In this press release, Statistics Portugal (INE) and the Portuguese Committee for UNICEF present some official statistical indicators that allow us to characterize the reality of children in Portugal.

Between 1990 and 2023, the proportion of children in the total population went from 25.2% to 15.7%. In the same period, the number of live births per thousand women at childbearing age decreased from 46.5 to 38.8 and the mean age of women at birth of their first child changed from 24.9 to 30.2 years.

Vaccination coverage against human papillomavirus (HPV) infections was, in 2023, higher for female children aged 11 and 12 years. In 2024, 3.6% of children could not meet a need for dental consultation or treatment and 4.5% had some limitation in carrying out activities considered usual for their age due to prolonged health problems.

The number of students enrolled in non-higher education in the 2022/2023 academic year decreased by 19.9% compared to 1990/1991, with the gross enrolment rate in pre-primary education rising from 50.7% to 99.4%. In 2022, 76.8% of 15-year-old students had a minimum level of proficiency in reading and 70.2% in mathematics, reflecting, in both cases, a reduction compared to 2012.

The at-risk-of-poverty rate for children up to 17 years of age remained higher than that observed for the general population, reaching 17.8% in 2023. In that year, the risk of poverty affected almost a third of people living in single-parent households and about 28% of those in large families.

In 2024, one fifth of children lived in households without the ability to pay for at least one week of holiday per year, away from home, and one tenth of children were unable to participate regularly in an extracurricular or leisure activity.

Data from recent years show that women benefit more from adoption leave than men. In 2024, 47% of the beneficiaries of initial Social Security parental leave were male with an average duration of 38.8 days; in the case of female beneficiaries, the average duration was 109.2 days.

In 2022, 18.6% of people aged 18 to 74 reported having experienced some type of violence during childhood (up to 15 years old). 3.5% of women were victims of sexual abuse in childhood, which compares with 1.1% of men. In 2024, 3,237 crimes against minors were recorded, corresponding to the highest number of reports recorded by police authorities since 2014.