TEPAV report: 6.7 million children in Turkey are below the poverty line

According to the report titled "Let Poverty Not Be a Legacy: Child Poverty and Birth Grants in Turkey" published by the Economic Policy Research Foundation of Turkey (TEPAV), 31 percent of children in the 0-17 age group were below the poverty line in 2025.

The study, prepared by TEPAV Development Program Director Ekrem Cunedioğlu and Policy Analyst Sercan Sevgili, revealed that child poverty fluctuated between 30.2 percent and 32.7 percent between 2014 and 2025. The research shows that an increase in the number of children in a household makes it more difficult to escape poverty.

According to the data, the poverty rate in households with four or more children reaches 64 percent. The difference in the probability of poverty between single-child households and multi-child households was calculated at 28.7 percentage points. Furthermore, it was stated that 22.6 percent of children in the 0-14 age group experience persistent poverty.

In a comparison made with Eurostat data, while the rate of children at risk of poverty or social exclusion in Turkey is 37.6 percent, this rate is at an average of 24.3 percent in EU countries. Expenditure data highlights the gap between income groups; the expenditure per child by households in the highest income group reaches 19.4 times that of the lowest income group.