Introduction:
Child poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon, accumulating a number of unfavourable factors favouring the occurrence of health risk and low educational attainment. The fight against poverty is carried out not only in the political dimension at the national level, but also in the EU led by the Europe 2020 strategy.

Objective:
Knowledge and assessment of the socio-economic living conditions of children aged 0–17 years in Poland in comparison with EU countries in the period 2005–2014.

Material and Methods:
Information about poverty or social exclusion of children in the EU in 2005–2014 were obtained from Eurostat. The prevalence and changes in rates of poverty or social exclusion were analyzed, and evaluated using the Joinpoint Regression.

Results:
In 2014, poverty or social exclusion of children aged 0–17 years, measured with AROPE ratio, placed Poland in the 15th position among the EU countries. A significant reduction in poverty or social exclusion in Poland was observed until the turn of 2008/2009. Similar trends occurred in the United Kingdom, Ireland and the Netherlands. Despite the reduction in risk of relative poverty rate after taking into account social transfers and in severe material deprivation of children in Poland, the values were higher than the average in the EU. In 2007–2014, there was a substantial improvement in the situation of Polish children living in households with very low work intensity, and in 2014 the parameter had lower values only in Luxembourg and Slovenia

Conclusions:
]Although Poland has experienced positive social change manifested with improvement of living conditions of the youngest population, in the last ten years the threat of the phenomenon of poverty or social exclusion of children was higher compared to the EU average.