Estimating the number of children in alternative care across the world
Introduction
This is a summary of a paper by Nicole Petrowski, Claudia Cappa & Peter Gross (2017), current and former specialists from UNICEF. Further details of the article may be found here.
In their paper the authors estimate the number of children living in residential and foster care across the world, covering 142 countries, and more than 80% of the world’s population of children. The task of compiling data is hindered by a lack of functioning systems for gathering information on children in alternative care in many countries in the world.
The authors of the article provide a context for the information they have collated, but for the purposes of this summary the focus is on the numerical data in order to give the reader a snapshot of the estimated number of children in alternative care between 2012 and 2017, the period during which the information was gathered, although some of the data went back to 2006. The estimates provided are global and regional and not by country. The regions used by UNICEF are shown in Table 1.
Table 1: UNICEF Regions
Regions | Abbreviations |
Eastern and Southern Africa | ESAR |
West and Central Africa | WCAR |
Middle East and North Africa | MENA |
South Asia | South Asia |
East Asia and Pacific | EAPR |
Latin America and the Caribbean | LACR |
Central and Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States | CEE/CIS |
Industrialised countries | Industrialised countries |
The data
Of the 142 countries for which information was available, 86 countries had data on both residential and foster care, while 56 countries had data on either residential or foster care but not both. The most common source of data was administrative records of government ministries. It is worth noting that there were disparities between the years in which the data was collected. It was also more difficult across all regions to obtain reliable data on foster care than it was on residential care.
The tables below give a breakdown of the number of children in residential care and foster care. In total there were an estimated 2,726,000 children in residential care, an average of 120 children per 100,000 of 84% of the world’s child population. Due to a lack of data it is not possible to estimate the total number of children in foster care.
Table 2: Number of countries with residential care data
Regions | Number of countries in the region | Number of countries with residential care data |
CEE/CIS | 21 | 21 |
South Asia | 8 | 8 |
LACR | 33 | 31 |
Industrialised countries | 39 | 28 |
EAPR | 29 | 10 |
MENA | 20 | 14 |
ESAR | 23 | 14 |
WCAR | 24 | 14 |
World | 197 | 140 |
Table 3: Number of countries with foster care data
Regions | Number of countries in the region | Number of countries with foster care data |
CEE/CIS | 21 | 17 |
South Asia | 8 | 1 |
LACR | 33 | 20 |
Industrialised countries | 39 | 28 |
EAPR | 29 | 2 |
MENA | 20 | 8 |
ESAR | 23 | 5 |
WCAR | 24 | 7 |
World | 197 | 88 |
Table 4: Number of children in residential care
Regions | Number of children in residential care | Number of children in residential care per 100,000 |
CEE/CIS | 664,000 | 666 |
South Asia | 93,000 | 15 |
LACR | 189,000 | 99 |
Industrialised countries | 384,000 | 192 |
EAPR | 772,000 | 153 |
MENA | 212,000 | 126 |
ESAR | 286,000 | 120 |
WCAR | 126,000 | 51 |
World | 2,726,000 | 120 |
[Population of children covered is 84%]
Table 5: Number of children in foster care
Regions | Number of children in foster care | Number of children in foster care per 100,000 |
CEE/CIS | 788,000 | 790 |
South Asia | n/a | n/a |
LACR | 54,000 | n/a |
Industrialised countries | 799,000 | 399 |
EAPR | n/a | n/a |
MENA | 52,000 | 31 |
ESAR | n/a | n/a |
WCAR | n/a | n/a |
[Not enough data available to calculate estimates in five regions]