The trend of families with children scraping the poverty line seems to be growing again after remaining steady for some years. The development is seen in figures released by the National Institute of Health and Welfare (THL) published on Thursday.
Two-guardian families with small children have been hit the hardest, the report says.
Five percent of children in Finland were found to be from families subsisting on basic social security alone in 2014, the year of the survey.
The THL report shows that Finland's family poverty rate tripled in the twelve years from 1995 to 2007, and has in the 2010s.
"Previous studies have already shown that the poverty of families with small children is the most dangerous kind, as it is most likely to reflect on the children's lives as adults later on," research chief Minna Salmi says.
More than 100K poor children
There were some 63,400 families living below the poverty line in Finland in 2014 – that means some 126,000 children who were living in poor conditions.
Financial troubles were shown to affect the wellbeing of children and their parents in a variety of ways. Poor families face relationship strains and personal stress; while women in poor families more often struggle with the financial burden than the men or fathers.
Parents in low-income families were also shown to be more anxious about the health, emotional wellbeing, behaviour and learning of their children.
Higher education no guarantee against poverty
Poverty in families with children can often be traced to a history of unemployment, scant education and social changes in employment.
However, having a university-level degree is also no panacea against having to raise children with insufficient funds. In fact, more families than usual now include at least one parent with higher education credentials.
A decrease in the real value of income transfers has also weakened the livelihood of many families, as have a number of changes of taxation and payment methods. Social benefits for families with children were not raised in fat years, but benefit cuts have been in wide use in the recessions of the early 1990s and 2010s.
Salmi says that all political decisions on raising taxes or fees have directly impacted families' chances of making a living.
"Detrimental political decisions could be avoided by prior assessment of the potential effects on children and families with children," Salmi says.
