Child poverty
Child poverty refers to the state of children living in poverty and applies to children from poor families and orphans being raised with limited or no state resources. UNICEF estimates that 356 million children live in extreme poverty. It is estimated that 1 billion children lack at least one essential necessity such as housing, regular food, or clean water. Children are more than twice as likely to live in poverty as adults and the poorest children are twice as likely to die before the age of 5 compared to their wealthier peers.
Definition
The definition of children in most countries is "people under the age of eighteen". 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.The United Nations Children's Fund defines children living in poverty as those that "experience deprivation of the material, spiritual and emotional resources needed to survive, develop and thrive, leaving them unable to enjoy their rights, achieve their full potential or participate as full and equal members of society."
The ChildFund International definition is based on Deprivation, Exclusion and Vulnerability. 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
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 updated only for price changes, but 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, and every threshold generally reflects the minimum income required to acquire necessities of life. However, a caveat is that as a family that earns above a set threshold may still choose to not spend on the need of their children. Certain organizations, 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 improve only 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, d 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, 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 ILO's basic needs 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 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 ; 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.
- 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
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. More recently in 2021, it is estimated that nearly 11 million children live in poverty in the US, making up almost one-third of all people living in poverty in the country.