherlands (CBS).

"This situation can arise because, for example, parents have separated, a parent has died or the parents have never lived together," the statistics office said. Nearly nine-in-ten of the 538 thousand children are registered at the mother's address.

Roughly 1.5 million households will likely find it difficult to pay their energy bills in 2030, a worrisome increase compared to today, when over 650 thousand Netherlands households have a tough time handling the price of electricity and gas. The research, from agency Ecorys and reported on by Trouw, defined households as being energy impoverished if they spend at least ten percent of household income on payments to energy providers.

The number of people in the Netherlands who live below the poverty line continues to decline, according to social and cultural planning office SCP. In 2017 nearly 939 thousand people did not have enough money to get by, compared to almost a million people the year before. The SCP attributes the decline to economic growth and increased employment, NOS reports.

In a short New Year's address, Amsterdam mayor Femke Halsema praised the hopeful feeling around the city's future. She said the city wants more people to be able to access Amsterdam's growing prosperity through policy that addresses poverty, disenfranchisement, and crime.

A growing group of working Dutch live in poverty, social and cultural planning office SCP said in a report published on Wednesday. In 2014 a total of 4.6 percent of Dutch workers, or 320 thousand people, lived below the poverty line, compared to 3.1 percent in 2001. Of these working poor, 175 thousand are employed and 145 thousand are self-employed, ANP reports.

The College of Human Rights think poverty reduction should be higher up on the political agenda and the government should develop a national program to tackle poverty, they stated in a report issued on Wednesday. Human rights such as right to education, employment, health and housing are threatened by citizens' lack of monetary means.

An increasing number of Dutch children grow up in poverty, according to Defense for Children's report Kinderen in tel 2016. But at the same time, the organization did note a decline in school dropouts and juvenile delinquency, NOS reports.

Despite a decrease in the wealth gap in the Netherlands, the number of households living in long-term poverty increased to 3.3 percent of households in 2015, Statistics Netherlands announced on Wednesday. In 2015 a total of 221 thousand households lived below the minimum income threshold for more than four years, 27 thousand more than in 2015.

Nearly half of Dutch poultry farmers have been living below the poverty for an average of 15 years, according to an ING report on the state of Dutch agriculture. Half of chicken farmers and 45 percent of pig farmers lived on less than 22,300 a year between 2001 and 2015

About 421 thousand children lived in a home with a low income in 2014 and were at risk of growing up in poverty. That is 12 percent of all children in the Netherlands. Some 131 thousand of them have been living in a low-income household for more than 4 years, according to Statistics Netherlands.

One in eight kids in the Netherlands are growing up in families wit low incomes, but this is slowly improving. The number of low-income households in the Netherlands is no longer increasing and may even start falling in the near future, according to Statistics Netherlands and the Central Planning Bureau on Wednesday.