Child Poverty in the Developing World by David Gordon

Abstract

Children, Youth and Environments Vol. 14 No. 1 (2004) ISSN: 1546-2250 Child Poverty in the Developing World Gordon, David (2003). Bristol, UK: The Policy Press; ISBN 1861345593. This brief report is a summary of a large UNICEF-funded research project undertaken by the London School of Economics and the University of Bristol, which focused on determining the extent and severity of child poverty in the low-income countries. Most of the data used in this study were drawn from existing Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) for 46 countries (including China, which had its own survey). Based on detailed face-to-face interviews, the data covered a sample of nearly 1.2 million children (0-18 years) from 380,000 households– according to the authors, probably the largest, most accurate survey sample of children ever assembled. This report serves as a useful complement to the paper by Rainwater and Smeeding in the last issue of this journal, which compared child poverty in the U.S. to that in 14 other rich nations. However, the two projects have important differences in the approaches they take in measuring child poverty. Both projects reject the notion that absolute income is an adequate measure of poverty (the assumption on which the World Bank’s $1 per day poverty line is based.) Rainwater and Smeeding use the widely accepted approach of defining poverty in terms of the median household income within a given country- an approach that views poverty as relative, reflected in the incapacity of those below a certain income level to act and participate as full members of a particular society. The research described in the report reviewed here takes a different tack. It focuses on absolute rather than relative poverty, but it also rejects the notion that income is an adequate yardstick. It questions the assumption that 386 household poverty is an accurate proxy for the poverty of the children within that household. According to this approach, income is a critical indicator of poverty, but it is by no means the only factor affecting people’s standard of living or their capacity to participate as part of the social mainstream. The cost of food, water and decent shelter, for instance, can vary widely not only from country to country, but also within countries, especially between rural and urban areas. Access to information, education, health care and other basic services, the strength of social networks and the potential for involvement in local political processes all make a difference in the burden of poverty, and these factors are neither wholly dependent on income, nor reliably predicted by income. Nor, according to this project, is it reasonable to assume that the resources of a given household are an adequate predictor of the well-being of the children in that household. This would imply that resources are equally shared within households. In fact, as this report points out, many households make enormous sacrifices to meet children’s needs; in others, few of the benefits of what is earned or produced actually trickle down to reach children. The research reported here starts instead from a view of poverty as characterized by a range of deprivations which can affect people independent of income, and which can affect children independent of the level of household poverty. Deprivation for children is defined here in terms of the circumstances most likely to have serious consequences for their health, well-being and development. Eight criteria are used in developing a taxonomy of deprivation for children: food, safe drinking water, sanitation facilities, shelter, health, education, access to information and access to health and education services. (A child’s contact with health services and actual exposure to education may not relate solely to the availability of these services– hence, I assume, the added category of access.) The definition of absolute poverty in children, which draws on this taxonomy, is very strict. Children are considered to be living in absolute poverty only if they experience “severe” deprivation in at least two of these areas– 387 and the definitions for severe deprivation go beyond what would generally be considered threatening to children’s wellbeing . For instance, severe deprivation in the area of food means serious malnutrition...