Economy > Poverty > Poverty by individual and household characteristics > Poverty rate > Children: Countries Compared

DEFINITION: Group-specific poverty rates are headcounts of how many people of a population group fall below the poverty line, in percentage of the total number in that population group. The poverty line used here is 50% of the median household disposable income, adjusted for household size. Children are persons with less than 18 years of age, working-age people are persons between age 18 and 65 and adults are persons aged 18 and over. A worker is an adult with a non-zero annual earning or self-employment income. In addition to poverty rates, indicators show here include the poverty risk (i.e. the age-specific poverty rate divided by the poverty rate for the entire population, times 100) and the share of various population groups that are counted as poor.

Income is defined as household disposable income in a particular year. It consists of earnings, self-employment and capital income and public cash transfers; income taxes and social security contributions paid by households are deducted. The income of the household is attributed to each of its members, with an adjustment to reflect differences in needs for households of different sizes (i.e. the needs of a household composed of four people are assumed to be twice as large as those of a person living alone).