Deep and Extreme Child Poverty in Rich and Poor Nations: Lessons from Atkinson for the Fight Against Child Poverty

Yixia Cai,Timothy Smeeding

doi:10.1007/s40797-019-00116-w

Abstract

The paper documents child poverty levels and trends using both relative (‘deep’) and absolute (‘extreme’) measures in two clusters: Anglo-Saxon high-income countries and upper middle-income countries. We also investigate the influence of different components of household income and other resources on child deep-poverty rates to examine the role of the market and the redistributive effects that materialize through private transfers, public benefits, and tax systems on generating poverty reduction. Overall, middle-income nations have witnessed continuous reductions in their extreme child poverty rates, while mild decreases or fluctuations have been observed in the five high-income nations, with the US highlighted by its relatively high rates of deep and extreme poverty regardless of absolute or relative measures and type of equivalence scale used. Private institutions play a larger role in poverty reduction in middle-income nations compared to its impact on developed nations. The degree of dependence on universal or assistance benefits varies among high-income nation. In the US, universal programs tend to be meager, while Australian social insurance and universal benefit are robust in their fight against deep poverty. Brazil stands out by its overwhelmingly large proportion of social insurance programs that contribute to improvements of its deep child poverty situation, and South Africa’s assistance benefit system performs better in lifting children out of deep poverty.

Highlights

Child poverty has drawn increasing attention from social scientists and policy makers in the past decades
Some fluctuations are observable in Brazil and South Africa, whereas deep child poverty rates tended to be higher in India and China in the latest year relative to earlier points in time
This increase in relative poverty rates over the period examined may be due to growing inequality—real economic growth at the bottom of the distribution is lower for lower income families in these nations compared to the median income families (Alvaredo et al 2017)

Summary

Introduction

Child poverty has drawn increasing attention from social scientists and policy makers in the past decades. A number of studies from developed countries illustrate the negative effects of children living in poverty, especially deep poverty (incomes less than half of the poverty line) on their future development. These include chronic health and psychological problems as well as poor educational attainment compared to their middle class and affluent peers in rich countries (Almond et al 2018; Magnuson and Votruba-Drzal 2008; Rainwater and Smeeding 2003; Smeeding and Thévenot 2016). Brazil, which was LM in 2002, quickly reached UM in 2006 and may soon join the R nations; China went

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