James Town, Accra.
Child poverty refers to the state of children living in poverty. This applies to children that come from poor families or orphans
being raised with limited, or in some cases absent, state resources.
Children that fail to meet the minimum acceptable standard of the nation
where that child lives are said to be poor. In developing countries,
these standards are lower and when combined with the increased number of
orphans the effects are more extreme
Definition
Street children in the Philippines
The definition of children in most countries is 'people under the age of eighteen',
while biologically the transition from childhood to adulthood is said
to occur with the onset of puberty. Culturally defining the end of
childhood is more complex, and takes into account factors such as the
commencement of work, end of schooling and marriage as well as class,
gender and race. According to the United Nations Children's Fund
(UNICEF) "children living in poverty are those who experience
deprivation of the material, spiritual and emotional resources needed to
stay alive, develop and thrive, leaving them unable to enjoy their
rights, achieve their full potential, and participate as full and equal
members of society". The ChildFund International
(CFI) definition is based on Deprivation (lack of materialistic
conditions and services), Exclusion (denial of rights and safety) and
Vulnerability (when society can not deal with threats to children).
Other charitable organisations also use this multi-dimensional approach
to child poverty, defining it as a combination of economic, social,
cultural, physical, environmental and emotional factors.
These definitions suggest child poverty is multidimensional, relative
to their current and changing living conditions and complex interactions
of the body, mind and emotions are involved.
Measuring child poverty
A boy washes cutlery in a pool of filthy water in Cambodia
The easiest way to quantify child poverty is by setting an absolute or relative monetary threshold.
If a family does not earn above that threshold, the children of that
family will be considered to live below the poverty line. Absolute
poverty thresholds are fixed and generally only updated for price
changes, whereas relative poverty thresholds are developed with
reference to the actual income of the population and reflect changes in
consumption. The absolute poverty threshold is the money needed to purchase a defined quantity of goods and services.
While every threshold generally reflects the minimum income required to
acquire necessities of life. However, there exists a caveat, as a
family which earns above a set threshold, may still choose to not spend
on the need of their children.
Certain organisations, such as the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund, use the absolute poverty threshold of US$1 a day to
measure poverty in developing countries.
Since the 1960s, the US has used an absolute poverty threshold adjusted
for family size and composition to determine those living in poverty.
Europe and many other developed countries use a relative poverty threshold, typically 50% of the countries' median income.
Relative poverty does not necessarily mean the child is lacking
anything, but is more a reflection of inequality in society. Child
poverty, when measured using relative thresholds, will only improve if
low-income families benefit more from economic advances than well-off
families.
Measures of child poverty using income thresholds will vary depending
on whether relative or absolute poverty is measured and what threshold
limits are applied. Using a relative measure, poverty is much higher in
the US than in Europe, but if an absolute measure is used, then poverty
in some European countries is higher.
It is argued that using income as the only threshold ignores the
multidimensional aspect of child poverty, which includes consumption
requirements, access to resources and the ability to interact in society
safely and without discrimination.
A 2003 study conducted by researchers out of Bristol attempted to
provide a scientific basis for measuring severe deprivation based on
levels of adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, decent sanitation
facilities, health, shelter, education, and information.
Measurable values were attributed to each indicator and these were used
to establish how many children were living in poverty. The values
included: heights and weights more than 3 deviations below the
international median, children with access only to rivers and other
surface water, no access to toilets, no immunisations, no access to
medical advice, living in dwellings with more than five people per room,
no school attendance and no access to newspapers or other media. Out of
a population of 1.8 billion children from developing nations, 56% were
below at least one of these measurements. In Sub-Saharan Africa and
Southern Asia, this number increased to over 80%, with the rural
children from these areas the worst affected.
The Young Lives Project
is investigating the changing nature of child poverty by following
nearly 12,000 children for 15 years in four countries (Ethiopia, Peru,
Vietnam and India), chosen to reflect a wide range of cultural,
political, geographical and social contexts.
Every three to four years, researchers will collect data on the
children and their families health, malnutrition, literacy, access to
services and other indicators of poverty. Reports are available for
these four countries that comparing the initial data obtained in 2002
with data from 2006.
Peru, Vietnam and India have shown economic growth and a reduction in
poverty over this time, but large inequalities still exist between
rural and urban areas, and among ethnic groups.
This is particularly obvious in India, a country with the second
largest population of billionaires but also home to 25% of the world's
poor.
Ethiopia, one of the poorest countries in the world, has also shown
slight economic growth and reduction in poverty. Inequalities still
exist, with boys more likely to be malnourished than girls and more
absolute poverty in rural areas, although relative poverty is higher in
urban areas.
This data was collected before the 2008 drought and the recent increase
in food prices, which have had a severe impact on the ability of
Ethiopia to feed its population.
Capability Approach and the Child Development Index
Recently, debate among philosophers and theorists on how to define and measure poverty stems from the emergence of the human capability approach, where poverty is defined by Hi Kos extent of freedoms that a person possesses. Amartya Sen,
the creator of the capability approach, argues that there are five
fundamental freedoms that should be available to all humans: political
freedoms, economic facilities, social opportunities, transparency
guarantees, and protective security. He also suggests that they are all interconnected, where each freedom fosters and/or enhances the others.
Additionally, the capability approach claims that development
should be considered a process of expanding freedoms or removing the
major sources of unfreedom rather than a focus on narrower measurements
such as growth of gross national product, per capita income, or
industrialization. According to kos basic needs approach
(which in most aspects is quite like the capability approach), the
objective of development should be to provide all humans with the
opportunity to a full life, which goes beyond abstractions such as
money, income, or employment.
Therefore, the definition and measurement of poverty in general must
extend beyond measurements like per capita GDP, which tools such as the Human Development Index attempt to accomplish.
In light of this, a UK initiative, Save the Children, has also developed a measurement of child poverty based on measures of capability, called the Child Development Index (CDI).
CDI is an index that combines performance measures specific to children
– primary education, child health, and child nutrition – to produce a
score on a scale of 0 to 100, with zero being the best with higher
scores indicating worse performances.
According to Save the Children, each of the indicators was chosen
because it was easily accessible, universally understood, and clearly
indicative of child wellbeing. Health measures under-five mortality rate; nutrition measures the percentage of children under five who are moderately or severely underweight
(which is two standard deviations below the median weight for age of
the reference population); and education measures the percentage of
primary school-age children that are not enrolled in school. In terms of opportunities and capabilities, CDI is the most appropriate measurement of child poverty.
Of the estimated 2.2 billion children worldwide, about a billion, or every second child, live in poverty.
Of the 1.9 billion children in developing nations, 640 million are
without adequate shelter; 400 million are without access to safe water;
270 million have no access to health services.
In 2003, 10.6 million children died before reaching the age of five,
which is equivalent to the total child population of France, Germany,
Greece, and Italy.
1.4 million die each year from lack of access to safe drinking water
and adequate sanitation while 2.2 million die each year due to lack of
immunizations.
The Child Development Index also illustrates relative child
poverty compared across all regions of the world (see Measuring child
poverty).
- World performance: CDI = 17.5
- Africa: CDI = 34.5
- Middle East/North Africa: CDI = 11.2
- Central/East Europe and Central Asia: CDI = 9.2
- South Asia: CDI = 26.4
- East Asia: CDI = 8.5
- Latin America and Caribbean: CDI = 6.8
- Developed Countries: CDI = 2.1
The CDI in Africa is twice that of the world average, and South Asia also fares poorly in relation to the global performance.
In contrast, the CDI in developed countries is one-ninth of the world
CDI, indicating a clear distinction between developing and developed
nations.
However, in 2013, child poverty reached record high levels in the United States, with 16.7 million children, more than 20%, living in food insecure households. 47 million Americans depend on food banks, more than 30% above 2007 levels. Households headed by single mothers
are most likely to be affected. Worst affected are the District of
Columbia, Oregon, Arizona, New Mexico and Florida, while North Dakota,
New Hampshire, Virginia, Minnesota and Massachusetts are the least
affected.
Causes
The majority of poverty-stricken children are born to poor parents. Therefore, the causes such as adult poverty, government policies, lack of education, unemployment, social services, disabilities and discrimination significantly affect the presence of child poverty. Lack of parental economic resources such as disposable income restricts children’s opportunities. Economic and demographic factors such as deindustrialization, globalization, residential segregation, labor market segmentation,
and migration of middle-class residents from inner cities, constrain
economic opportunities and choices across generation, isolating inner city poor children.
The decline of the nuclear family, illegitimacy, teen pregnancy, and increased numbers of single mothers, is also cited as a major cause of poverty and welfare dependency for women and their children. Children resulting from unintended pregnancies are more likely to live in poverty; raising a child requires significant resources, so each additional child increases demands on parental resources.
Families raised by a single parent are generally poorer than those raised by couples. In the United States, 6 of 10 long term poor children have spent time in single parent families
and in 2007, children living in households headed by single mothers
were five times as likely as children living in households headed by
married parents to be living in poverty.
Many of the apparent negative associations between growing up
poor and children’s attainments reflect unmeasured parental advantages
that positively affect both parents’ incomes and children’s attainments,
like parental depression.
Effect
Developed countries
Developed countries also have a serious problem with child poverty. If all the 16.7 million poor children in America were gathered in one place, they would form a city bigger than New York.
Many published studies have demonstrated strong associations between
childhood poverty and the child’s adult outcomes in education, health
and socialization, fertility, labor market, and income.
Strong evidence suggests that children of low income parents have an
increased risk of intellectual and behavioral development problems.
Large negative associations between poverty during early childhood and
academic outcomes have been consistently found in many studies.
Furthermore, children in poverty have a greater risk of displaying
behavior and emotional problems, such as impulsiveness and difficulty
getting along with peers, and family poverty is associated with higher
risk for teen childbearing, less positive peer relations, and lower
self-esteem.
In terms of economic disadvantages, adults who experienced
persistent childhood poverty are more likely to fall below the poverty
line at least once later in life.
Poor boys work fewer hours per year, earn lower hourly wages, receive
lower annual earnings, and spend more week idle in their mid-twenties. Paternal income is also strongly associated with adult economic status.
The National Academy of Sciences found that "childhood poverty and
chronic stress may lead to problems regulating emotions as an adult".
Also, childhood poverty in the first three years of life is
related to substandard nutritional status and poor motor skills; in
contrast, poverty is also associated with child obesity – as they get older, poor children are more likely to have chronic health problems, such as asthma and anemia.
These impacts probably reflect issues related to poverty including a
substandard diet, inferior housing conditions, poor neighborhood
environment, reduced access to goods and activities and the
psychological stress stemming from these factors.
The relationship between childhood poverty and later negative
adult outcomes has been found to be relatively small in other research. In one systematic analysis, family income only "modestly" affected likelihood of teen pregnancy and male unemployment.
Developing countries
Using a relative measure of child poverty, an impoverished child growing up in a developing country suffers more hardship than most children living in poverty in a developed country.
Poverty in these countries is a condition usually characterised by a
severe deprivation of basic human needs (UN,1995). It is estimated that
one third of all children in developing countries (~674 million) are
living in poverty, the highest rates being in the rural areas of
Sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia (over 70%). War, disease, corruption,
lack of resources and harsh environmental conditions afflict many of
these countries, contributing to their poverty. These factors are a
major cause of death, which in turn leads to a higher number of single
parents and orphaned children. All UN member states have ratified the
1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child, with the exception of the
United States and South Sudan, which aims at reducing violations to a
number of rights relevant to reducing child poverty in different
countries.
A review published by UNICEF in 2009, found declines in under five
mortality, less child malnourishment, increases in breastfeeding,
improved water systems and better education access.
It also states that despite these improvements 24 000 children still
die each day from mostly preventable diseases, 150 million 5- to
14-year-olds are involved in child labour and 100 million primary aged
children go without schooling. There are still great inequalities within
populations, with girls and children from rural areas more likely to
suffer poor health, education and survival than boys and urban
populations. Notable state attempts to tackle child poverty in the
developing world, include Brazil's Bolsa Familia initiative (reaches 12
million households) and South Africa's Child Grant (7 million
households.
Elsewhere, child specific social protection policies and programmes are
few and the institutions to implement them are often lacking.
Cycle of poverty
The cycle of poverty
is when a family remains in poverty over many successive generations.
For this reason reducing child poverty has been a focus of almost all
governments as a way to break this cycle. Improving the quality of
education provided to the poor is seen by most as the best way to break
this cycle.
Improving the environment the child grows up in, ensuring access to
health, and providing financial incentives (either through benefit
schemes or reducing taxes) have all been suggested as ways to break the
cycle
.
Boys and girls have equal rates of poverty through their
childhoods but as women enter their teens and childbearing years the
rates of poverty between the genders widens. Globally, women are far
more impoverished than men and poor children are more likely to live in
female-headed households. Attempts to combat the cycle of poverty,
therefore, have often targeted mothers as a way to interrupt the
negative patterns of poverty that affect the education,
nutrition/health, and psychological/social outcomes for poor children.
Policy implications
According
to the Overseas Development Institute, greater visibility for
children's rights issues is needed in donor policies and attempts should
be made to emulate the success achieved using gender markers to develop
gender-sensitive development policy. They believe major influential players in the children's rights community – the UNICEF, UNFPA and NGOs, such as Save the Children, Plan International and World Vision – should do more to highlight the impact of mainstream macro-policies issues on children.
The Overseas Development Institute further suggests that an
international commission be established to address the impact of the 3-F
crisis (food, financial and fuel) on children as a platform for
dialogue and new initiatives.
However, determining the appropriate policies for dealing with
long-term childhood poverty and intergenerational economic inequality is
hotly debated, as are most proposed policy solutions, and depends on
the effects that most impact the region. In order to combat the lack of
resources available in developed nations, policies must be developed
that deliver resources to poor families and raise skill levels of poor
children by building on successful welfare-to-work initiatives and
maintaining financial work supports, such as Earned Income Tax Credit, refundable child care tax credits and housing vouchers.
Combating poverty in developed countries also means improving the
schools that exist there. In order to help children in poverty, schools
need to invest more money in school meals, libraries, and healthcare.
To effectively address economic, demographic and cultural changes,
economic and social service strategies to reverse the factors that
generated the urban underclass, such as providing jobs and social
services policies that deal with the effects of isolation, should be
implemented.
Finally, in order to reduce the cycle of poverty for children and
families, policies should be aimed at expanding economic opportunities
especially for disadvantaged girls.
