Children

• [New] The UK could see a baby bust in 2021, with the annual birth rate dipping to the lowest level since records began due to the coronavirus pandemic, new figures have shown.
• [New] Egypt, Bangladesh and the Democratic Republic of Congo will welcome between 8,500-9,500 new babies each on the first day of the year.
• In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, an estimated 3.3 million children under five will suffer from acute malnutrition in 2021, including at least 1 million with severe acute malnutrition.
• In Zimbabwe, an estimated 7.9 million people, including 4.1 million children, will be in urgent need of life-saving health services and humanitarian assistance in 2021 due to multiple hazards, including the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the economic crisis.
• Older adults are the fastest growing segment of the United States population, with more people aged 65 and over by 2035 than children.
• The greatest increase in child marriages due to the COVID-19 economic crisis is expected in South Asia, with an estimated up to 1 million girls at risk over the next 5 years.
• Without mitigation efforts, climate change will lead to nearly 95,000 additional deaths per year due to undernutrition in children under five by 2030, 32 and an additional 24 million undernourished children by 2050.
• Food banks were overwhelmed with individuals and families unable to afford groceries, and the nonprofit Feeding America projected that one in six Americans - including one in four children - could experience food insecurity in 2020.
• By mid-2021, an estimated 7.24 million people, or 60% of the South Sudanese population, including about 1.4 million children under age 5, are expected to be acutely malnourished, the highest number in three years.
• The number of people in LMICs facing acute food insecurity will double to 265 million by the end of 2020.
• By late November, approximately 26 million Americans said they did not have enough food; upper estimates predict some 54 million people nationwide, including 18 million kids, could be food insecure by the end of the year.
• More than 11 million children in the U.S. live in food insecure homes, and today, projections show that 18 million children could face hunger in 2020.
• A hunger relief non-profit, the US is seeing record levels of child hunger, and as many as 17 million children will experience food insecurity in 2020 alone.
• The world pledged to end extreme poverty, ensure universal health care, and provide education for all children by 2030; countries would decarbonize the world's energy system to head off the dire risks of human-induced climate change.
• Local services will face a funding gap of £7.8bn by 2025, with £16bn worth of core local government funding cuts between 2010 and 2020 likely to result in demand for services, such as social care and children's services, not being met if cash funding does not increase.
• The World Health Organization has predicted that by 2050, the global population of people aged 60 years and older will more than double, from 12% to 22%, and the number of people aged 60 years and older will outnumber children younger than 5 years.
• Aggregate effects from an aggressive global program to reduce PM2.5 implemented by the WHO (World Health Organization) could substantially reduce the mortality in more polluted regions, such as China and India.
• As many as 13 million more child marriages could take place over the next 10 years because of COVID-19 shutdowns of schools and family planning services combined with increasing economic challenges.
• UNICEF underscored the economic impact of the virus lockdown on children and warned the number of Middle Eastern and North African children languishing in poverty could top 60 million by the end of 2020.
• An additional 10 million children globally could face acute malnutrition, with a doubling of the number of people facing acute food insecurity in 2020 relative to 2019.

Last updated: 14 January 2021