Many studies were conducted on intergroup exclusion among children that stems from prejudicial attitudes about group membership, such as gender, race, ethnicity and culture (Killen & Rutland, 2011). However, there is a dearth of research regarding social exclusion based on social class. Still, there is evidence that children are sensitive to the social status of the groups, showing more favourable attitudes towards high status groups (Bigler, Brown e Markell, 2001). Also, between the ages of 3 and 5 years--?old, children distinguish between ‘rich’ and ‘poor’ on the basis of material and symbolic observable aspects (Leahy, 1981; Ramsey, 1991). At the age of 6, children begin to show unfavourable attitudes towards the poor, and 10--?11 years--?old hold negative stereotypes about this group (Woods et al, 2005; Sigelman, 2013). Nevertheless, very little is known about how children actually think and behave towards children perceived as being poor. In this paper we report data from an interview study on Portuguese Children’s concepts of child poverty. Our study explored the development of children’s awareness, feelings and knowledge about social class categories (attitudes, stereotypes, behaviours, causal attributions) and the perceived and intended behaviours towards poor children. We conducted a mixed study, doing semi--] structured individual interviews with 108 children in two schools within a low and high social economic (SES) neighborhood (in total, 36% received economic support from the National Ministry of Education). Children ages ranged between 6 and 12 years old (M = 9.10; SD=2.19). We used drawings as a support for the interview, and also collected quantitative data on attitudes and stereotypes. Qualitative analysis (Flick, 2002) revealed that, regardless their age and SES, the majority of children relate poor children with extreme poverty referring that they use torn clothes, live on streets, alone and with no food or money. Sadness was the feeling most attributed to the poor. With age, children are able to make more detailed and completed descriptions of this category, showing a greater integration of the social complexification of the phenomenon. Regarding attitudes, positive attitudes towards poor children increase during childhood. Furthermore, half of the children perceive other’s behaviors towards poor children as negative ones (e.g. make fun, exclude, disregard), and this perception increases with age. About intended personal behavior though almost all the participants indicated positive behaviors (e.g. help, play). Additionally, school SES context influences kind of personal behavior. Results are discussed from a social identity perspective, concluding both avoidance of self- or close- other categorization as poor and notion of an anti-discrimination norm in place. This knowledge is important to understand how children perceive and deal with social inequity in school environments, as well as to know the perception of discrimination of this group in school.

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