The Global Child Poverty Challenge

Richard Morgan

• Publisher: Practical Action Publishing
• Year: 2016
• eBook ISBN: 9781780449678
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Global Development Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Children are the most vulnerable people in the world – but rarely has the impact of poverty on children been addressed as an urgent issue in its own right. The harm that deprivation does to girls and boys as individuals, and the lasting cost of poverty, have received too limited attention. Policies and programmes have not made best use of the growing evidence of 'what works' for the poorest children to support the efforts of families and children themselves to forge more prosperous futures.In a major effort to counter the invisibility of children in thinking on poverty reduction, The Global Child Poverty Challenge takes stock of a wide range of evidence on how children can be put at the centre of policies and programmes, in ways that recognize their capacities and centrality to future prosperity. The contributors look at experience with key interventions for investing in children – including social protection, basic services, skills development for future livelihoods, responsible microfinance and opportunities for decent work. 'Child sensitive' approaches based on child rights principles are seen as central to making these interventions work for the poorest children. Bringing together findings from a variety of settings, this book calls for the recognition of children as holders of rights and agents in their own development. It points to the experience of children living in poverty – and draws attention to their many roles: as learners, seekers of opportunity, as migrants, users of financial services and entrants to the world of work.This book is essential reading for all those working on social protection and poverty reduction programmes in developing countries, including researchers, policy makers, and those working for development agencies.

CHAPTER 1

Addressing child poverty: an overview

Richard Morgan

Abstract

This chapter introduces the case for development policy to treat the reduction of child poverty as an urgent and central issue, based on the still-pervasive nature of the problem and the extensive deprivations and socio-economic losses associated with it. Summaries are provided of the contributions to this book, which present findings and experience from a range of policies and interventions intended to benefit the poorest children in different societies while increasing their capacities and opportunities. An argument is made for adopting ‘child-sensitive’ approaches to policies and designs for economic strengthening programmes, in ways that recognize the vulnerabilities, voices, and agency of children in poverty themselves.

Keywords: child poverty, inequality, developing countries, child labour, child refugees

ACROSS ALL REGIONS, CHILD POVERTY has long been an unduly neglected issue in national policy. Its implications for economic development have been underestimated and its impacts on societies, future prosperity, and for disadvantaged children themselves have been poorly understood.

Within an apparently renewed global push towards poverty reduction goals, the persistence of poverty among children needs to be addressed as a distinct and urgent priority. Children are by far the most vulnerable to poverty’s damaging effects, while harms suffered by poor children, such as stunting in early childhood and learning deprivation, are hard to recover from in later years. Such deprivations have major costs not only for the young people affected but also for their whole societies, and poverty’s effects are powerfully transmitted to the next generation.

The elimination of extreme poverty among children cannot be safely left to the forces of economic growth alone. Particularly in quite unequal societies, rising average incomes may not translate powerfully into gains for the poorest children, while improvements in basic services, if they occur, may fail to reach the most deprived. Specific, strongly targeted interventions for the poorest families and children are needed to ensure that girls and boys and young people around the world are able to fulfil their potential, including as future entrepreneurs and wealth creators.

Of the roughly 1 billion people currently living in extreme income poverty, almost half are children: while in low-income countries, some 52 per cent of under-12s live in income poverty, compared with 42 per cent of people over this age (Olinto et al., 2013). Rates of poverty are significantly higher among children compared with adults in many rich world countries too (UNICEF, 2012). Such patterns will continue unless there is a concerted focus on child poverty in its own right.

Low family economic status is associated with poor outcomes and major deprivations in young lives. Children born in the lowest household wealth quintile in developing countries are over twice as likely to die before the age of five years as their counterparts in the top quintile, while the prevalence of malnutrition among young children is about 2.5 times higher in the poorest families in developing countries compared with the richest (UNICEF, 2010).

The physical stunting of children is not only a poverty trap for them as individuals: it also represents a fundamental squandering of human potential. It often leads to long-term damage – through poorer school performance, lower work capacity, and diminished productivity in adulthood. Girls who suffer under-nutrition are more likely to see their own children afflicted by it – one of the key ways in which poverty is transmitted between generations.

Across all regions, as illustrated by the World Inequality Database on Education, educational access and learning achievement among girls and boys from income-poor and socially marginalized families are often dramatically lower. Children from poor families, even in wealthy societies, speak forcefully of the shame, humiliation, and exclusion they may suffer at school, as well as of wider stigma in society (Save the Children, 2016).

Children in one part of the United Kingdom are quoted in the Save the Children report, saying that: ‘Folks look down on them (children who are poor). They don’t have the things everyone else has like trainers, a nice school bag, a school bag with a name. Names are important.’

An eight-year-old girl in India relates:

The boys from the other community always call us names, call us dirty. Even if we bathe … the other children call us dirty and say we smell … if we ever complain to the teachers, they warn us that if we tell anyone they will cut our names from the school.

Harmful child labour, early and forced marriage, and other forms of exploitation such as child prostitution and trafficking are also closely related to poverty in many parts of the world. Social pressures within the poorest families and communities for girls to marry at an early age are often intense. Vulnerability to many forms of exploitation has intensified with the increase in child refugees, unaccompanied children, and displacement affecting children in several regions.

A Bangladeshi girl, the youngest of three child brides, was married at 15: ‘We were very poor – sometimes we would eat every two or three days. Even though [my parents] really wanted all three of their daughters to study it wasn’t possible, so they got me married’.

And a 12-year-old Syrian refugee in Jordan explained why he worked and did not go to school: ‘I feel responsible for my family. I feel like I am still a child, and would like to go back to school, but my only option is to work hard to put food on the table for my family’ (Save the Children, 2016).

With often low education and skill levels, limited resources and inadequate social networks, Income-poor and socially marginalized young people face major challenges in obtaining secure livelihoods or safe employment because of their low education and skill levels, limited resources and inadequate social networks. Adolescents entering the world of work without having completed secondary or vocational education may have few prospects beyond day-labour in the informal sector. They are often exposed to dangerous, poorly paid, and exploitative conditions. They need to develop a wide range of competencies that empower them to navigate economic and social risks; to overcome current and accumulated deprivations; and to seize scarce economic opportunities. These competencies may need to encompass not only technical and vocational knowledge, but also basic literacy and numeracy, financial awareness, life skills, social networks, and self-esteem.

In this context, an important consideration for economic strengthening and microenterprise programme design is that of the potential impacts of interventions for children’s rights, capability development, and wellbeing – both in the immediate and longer term. This encompasses not only the conventional measures of ‘benefit’ but also the necessity to guard against unintended negative effects and possibly irreversible harms. The concept of child sensitivity is one which can guide programme designers and policy-makers to more systematically consider such impacts, based on contextually relevant risk assessment and monitoring. Economic interventions of various kinds can make use of child-related indicators to help maximize benefits for child capabilities and avoid harms. Programmes can and should also be improved by listening to the voices of children and young people themselves.

This book is primarily concerned with the question of how best to intervene in support of children born into and growing up in poverty – including in support of their families, when they have them. It asks how children in poor families and settings can better be supported to make successful transitions into good livelihoods and decent work as young adults. The contributors in the chapters that follow address a range of experiences that help to illustrate what effective, child-sensitive approaches may look like; while also exploring options and potential solutions for expanding young people’s access to enterprise and economic opportunities in poorer societies.

In the following chapter, ground-breaking longitudinal studies of child cohorts in four countries undertaken by the Young Lives initiative, for which four survey rounds have now been completed, are reported by Paul Dornan and Kirrily Pells. The most recent findings give strong indications of the negative impacts of poverty and inequalities on children’s physical growth and development paths; and point to policies and interventions that can mitigate the harms they suffer and help build a stronger basis for success in adolescence through education, nutrition, and transitions to work.

In an international review of NGO-associated randomized control trials, Cali Mortenson Ellis and Josh Chaffin review evidence from several categories of micro-economic interventions aimed at strengthening poor families and in some cases targeted directly to adolescents themselves, in terms both of benefits and harmful impacts for children. Their review identifies a range of positive impacts associated with interventions such as social cash transfers, training, and microcredit – but also evidence of adverse effects (on, for example, school attendance and hours of child work) relating to both the design and nature of some types of intervention. Nicola Hypher and Katherine Richards look in more depth at experience, particularly in Africa and South Asia, with one major category of intervention – social protection measures, including cash transfers – with a view to building design and implementation features that can strengthen investments for children in poverty through child-sensitive approaches. Their review suggests practical considerations through which sensitivity to the rights and vulnerabilities of both girls and boys can be built directly into the design, implementation, and monitoring of social protection programmes. Meanwhile, in a ‘Taking Stock’ piece, Stephen Devereux’s pair of archetypal development professionals debate the different sides of a major policy issue in social protection – the concept of ‘graduation’ – and discuss whether this is an appropriate approach from a children’s and child rights perspective.

With a more specific focus on children’s learning, Munshi Sulaiman considers country-specific evidence from programme interventions to improve livelihoods among ultra-poor households in Bangladesh supported by BRAC, a major NGO. The findings from this review caution against an automatic assumption that educational indicators for girls and boys will necessarily be improved and child labour time decline as family incomes rise.

The failures of societies to protect children against harm, including those involved in economic activity, are dramatized around the world by the testimonies of girls and boys themselves. The experiences they recount are a stark reminder of the suffering that may ensue in cases and places where children’s rights are not respected and remain neglected.

One Syrian child quoted by Save the Children recounts:

When the man selling the diesel gives it to his customer, I stand next to him and soak up the diesel that has fallen to the ground with a sponge. I hate the diesel market and the clothes that I wear there; all of it makes me sick. One day some red spots appeared on my body and when I went to the doctor he said it was because of the diesel …

While another Syrian child relates:

Once we arrive at the field, we are given huge bags that we attach to our waist. We then start harvesting potatoes. We have to be really fast and we shouldn’t leave any potatoes behind or else we get beaten with a plastic hose … I collect about 30 bags of potatoes each day and my back hurts a lot. When we come back to the tent I immediately go to sleep …

Against a backdrop of the still-widespread incidence of harmful forms of child labour, Patricia Richter and Sophie de Coninck put forward a framework and options for the responsible design of different types of programmes directed at the underlying causes of child labour. They report on the varied impact of several sets of interventions on child work and schooling, as found by ILO research, and point to the need for greater awareness of and capacity to address child labour issues within financial institutions themselves. Meanwhile, in a qualitative and in-depth account of microfinance project activities in Egypt, Richard Carothers identifies positive measures and methods used by microfinance providers to improve the protection and conditions of children who contribute to family enterprise, while reducing their exposure to risks and harm. A notable and innovative feature of this approach, in line with the Convention on the Rights of the Child, is the use of techniques which enable the views of working children themselves to be taken into account.

The phenomenon of independent migration among children is often and necessarily viewed through a lens of concern for the risks to child protection rights which may be involved, including trafficking. Shahin Yaqub’s cross-regional literature review focuses on an alternative or at least complementary approach. This is based on an understanding that migration may offer solutions to poor development opportunities at home, presenting migrant children as, in many cases, risk-informed agents in search of income and assets for a better future, as well as safer living environments.

Karen Moore’s review of efforts to promote economic opportunities for young people in Africa, including those supported by the MasterCard Foundation, emphasizes the importance of combining broad-based enterprise-oriented training with access to business opportunities and financial services. Her findings further emphasize the need to recognize the roles that informal and mixed livelihood strategies, including in agriculture, continue to play. Meanwhile, Rani Deshpande reports evidence from the testing in Ghana and three other countries of a specific youth-oriented intervention in which considerable hope has been placed – the promotion of financial savings. The promising but mixed findings from the YouthSave initiative suggest that the impact of well-designed savings programme initiatives among older girls and boys may be heightened by complementary measures to involve parents, provide financial education, and strengthen psychosocial, health-related, or educational support.

With this body of evidence in mind, and with growing confidence that practical, child-centred solutions can be found, the last word in this overview goes to Paul Dornan, of the Young Lives study. He summed up the challenge we face in a contribution to the work of the Global Coalition to End Child Poverty, a new grouping of agencies which aims to promote action by decision-makers across nations:

There is a clear imperative for action to eradicate child poverty. To tackle child poverty is to invest to fulfil human potential. It is ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright
• Contents
• About the Editor
• 1 Addressing child poverty: an overview
• 2 Building strong foundations for later livelihoods by addressing child poverty: evidence from Young Lives
• 3 Evaluations of outcomes for children and youth from NGO-supported microeconomic interventions: a research synthesis
• 4 Lessons from practice in child-sensitive social protection
• 5 Are graduation or rights-based programmes better for getting children out of poverty?
• 6 Does wealth increase affect school enrolment in ultra-poor households: evidence from an experiment in Bangladesh
• 7 Responsible finance and child labour: quo vadis microfinance?
• 8 Recognizing and supporting working children through microfinance programming
• 9 Independent child migrants in developing countries: a literature review
• 10 Fostering economic opportunities for youth in Africa: a comprehensive approach
• 11 Do youth need savings? The experience of YouthSave in Colombia, Ghana, Kenya and Nepal
• 12 Conclusions: towards effective action in addressing child poverty through public policy