Introduction: Dimensions of Children’s Inequality

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONIn the last third of the 20th century, children's special protected status has been affirmed by nearly every nation (UNICEF 2002). Yet throughout the world, are still more likely to live in poverty than are adults (European Commission 2001). Some national governments have attempted to reduce and eliminate childhood poverty. In 1964 the American President Johnson launched 'War on Poverty.' In 1975 the European Commission created its first European Poverty Program, and the British Labour Party under the leadership of Tony Blair took child poverty pledge in 2001, aiming at bringing another million out of poverty in the UK by 2005 (Lemann 1998; Gauthier 1996; BBC 2001). The United Nation's Convention on the Rights of the Child had been signed by every nation, signifying their intention to eliminate child poverty and create a world fit for children (UNICEF 2002a). Despite these political efforts, poverty still affects one child out of four in the United States, and one child out of five in the United Kingdom. Globally, the World Bank estimated that 1.2 billion people world-wide were living in poverty in 1998 - large proportion of which was (World Bank 2002).Poverty is, however, only one dimension of inequality. In recent decades, the political discourse has endorsed larger definition of inequality, going beyond monetary definition of poverty, and referring more broadly to the right to health and education, and equal social participation. For example, the United Nations and other organizations have called for the elimination of discrimination against children, as well as women and girls, and the elimination of racial discrimination - all obvious forms of inequality (UNFPA 2000; UN 2001 ; UNICEF 2002a). And the European Union has mandated the elimination of social exclusion as part of its 1999 Treaty of Amsterdam (EU 2002). The mandate to combat these inequalities is broadly construed, including addressing such problems as unemployment, low levels of education, school drop-out, and occupational training, low incomes, poor housing, high crime rates, poor health and family breakdown (UK Social Exclusion Unit 2001 ; UNICEF 2002a).While social scientists have long studied the economic well-being of and have in fact been responsible for bringing children's problems to the attention of politicians, they have only recently begun to measure children's status using more complex and nuanced methodologies (Mauser, Brown, and Presser 1997). Our intention in this volume is to bring together some of these new measures and methods for studying and inequality.The articles included in this special issue all examine specific dimensions of inequality among children, ranging from the traditional monetary dimension to issues of health, schooling, and public resources, and the intervening factors of family structure and resources. In this introduction to the special issue, we discuss the dimensions of inequality that serve to group the articles included in the volume - dynamic measures of income inequality, inequality in health and education, particularly by gender and ethnicity, and finally, multi-dimensional measure of social exclusion. In doing so, we intend to point out the unique insights provided . by viewing children's inequality through different lenses. We go on to discuss the policy implications suggested by these studies and others that address children, families, and inequality.MEASURING INEQUALITYWhen different dimensions of inequality are considered, measuring inequality becomes more complex. Measuring inequality has been the subject of numerous recent books and articles (Bradbury and Jantti 1999; Ringen 1988; Vleminckx and Smeeding 2001). We summarize here three approaches in an attempt to map some of the between and within-country variations, as well as locating the contribution of each paper in this special issue.INCOME-BASED ENEQUALITYChildren's economic well-being generally depends upon their parent's income. …