A quarter of the children who live in rural areas go to bed hungry at night, according to the report entitled “The well-being of children in rural areas”, carried out by World Vision Romania.
Village children, hungry and poor. Photo source: archive
According to the document, almost a quarter of children, 23% to be exact, always or sometimes go to bed hungry at night. And that’s because their parents are too poor and don’t have enough money for food.
The data also show that 12.3 lei/day is the average amount of food costs in the family, for children from rural areas, and 15% of children over 8 years old from rural areas (approximately 154,000 children) always feel tired because I work before or after school.
“What we see this year is that yes, some of the indicators have improved, but a very large part of the indicators have worsened, especially those indicators related to the basic rights of the child”, presented Mihaela Nabăr, executive director of World Vision Romania. “If we were to look, for example, at how well our children are fed, what we find is that almost a quarter of children in Romania always or sometimes go to bed hungry at night, because there is not enough food home. It’s a percentage that, unfortunately, has worsened compared to 2020, when we had one in 10 children going to bed almost every night or always hungry. I think we should look at why this is happening, how much inequality has increased and how well we are allocating resources.” Mihaela Nabăr also showed.
Economic analyst Adrian Negrescu told “Adevărul” that “unfortunately, we have a lot of abandoned areas in our country from an economic point of view, from the point of view of supporting the business environment, from the point of view of the chances that children, young people, families have to have a better life” . These figures are, in his opinion, “an x-ray of the extremely serious economic situation in which Romania is”. Poverty in certain areas of the country has reached unimaginable levels. “Families don’t send their children to school, they don’t manage to cover their financial needs, a hot meal, because wages are very low and labor taxes are very high. It is a consequence of a disastrous policy from an administrative, economic and fiscal point of view, in terms of regional economic development in Romania”, the analyst also said. He believes that we are facing the worst economic scenario in which our country can find itself: “Because it is likely to accentuate economic problems and drive away investors interested in opening new investments, ljobs and other business”.
Solutions for eradicating poverty in rural areas
Economic analyst Adrian Negrescu comes up with several solutions that could get the country out of the crisis and the people out of hunger and poverty: “It is a consequence of a disastrous policy from an administrative, economic and fiscal point of view, in terms of regional economic development in Romania. The solutions can be related to the administrative reorganization of the country into centers of economic development, to the revitalization of the development regions that we had that did not work. Also, we should focus on attracting European funds and other sources of financing to financially disadvantaged areas”.
How can we do this? “Through national programs of reconversion, professional, supporting families who send their children to school, through tax reductions for families who have children and who cannot describe from a financial point of view, because everything starts from money”, Adrian Negrescu also explains.
The specialist would impose as a solution an expansion of the meal voucher system, especially for families with children. “And the value of these vouchers should increase depending on the financial situation of the beneficiaries. This means that not only employees should receive these aids, but also families. And the only solution is to basically revitalize these areas, where the birth rate is still at a high level, and provide them with some kind of career plan. Let those people know that they send their children to school, then they end up in a trade school, they get a job, they can have a chance to buy a house and have a decent life.” the expert also considers.
Predictions for the coming year: “We will tighten the belt even more”
Adrian Negrescu warns that, most likely, the year 2025 will bring new tax increases. “Let’s tighten our belts and be economically prepared for a series of austerity measures to come, given that the state’s financial hole is the biggest.” The specialist stated that this year we borrowed 47 billion euros, an unprecedented amount in Romania’s history. “We have brought the budget deficit to 27 billion euros, also unprecedented in the history of the last 30 years, which is why the bill will be extremely large, somewhere at the level of 70 billion euros, this in addition the classic amounts that we associate with the business environment, we associate them with the functioning of the Romanian state. This money will either be taken from loans – and I’m afraid that’s where we’re headed – or from tax increases, which will affect the poor strata of the population even more”, concluded Adrian Negrescu.
