International review of approaches to tackling child poverty: Finland

Introduction

Finland has low child poverty rates compared to other European Union (EU) countries. Its rate was 11.6% in 2024 compared to an EU average of 19.4%. Scotland’s rate was 19.4% in 2023/24.^[2] Finland has maintained low child poverty rates over a long period of time following a reduction in the 1970s and 1980s. Despite a slight upward trend from the mid-1990s, child poverty rates in Finland have remained at a relatively low level (below 12% of the child population). It is also notable that rates of poverty are lower for children than working-age adults, and Finland is one of only three countries in the EU where people of working-age are the population group most at risk of poverty.^[3]

Reducing or preventing child poverty was not an explicit concern of Finland’s social policy until the 1990s. Instead, the emphasis on children’s social welfare provision came from the view that society has a shared responsibility for children and the ‘prerequisites of their wellbeing’.^[4] The aim of Finland’s family policy therefore has been described as creating ‘a safe environment for children to grow up in and to provide parents with the material and psychological means to have and raise children’.^[5] As a result, most policies are provided on a universal basis, rather than being targeted at groups in or at risk of poverty.

In 2021, Finland launched its first National Child Strategy, based on the UN Convention of the Rights of the Child. It is Finland’s National Action Plan for the European Child Guarantee (part of the EU Strategy on the Rights of the Child).^[6] As part of this plan, Finland agreed a target to reduce poverty by 100,000 people by 2030, of which one third should be children.^[7] This is the national target for Finland agreed with the European Commission to contribute to the EU-wide target to reduce the number of people living in poverty by at least 15 million (including 5 million children) by 2030.^[8] This is discussed further on page 22.

This case study considers the key interventions and factors that have contributed to Finland’s low child poverty rate, particularly those that facilitated the fall in child poverty in Finland during the 1970s and 1980s. It is important to understand the path dependency of many of the factors in the Finnish context, which were possible not only because of the conditions at the time, but also due to Finland’s historical and democratic trajectory as a Nordic-style nation state. As such, the important economic, political, social and cultural context is also considered.