Child poverty rates soar due to recession

More than one in four children have been left on or below the poverty line since the economy crashed, according to an international study on the impact of the recession.

Child poverty rates jumped from 18% to 28.6% between 2008 and 2012 — an increase of 130,000 that brought the number of children living in hardship here to 350,000.

That puts Ireland in 37th place out of 41 developed countries ranked by Unicef according to how well they’ve managed to insulate children from the impact of the global economic crisis.