in contrast countries where child poverty is low have rates that are significantly lower than the poverty rates of the population in general at percentage points the increase between and was largest in slovak republic an increase of more than two percentage points over the same period was observed in france germany greece hungary italy lithuania luxembourg and sweden figure panel a on the contrary a fall in the child poverty rate coincided with the rise in median income which has been particularly strong in chile especially since in greece the increase in the relative child poverty rate was accompanied by a significant fall in median income and thus the poverty line figure panel b this suggests that not only the proportion of children experiencing poverty increased but also that the standard of living of poor families declined as further explained in the next subsection