Child Poverty In Perspective: An Overview Of . - UNICEF
UNICEFInnocenti Research CentreReport Card 7Child poverty in perspective:An overview ofchild well-beingin rich countriesA comprehensive assessment of the livesand well-being of children and adolescentsin the economically advanced nationsFor every childHealth, Education, Equality, ProtectionADVANCE HUMANITY
This publication is the seventh in a series of Innocenti ReportCards, designed to monitor and compare the performance ofthe OECD countries in securing the rights of their children.Any part of the Innocenti Report Card may be freelyreproduced using the following reference:UNICEF, Child poverty in perspective:An overview of child well-being in rich countries,Innocenti Report Card 7, 2007UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence. The United Nations Children’s Fund, 2007Full text and supporting documentation can be downloadedfrom the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre website.The support of the German Committee for UNICEF in thedevelopment of Report Card 7 is gratefully acknowledged.Additional support was provided by the Swiss Committee forUNICEF.The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy, wasestablished in 1988 to strengthen the research capability ofthe United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and to supportits advocacy for children worldwide.The Centre (formally known as the International ChildDevelopment Centre) generates research into current andfuture areas of UNICEF’s work. Its prime objectives are toimprove international understanding of issues relating tochildren’s rights and to help facilitate the full implementationof the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Childin both industrialized and developing countries.The Centre’s publications are contributions to a global debateon child rights issues and include a wide range of opinions.For that reason, the Centre may produce publications that donot necessarily reflect UNICEF policies or approaches onsome topics.The views expressed are those of the authors and do notnecessarily reflect the policy or views of UNICEF.UNICEF Innocenti Research CentrePiazza SS. Annunziata, 1250122 Florence, ItalyTel: ( 39) 055 20 330Fax: ( 39) 055 2033 220florence@unicef.orgwww.unicef.org/irc
I nnocentiR eportC ard7 UNICEFInnocenti Research CentreThe true measure of a nation’s standing ishow well it attends to its children – theirhealth and safety, their material security,their education and socialization, andtheir sense of being loved, valued, andincluded in the families and societies intowhich they are born.Report Card 7
I nnocentiC hi l d w e l l - being ina summar y tab l erichR eportC ard7c o untries :The chart below presents the findings of this Report Card in summary form. Countries are listed in order of theiraverage rank for the six dimensions of child well-being that have been assessed.1 A light blue backgroundindicates a place in the top third of the table; mid-blue denotes the middle third and dark blue the bottom third.Dimension 1Dimension 2Dimension 3Dimension 4Dimension 5Dimension 6Dimensions ofchild well-beingAveragerankingposition(for all 6dimensions)Materialwell-beingHealth andsafetyEducationalwell-beingFamily andpeerrelationshipsBehavioursand 715Greece11.81518161183Poland12.32115314219Czech 71361813United States18.01721122020–United Kingdom18.2181217212120OECD countries with insufficient data to be included in the overview: Australia, Iceland, Japan, Luxembourg, Mexico, New Zealand,the Slovak Republic, South Korea, Turkey.This Report Card provides a comprehensive assessment ofthe lives and well-being of children and young people in21 nations of the industrialized world. Its purpose is toencourage monitoring, to permit comparison, and tostimulate the discussion and development of policies toimprove children’s lives.child well-being under six different headings or dimensions:material well-being, health and safety, education, peer andfamily relationships, behaviours and risks, and youngpeople’s own subjective sense of well-being. In all, it drawsupon 40 separate indicators relevant to children’s lives andchildren’s rights (see pages 42 to 45).The report represents a significant advance on previoustitles in this series which have used income poverty as aproxy measure for overall child well-being in the OECDcountries. Specifically, it attempts to measure and compareAlthough heavily dependent on the available data, thisassessment is also guided by a concept of child well-beingthat is in turn guided by the United Nations Convention onthe Rights of the Child (See box page 40). The implied
I nnocentiR eportC ard7definition of child well-being that permeates the report isone that will also correspond to the views and theexperience of a wide public.Each chapter of the report begins by setting out astransparently as possible the methods by which thesedimensions have been assessed.Main findings The Netherlands heads the table of overall child wellbeing, ranking in the top 10 for all six dimensions ofchild well-being covered by this report. European countries dominate the top half of the overallleague table, with Northern European countriesclaiming the top four places. All countries have weaknesses that need to be addressedand no country features in the top third of the rankingsfor all six dimensions of child well-being (though theNetherlands and Sweden come close to doing so). The United Kingdom and the United States findthemselves in the bottom third of the rankings for fiveof the six dimensions reviewed. No single dimension of well-being stands as a reliableproxy for child well-being as a whole and severalOECD countries find themselves with widely differingrankings for different dimensions of child well-being. There is no obvious relationship between levels of childwell-being and GDP per capita. The Czech Republic,for example, achieves a higher overall rank for childwell-being than several much wealthier countriesincluding France, Austria, the United States and theUnited Kingdom.Measurement and policyWhat is to be gained by measuring and comparing childwell-being in different countries?The answer lies in the maxim ‘to improve something, firstmeasure it’.Even the decision to measure helps setdirections and priorities by demanding a degree ofconsensus on what is to be measured – i.e. on whatconstitutes progress. Over the long-term, measurement serves as the handrail of policy, keeping efforts on tracktowards goals, encouraging sustained attention, giving earlywarning of failure or success, fuelling advocacy, sharpeningaccountability, and helping to allocate resources moreeffectively.Internationally, measurement and comparison gives anindication of each country’s strengths and weaknesses. Itshows what is achievable in practice and provides bothgovernment and civil society with the information to arguefor and work towards the fulfilment of children’s rights andthe improvement of their lives. Above all, such comparisonsdemonstrate that given levels of child well-being are notinevitable but policy-susceptible; the wide differences inchild well-being seen throughout this Report Card cantherefore be interpreted as a broad and realistic guide to thepotential for improvement in all OECD countries.Given the potential value of this exercise, every attempt hasbeen made to overcome data limitations. Nonetheless, it isacknowledged throughout that the available data may beless than ideal and that there are prominent gaps. Children’sexposure to violence in the home both as victims and aswitnesses,2 for example, could not be included because ofproblems of cross-national definition and measurement.Children’s mental health and emotional well-being mayalso be under-represented, though attempts have been madeto reflect these difficult-to-measure dimensions (see, forexample, the results of surveys into children’s ownperceptions of their own lives on pages 34 and 38). Age andgender differences are also insufficiently attended to, againreflecting a lack of disaggregated data and the fact that themajority of the available statistics relate to the lives of olderchildren. A particularly important omission is the level ofparticipation by three and four year-olds in early childhoodeducation (for which, again, no internationally comparabledata are available).Acknowledging these limitations, Report Card 7nonetheless invites debate and breaks new ground bybringing together the best of currently available data andrepresents a significant step towards a multi-dimensionaloverview of the state of childhood in a majority of theeconomically advanced nations of the world.
I nnocentiR eportC ard7Dimension 1M ateria lw e l l - beingFigure 1.0 The material well-being of children, an OECD overviewThree components were selected to represent children's material well-being (see box below).Figure 1.0 averages each country’s score over the three components and is scaled to show eachcountry’s distance above or below the average (set at 100) for the 21 countries daBelgiumAustriaFranceNetherlandsCzech RepublicSpainAustraliaGermanyItalyNew ZealandGreeceJapanPortugalUnited StatesUnited Note: Each country has been placed on a scale determined by the average score for the group as a whole. The unit used is the standard deviation(the average deviation from the average). To ease interpretation, the results are presented on a scale with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of10.Assessing material well-beingThe table on the right shows how the index ofCOMP ONENTSINDICATORSrelative incomepoverty– percentage of children living inhomes with equivalent incomesbelow 50% of the nationalmedianhouseholdswithout jobs– percentage of children infamilies without an employedadultreporteddeprivation– percentage of children reportinglow family affluencechildren’s material well-being has been constructed.The choice of individual indicators reflects theFor each indicator, countries have been given a scorewhich reveals how far that country stands above orbelow the OECD average. Where more than oneindicator has been used, scores have been averaged.In the same way, the three component scores havebeen averaged to arrive at each country’s overallrating for children’s material well-being (see box onpage 5).Material well-beingavailability of internationally comparable data.– percentage of children reportingfew educational resources– percentage of children reportingfewer than 10 books in thehomeDimension 1Material well-be i n g
I nnocentiR eportC ard7 Children’s material well-beingThis overview of child well-beinglooks first at material well-being.Three different components have beenconsidered – relative income poverty,children in households without anemployed adult, and direct measures ofdeprivation. Figure 1.0 (opposite)brings these three components intoone overall ranking table of childmaterial well-being.Main findings The lowest rates of relative incomepoverty (under 5%) have beenachieved in the four Nordiccountries. A total of nine countries – all innorthern Europe – have broughtchild poverty rates below 10%. Child poverty remains above the15% mark in the three SouthernEuropean countries (Portugal,Spain, Italy) and in fouranglophone countries (the UnitedStates, New Zealand, the UnitedKingdom, and Ireland). The Czech Republic ranks aboveseveral of the world’s wealthiestcountries including Germany, Italy,Japan, the United States and theUnited Kingdom. Ireland, despite the strongeconomic growth of the 1990s andsustained anti-poverty efforts, isplaced 22nd out of the 25countries.Income PovertyTwo previous issues of the ReportCard have been devoted to childincome poverty in the OECDcountries (see Box 7).Dimension 1Material well-beingThe evidence from many countriespersistently shows that children whogrow up in poverty are morevulnerable: specifically, they are morelikely to be in poor health, to havelearning and behavioural difficulties,to underachieve at school, to becomepregnant at too early an age, to havelower skills and aspirations, to be lowpaid, unemployed, and welfaredependent. Such a catalogue ofpoverty’s ills runs the risk of failing torespect the fact that many children oflow-income families do not fall intoany of these categories. But it doesnot alter the fact that, on average,children who grow up in poverty arelikely to be at a decided anddemonstrable disadvantage.Ideally child poverty would beassessed by bringing together dataunder a variety of poverty headingsincluding relative poverty, absolutedeprivation, and depth of poverty(revealing not only how many fallbelow poverty lines but also by howfar and for how long). Nonetheless,the ‘poverty measure’ used hererepresents a more comprehensive viewof child poverty than has previouslybeen available.Relative income povertyChild poverty can be measured in anabsolute sense – the lack of somefixed minimum package of goods andservices. Or it can be measured in arelative sense – falling behind, byA common scale Throughout this Report Card, a country’s overall score for eachdimension of child well-being has been calculated by averaging itsscore for the three components chosen to represent that dimension.If more than one indicator has been used to assess a component,indicator scores have been averaged. This gives an equal weightingto the components that make up each dimension, and to theindicators that make up each component. Equal weighting is thestandard approach used in the absence of any compelling reason toapply different weightings and is not intended to imply that allelements used are considered of equal significance. In all cases, scores have been calculated by the ‘z scores’ method –i.e. by using a common scale whose upper and lower limits aredefined by all the countries in the group. The advantage of thismethod is that it reveals how far a country falls above or below theaverage for the group as a whole. The unit of measurement used onthis scale is the standard deviation (the average deviation from theaverage). In other words a score of 1.5 means that a country’sscore is 1.5 times the average deviation from the average. To easeinterpretation, the scores for each dimension are presented on ascale with a mean of 100 and a standard deviation of 10.
I nnocentiFigure 1.1 Relative income poverty: Percentage of children (0-17 years) inR eportC ard7more than a certain degree, from theaverage standard of living of thesociety in which one lives.households with equivalent income less than 50% of the median.OECD NationsDenmarkFinlandThe European Union offered itsdefinition of poverty in 1984: “thepoor are those whose resources (material,cultural, and social) are so limited as toexclude them from the minimumacceptable way of life in the MemberStates in which they live”. For practicaland statistical purposes, this has usuallymeant drawing national poverty linesat a certain percentage of nationalmedian income.NorwaySwedenBelgiumSwitzerlandCzech alyUnited KingdomNew ZealandUnited States0510152025Date: 2000,1999 (Australia, Austria and Greece), 2001 (Germany, New Zealand and Switzerland).Critics have argued that relativepoverty is not ‘real’ poverty, pointingout that many of those who fall belowrelative poverty lines enjoy a standardof living higher than at any time inthe past or than most of the world’schildren in the present. But this failsto acknowledge that in today’s OECDnations the cutting edge of poverty isthe contrast, daily perceived, betweenthe lives of the poor and the lives ofthose around them.Figure 1.2 Percentage of working-age householdswith children without an employed parentOECD NationsJapanPortugalSwitzerlandAustriaUnited SpainNorwayNetherlandsFranceIrelandNew ZealandCzech RepublicUnited KingdomGermanyPolandAustraliaHungaryNon-OECD NationsIsrael0246810Figure 1.1 shows the percentage ofchildren growing up in relativepoverty – defined as living in ahousehold where the equivalentincome is less than 50% of thenational median – for 24 OECDcountries. 312Date: 2000, 1999 (Japan and Canada), 1998 (Switzerland), 2001 (Spain, the Netherlands, and Germany), 2002 (Austria, Norway and Poland).Non-OECD, 2004 (Israel).Nonetheless an internationalcomparison based on a poverty linedrawn at 50% of the median nationalincome presents only a partial picturein that it makes no allowance fordifferences in national wealth. Itshows, for example, that the childpoverty rate in the United States ishigher than in Hungary, but fails toshow that 50% of median income (fora couple with two children) isapproximately 7,000 in Hungary and 24,000 in the United States. The factthat a smaller percentage of childrenare growing up poor in the CzechDimension 1Material well-be i n g
I nnocentiR eportC ardRepublic than in France, or in Polandthan in Italy, does not mean thatCzech or Polish children are moreaffluent but that their countries have amore equal distribution of income. Inother words Figure 1.1 tells us muchabout inequality and exclusion butlittle about absolute materialdeprivation.Even within individual countries,relative income poverty does notreveal how far families fall belowpoverty lines, or for how long.Furthermore all such measurements ofchild poverty are based on householdincome and assume a wellfunctioning family in which availableresources are allocated with reasonablefairness – with necessities takingpriority over luxuries. A childsuffering acute material deprivationcaused by a parent's alcohol or drughabit, for example, is not counted aspoor if the family income is greaterthan 50% of the national median.Relative poverty is therefore anecessary but not sufficient indicatorof children’s material well-being, andneeds to be complemented by somemeasure of deprivation.UnemploymentVarious studies have found thatgrowing up in a household withoutan employed adult is closely associatedwith deprivation, particularly if theunemployment is persistent. Theproportion of children who aregrowing up in households with noemployed adult has therefore beenchosen as the second component forbuilding a more rounded picture ofchildren’s material poverty.Figure 1.2 is clearly measuring adifferent aspect of poverty. The UnitedStates, for example, has risen from thebottom of Figure 1.1 to fifth place inFigure 1.2, while Norway has fallenDimension 1Material well-being7 From previous Report CardsReport Card 1 (2000) and Report Card 6 (2005) addressed the issue ofchild income poverty in the OECD countries. Some of the main findings: In recent years, child poverty has risen in 17 out of 24 OECDcountries for which data are available. Norway is the only OECD country where child poverty can bedescribed as very low and continuing to fall. Higher government spending on family and social benefits isassociated with lower child poverty rates. No OECD country devoting10% or more of GDP to social transfers has a child poverty ratehigher than 10%. No country devoting less than 5% of GDP to socialtransfers has a child poverty rate of less than 15%. Variation in government policy appears to account for most of thevariation in child poverty levels between OECD countries. There appears to be little relationship between levels of employmentand levels of child poverty. It is the distribution of employment amongdifferent kinds of household, the proportion of those in work who areon low-pay, and the level of state benefits for the unemployed andthe low-paid, that contribute most to differen
UNICEF. The UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre in Florence, Italy, was established in 1988 to strengthen the research capability of the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) and to support its advocacy for children worldwide. The Centre (formally known as the International Child Development Centre) generates research into current and
break poverty’s cycle By Marilú Duncan Fall, 2011 Based on Dr. Ruby Payne’s A Framework for Understanding Poverty. Some Elements of Poverty Poverty is not a choice Poverty occurs in all aspects of life Poverty touches race, ethnicity and social class Poverty can become a way of life
Child Poverty Progress eport 2019 6 How do we measure Child Poverty? These indicators reflect the policy levers available: The key indicator of child poverty is the percentage of children living in households below 60% of the median UK household income (After Housing Costs). In addition to the relative measure of child
APA Poverty Task Force – Poverty Curriculum – Epidemiology 1 P a g e Facilitator Guide: The Epidemiology of Childhood Poverty Learning Goals and Objectives 1. Describe the current levels of child and family poverty in the US. a. Define the federal poverty limit and its relationship to public benefits (Knowledge) b.
Care needed: (check all that apply) Child #1 Child #2 Child #3 Child #4 Child #5 Preferred Location (Zip Code other than home) Full day Part day Evenings Overnight Weekends Special Needs: Child #1 Child #2 Child #3 Child #4 Child #5 Limited English Child Protective Services Severely Handicapped
child poverty’ as well as making provision for plans and reporting relating to achievement of these targets. The Child Poverty (Scotland) Act 2017 requires the Scottish Government to meet four income based child poverty targets by 2030 and report on the actions they will take to meet those targets.
National Child Health Survey. Ű Child Poverty: Between 2016 and 2017, the child poverty rate in Maine decreased significantly, from 16.7 to 14.2 percent for children under age 18, resulting in 6,400 fewer children living in poverty. The 2017 child poverty rate in Maine was the lowest it has been since 2005.
Child Poverty in Los Angeles 1. Child poverty rates in Los Angeles are high. 2. Poverty rates and the needs of children vary across a number of dimensions including age, race/ethnicity, and nativity. 3. Poverty is simultaneously concentrated in central-city neighborhoods and suburbanizing which creates challenges for both families and service .
Reaching and Teaching Students in Poverty: Strategies for Erasing the Opportunity Gap By Paul C. Gorski Slidehood.com A Book Study by: Kim Cole, Molly Hawley, Kara Nunn and Sarah Weyer. POVERTY IS INCREASING In our district, we are noticing that more kids are coming toFile Size: 1MBPage Count: 10Explore further5 Concrete Ways to Help Students Living in Poverty - The .theartofeducation.edu5 Activity Ideas for Teaching about World Povertyletscultivategreatness.com5 Ways Teachers Can Address Socioeconomic Gaps in the .blog.socialstudies.comReaching and teaching students in poverty : strategies for .searchworks.stanford.eduYou Can Teach Children Living in Poverty - The Educators Roomtheeducatorsroom.comRecommended to you b
