Abstract
Recently, the first ever estimate of the number of children living poverty in developing countries was undertaken. The incidence of child poverty was estimated by establishing how many children suffer severe deprivation in at least one out of seven indicators which are internationally recognized as their rights as well as constitutive of poverty. This is a major step forward in the analysis of poverty. In this paper, we generalize these findings on the incidence of children living in poverty by exploring how to estimate the depth and severity of child poverty.
Two countries can have the same proportion of children living in poverty, however, the actual plight of children could be very different depending on how many deprivations, on average, children suffer. In addition, even if they suffer from the same average number of deprivations, these deprivation could be the same for all children or be very unevenly distributed. We show how these considerations can be used to estimate the depth and severity of poverty. We use regional data to provide applied examples of this methodology.
The method proposed in this paper is similar to the one used to estimate the incidence, depth and severity of income poverty. The paper also offers some possible generalizations and ways forward for future research.
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Acknowledgments
We would like to help the comments, support and assistance of many colleagues: Claudia Cappa, Cathrine Caspari, Ngagne Diakhate, Gaspar Fajth, David Gordon, Radhika Gore, Sita Haldipur, Attila Hancioglu, Friedrich Huebler, Edilberto Loaiza, Shailen Nandy, Vanessa Sedltzki and David Stewart. They are not, of course, responsible for any errors.
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Appendices
Appendix A
Indicators and definitions for child poverty (verbatim from Gordon et al., 2003)
The thresholds used to determine severity of deprivation for each indicator were:
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(1)
Severe nutrition deprivation: Children whose heights and weights for their age were more than −3 standard deviations below the median of the international reference population i.e. severe anthropometric failure.
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(2)
Severe water deprivation – children who only had access to surface water (e.g. rivers) for drinking or who lived in households where the nearest source of water was more than 15 min away (e.g. indicators of severe deprivation of water quality or quantity).
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(3)
Severe deprivation of sanitation facilities – children who had no access to a toilet of any kind in the vicinity of their dwelling, e.g. no private or communal toilets or latrines.
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(4)
Severe health deprivation – children who had not been immunised against any diseases or young children who had a recent illness involving diarrhoea and had not received any medical advice or treatment.
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(5)
Severe shelter deprivation – children in dwellings with more than five people per room (severe overcrowding) or with no flooring material (e.g. a mud floor).
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(6)
Severe education deprivation – children aged between 7 and 18 who had never been to school and were not currently attending school (e.g. no professional education of any kind).
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(7)
Severe information deprivation – children aged between 3 and 18 with no access to, radio, television, telephone or newspapers at home.
Thus, the measures used are typically indicative of much more severe deprivation than the indicators frequently published by international organisations. For example, ‘no schooling’ instead of ‘non-completion of primary school’, ‘no sanitations facilities’ instead of ‘unimproved sanitations facilities’, ‘no immunisations of any kind’ instead of ‘incomplete immunisation against common diseases’, ‘malnutrition measured as anthropometric failure below −3 standard deviations from the reference population median’ instead of ‘below −2 standard deviations from the reference median’, etc.
Appendix B
Source: Own calculations from data in Gordon et al. (2003).
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Delamonica, E.E., Minujin, A. Incidence, Depth and Severity of Children in Poverty. Soc Indic Res 82, 361–374 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-006-9039-5
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-006-9039-5