Gaspar FajthSolrun EngilbertsdottirSharmila Kuruklasuriya

Nicholas ReesDivision of Policy and Practice

UNICEF

ISCI conferenceThursday, July 28th 2011

Child poverty across 36 countries

• Overview of the Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities

• 36 country database - individual level indicators and household level indicators

• Which measures to focus on to capture multidimensional child poverty?

• UNICEF’s Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities launched in 2008: create momentum and influence national policy making processes

• Covers 52 countries in 6 continents

Background

Generate evidence, insights and networks that can be used as leverage to influence national development plans, and to inspire and feed into poverty reduction or sector-wide strategies, common country assessments and other development instruments

Why a Global Study?

UNICEF State of the World’s Children 2005 definition

“Children living in poverty experience deprivation of the material, spiritual, and emotional resources needed to survive, develop and thrive, leaving them unable to enjoy their rights, achieve their full potential or participate as full and equal members of society.”

What is child poverty?

Dimensions of Child Poverty

National reports

• National ownership• Impacted national development plans and policy

interventions:– Mali: first national forum on poverty led to formulation

of an action plan on social protection– Tanzania: created a push for the adoption of the Law

of the Child Act– Cameroon: findings reflected in the Government’s and

Growth Strategy Paper for 2010 - 2020– Morocco: Government to officially adopt

multidimensional child poverty indicators

Impact

• Where are we now?• The conceptual foundations of the Study need to be reflected

upon. The Study methodology is based on an approach developed by the University of Bristol, in early 2000’s – since then a lot of advances have been made in survey collection

• Comprehensive picture of child poverty:• Look at various different measures of poverty and evaluate whether

these measures provide us with vastly different pictures of poverty

• 36 country database (MICS/DHS) - 1,444,457 children• Child level indicators: nutrition, health and education• Household level indicators: sanitation, water, shelter, information• Children deprived:

– Individual deprivations only– Household deprivations only– Household AND individual deprivations - our focus

• Most indicators proxy indicators for children - measured at household level– Individual deprivations measure characteristics of the child - future human capital– Household deprivations measure aspects of children’s household

environments/community

Individual/ Household level indicators

Country comparison:Individual and household level indicators

• National analysis continues• The conceptual foundations and coherence are yet to be

reviewed and reflected upon– Focusing operational poverty concepts more narrowly

on child outcomes, poverty intensity as well as instability?

– Alternative approaches to measuring child poverty for middle income countries, conflict-hit areas and fragile states?

– Regional/global analysis of multidimensional child poverty?

– Global child poverty index?– Wide agreement on basic child indicators

Way forward

• For more information visit www.unicefglobalstudy.blogspot.com

• Join the Child Poverty Network:join-child-poverty@groups.dev-nets.org