Abstract
Although monitoring and evaluating child poverty has been recognized as important, there is little statistical information focused on children. Because the annual EU-Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) survey does not include child-specific information on an annual basis, this study proposes a measure of child exposure to household material deprivation based on this dataset. The study considers four domains of deprivation that have a direct impact on child development: housing conditions, household financial capacity, household durable goods, and environmental living conditions. Although developing a child-centered measurement of child deprivation is important, the EU-SILC considers the household as the unit of measurement. Therefore, our proposal is household-based, allowing annual monitoring of children’s exposure to deprivation—an important insight for social policy purposes to tackle the problem of child poverty. Using the 2017 Portuguese sample, we applied graded response models to assess the psychometric properties of the EU-SILC items and fit separate indexes per domain and the composite index. Item selection was based on their characteristic curves and information functions. The results allow for the selection of more informative items for every domain to obtain the composite index. In general, the empirical analysis confirmed the theoretical approach for item selection. The methodology may be directly applied to the full EU dataset or to each country individually.
Highlights
Monitoring and evaluating child poverty has been recognized as important, there is little statistical information focused on children
We explore the main dataset used by the EU to analyze income, social inclusion, and living conditions—the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), harmonized at the EU level and conducted annually—to evaluate child poverty
Our research offers an in-depth analysis of the 2017 EUStatistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) Portuguese dataset aimed at constructing a measurement proposal to evaluate and monitor children’s exposure to household deprivation on an annual basis
Summary
Monitoring and evaluating child poverty has been recognized as important, there is little statistical information focused on children. The methodological options beyond measurements employed to analyze child poverty condition our understanding of the problem, and, the effectiveness of the social policies pursued to alleviate it. The income-based approach to child poverty was the first methodological framework used to identify poor children. Because of the availability and easy access to data about household income, this procedure is still commonly used. This framework may cause serious bias in the analysis of the problem. Children’s basic achievements in education, health, housing, and social participation are determined by the public services offered. These provisions may overcome household financial difficulties. The incomebased approach is based on the hypothesis that resources in a household are shared, which is a non-consensual conjecture (Main and Bradshaw 2016)
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