Child Poverty as Capability Deprivation: How to Choose Domains of Child Well-being and Poverty

Abstract

As mentioned at the beginning of the book, there are several reasons why child poverty1 should be a much more important topic of development than it has been so far. At least five aspects are worth mentioning. First, children are disproportionately represented among the poor as they constitute a high share of the population in developing countries (from a third to a half), so reducing poverty necessarily means reducing child poverty. Second, child poverty, especially if persistent, often has irreversible effects for the current cohort of children, so there is a permanent pay-off from addressing them (in terms of mental, physical, emotional and spiritual development) (Mehrotra, 2006). Third, children are often hit hardest by poverty, household shocks and economic and social crises. Furthermore, reducing poverty for children by increasing their entitlements reduces future poverty, through an inter-generational transfer of poverty. Moreover, child poverty cannot be confined merely to the material aspects of children’s lives (Biggeri et al., 2006). If poverty, in general, has a multidimensional character this is especially true for children, as the relevance of different domains changes according to age. For instance, to be able to move is arguably less relevant for an infant than for an eight-year-old child.