Ireland ranks highly for child wellbeing – but inequality is shaping children’s lives
Behind Ireland’s high ranking is “a two-tier childhood” – Peter Power Executive Director
DUBLIN/FLORENCE, 12 May 2026 – Ireland ranks among the top‑performing countries internationally for child well‑being, but new UNICEF analysis shows that economic inequality continues to shape children’s lived experiences – particularly how they feel about their lives.
Report Card 20: Unequal Chances – Children and Economic Inequality, published today by UNICEF Innocenti – the Office of Strategy and Evidence – analyses children’s outcomes across high‑income and OECD countries.
Ireland places 6th overall in the report’s league table of child well‑being, reflecting strong and improving performance across physical health, mental well‑being and skills.
This marks a significant improvement since Report Card 16 (2020), when Ireland ranked 12th. The latest findings confirm progress across all three dimensions of child well‑being, while also highlighting areas where challenges persist beneath national averages.
Ireland’s strongest performance is in education. The country now ranks 1st for children’s skills. However, the report warns that strong national averages can mask deep inequalities within countries, including Ireland, where children from poorer backgrounds continue to experience worse outcomes.
Ireland’s children are achieving, but they are not all thriving,” said Peter Power, Executive Director at UNICEF Ireland, “Behind Ireland’s high ranking is a two-tier childhood. Many children do exceptionally well, while others face daily stress, housing instability, and financial pressure that undermine their well-being. Academic success cannot be the only measure of how our children are doing.”
Mental well‑being
Building on issues highlighted in earlier reports, the latest analysis shows that mental well‑being remains Ireland’s most pressing challenge, despite improvements in overall rankings. Suicide rates among 15–19‑year‑olds have increased, and reported life satisfaction among 15‑year‑olds has dipped slightly.
Crucially, the report finds that the gap in life satisfaction between children from higher‑ and lower‑income families in Ireland is wider than the Report Card average. This contrasts with education and physical health – where inequality gaps are comparatively narrower.
Taken together, the findings suggest that while Ireland has made real progress in narrowing some material and educational inequalities, inequality is felt most strongly in children’s emotional well‑being.
At a time when concerns about child poverty and cost‑of‑living pressures are increasingly visible in Ireland, this report helps explain why those issues matter so much for children,” Aibhlin O’Leary, Head of Advocacy at UNICEF Ireland said. “When families struggle financially, the impact is felt not just in what children have, but in their confidence, happiness and sense of future.”
Children’s voices
For the first time, a UNICEF Report Card includes children’s own perspectives on inequality. Ireland is one of just six countries where children took part in focus groups. Irish children spoke about:
- Feeling excluded when they cannot afford activities with friends
- The impact of financial stress on confidence and belonging
- Differences in opportunities shaping their sense of self-worth
These accounts reinforce the report’s central finding: inequality affects not only material conditions, but also relationships, identity and wellbeing.
Inequality
The report emphasises that inequality is not inevitable and that policy choices can reduce its impact.
UNICEF is calling on governments and stakeholders to:
- Prioritise children’s mental health, ensuring timely and equitable access to services
- Improve safety nets, including family and child benefits and minimum wages, to help ensure no child grows up in poverty.
- Support disadvantaged communities with subsidised housing, improvements to infrastructure in disadvantaged neighbourhoods, and investment in public facilities like green spaces and leisure facilities.
- Address inequalities in education by minimising socio-economic segregation in schools; ensuring that schools are appropriately staffed and equipped regardless of students’ economic backgrounds; and by providing children with healthy and nutritious school meals.
- Engage with children to better understand their perspectives on how inequality affects them and their families and to develop solutions that promote their wellbeing.
“Ireland has the resources to close these gaps,” Gwyther Rees, lead author and Chief, Planet, Participation and Well-being, UNICEF Innocenti said. “Reducing child poverty and inequality is one of the most effective ways to improve children’s health, well‑being and life chances.”
Note to editors:
Download Report Card 20 (2026) www.unicef.org/innocenti/reports/report-card-20
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- Report Card 20: Unequal Chances – Children and economic inequality provides data on the potential impact of economic inequalities on children’s lives in 44 countries classified as high-income and/or members of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). (Note: Some indicators in the report do not present data on all 44 countries.)
- Income inequality is measured using the ratio between the 20th and 80th percentiles of equivalised income distribution (OECD, Eurostat, UNICEF calculations).
- Child poverty refers to the proportion of children (0–17) living in households below 60% of median national income (EU-SILC, OECD, national sources).
- Ireland-specific context:
- Recent Eurostat data (not yet comparable across countries for inclusion in the report) shows child poverty in Ireland rising from 15.1% to 16.9%
- This equates to approximately 206,000 children, an increase of over 20,000 in one year
- Ireland-specific context:
- Child wellbeing indicators include:
- Mental wellbeing, which is represented by two sets of data – life satisfaction from OECD PISA 2022 and adolescent suicide from the WHO Mortality Database;
- Physical health, which is represented by two sets of data – child mortality from UN IGME (2024) and overweight and obesity from NCD-RisC; and
- Skills, which is represented by two sets of data – academic proficiency and social skills, both from OEDC PISA 2022. The report updates a league table of how 37 OECD/high-income countries are doing for children, based on measures of physical health, mental well-being and skills.
For further information, please contact:
Vivienne Parry, UNICEF Ireland, [email protected]
Brian Keeley, UNICEF Innocenti, [email protected]
Nadia Samie-Jacobs, UNICEF, New York, +1 845 760 2615, [email protected]
About UNICEF Office of Strategy and Evidence – Innocenti
UNICEF Innocenti leads UNICEF’s evidence ecosystem, including official statistics, research and foresight, and drives UNICEF’s corporate strategy, planning and monitoring. It is guided by the belief that stronger evidence means better decisions, and better decisions mean better lives for children.