Relative child poverty
The World Family Map also presents rates of relative poverty to measure the well-being of children in middle- and
high-income countries. These rates speak to the poverty experienced by children whose families are poor relative to other
families in that country, rather than families in other countries. Specifically, the relative poverty indicator describes the
share of children who live in households with household incomes that are less than half of the country’s median income.31
The higher the relative poverty rate, the more children live in poverty in comparison with the average household with
children in that country. This indicator also speaks to the income distribution within a country.