Estonia is a small country on the shores of the Baltic Sea, with a population of 1.4 million. The country has gone through many socio-economic and political changes during her history. In 1991 she gained independence from the collapsing Soviet Union; in 1992 the ‘kroon’ (EEK) was introduced as the national currency, and in 1993/94 the Russian army left the country. By 1996 Estonia had reached noticeable socio-economic and political stabilisation and today the country is ready to join to the EU.
Children as a separate unit of observation entered academic and political discourse in 1999 when ‘Poverty Reduction in Estonia’ (Kutsar and Trumm, 1999) was published. The publication revealed children to be the social group most vulnerable to poverty.