Measuring Child Poverty and Well-Being: A Literature Review

Abstract

Due to the acknowledgment that children deserve special focus in poverty measurement, the measurement of child poverty and well-being has received increasing attention within the academic and policy arena. The dependence of children on their direct environment for the provision of basic needs, the child-specific requirements in terms of their basic needs and the request for specific information for the formulation of child-focused policies are important reasons calling for the development of child poverty approaches. A range of approaches has been developed in the last decade to meet the need for a measurement tool especially geared to capture children and internalize their specific needs. Each of these approaches differ with respect to their chosen identification mechanism, aggregation methodology and data requirements. Decisions made on all these elements involve a set of advantages and disadvantages and have consequences for the usefulness of the approach to serve a specific purpose or audience. This review provides a structural overview of the current state of literature on the measurement of child poverty and well-being. We conclude that there are no perfect approaches for the measurement of child poverty and that each approach is the result of a specific conceptual framework in accordance with the availability of resources.