The under-5 mortality rate has gone down to 36 from 141 per 1,000 live births since 1990. Similarly, primary school attendance among boys and girls is equal with 76 per cent for each, a new report of Unicef says.

Similarly, the poorest newborns are 3.7 times less likely attended by skilled birth-attendant compared to the richest children, according to the report.

Also, only 41 per cent of the poorest has access to early childhood education. The figure stands at 84 per cent in richest children, the report mentioned.

The report ‘The State of the World’s Children’ released by Unicef on Tuesday depicts a grim picture on the plight of world’s poorest children in near future if they are denied a fair chance in life.

According to the report, the current trend shows that 69 million children under five will die from mostly preventable causes, 167 million children will live in poverty, and 750 million women will have been married as children by 2030—the target date set for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

“Denying hundreds of millions of children a fair chance in life does more than threaten their futures – by fueling intergenerational cycles of disadvantage, it imperils the future of their societies,” said Unicef Executive Director Anthony Lake.

The report notes that significant progress has been made in saving children’s lives, getting children into school and lifting people out of poverty.

Furthermore, the report says that the number of people living in extreme poverty worldwide is almost half what it was in the 1990s.

The report states that cash transfers, for example, have been helpful in making the children stay in school longer and advance to higher levels of education.

“On average, each additional year of education a child receives increases his or her adult earnings by about 10 per cent. And, for each additional year of schooling completed, on average, by young adults in a country, that country’s poverty rates fall by 9 per cent,” the report stated.