Make childhood poverty history

About 600 million children worldwide are growing up in absolute poverty. Over ten million children under five years of age die every year. Nearly one billion children will be growing up with impaired mental development by 2020.

Childhood poverty has significant and long-term implications. By the age of five we have laid our mental groundwork - perceptions, emotions, desires and feelings - for how we essentially will be 20 or 30 years later. By ten our capacity for basic learning has been determined. By age 15 our body size, reproductive potential and general health have been greatly influenced by what has happened in our lives thus far.

Stunting in children cannot be reversed. Children cannot recover from preventable disabilities. Nor can they fully reclaim the first 15 years of growth and development later on in life. Since everything from brain connection to employment potential is laid down in these formative years, investing in child well-being is not only a social and moral imperative but also a logical and economically sound investment strategy. Tackling childhood poverty and its transmission over generations and over a life-course is the way to addressing chronic and adult poverty.

Child well-being has improved in recent years. Infant mortality rates, for example, have improved globally. Between 1970 and 2002, infant deaths fell from 130 to 67 for every 1000 live births in South Asia and from 141 to 104 in sub-Saharan Africa. However, there are still some alarming trends. Child ill-health has increased, suggesting that although children survive they have a poor quality of life due to frequent sickness. Child well-being has declined in some countries, including those experiencing conflict or economic crisis. Childhood poverty is a problem even in countries with growing economies.

Several economic, political, environmental and social factors influence poverty and its transmission to children. They range from individual volition and the social context to global conditions and policies on child development:

• Nutrition is vital for child survival and early development. Damage in early childhood can have long-term effects, slowing down learning and increasing risks of maternal and child mortality in later life. In 2000, over 150 million pre-school children were underweight and 200 million were stunted. Many of these children will suffer from ill-health as adults.
• Good quality formal education combined with informal education to develop life skills as well as having educated parents can help improve opportunities for children. However, inability to pay is a big obstacle to a child's education.
• Child labour perpetuates poverty although it can sometimes enable children to attend school - an important factor in breaking poverty cycles. Child work is highest among the poorest 20 percent of people in sub-Saharan Africa and among children who do not attend school, although a high proportion of those who attend school also work.
• Adequate family income is important for a child's development but raising family income may also increase 'time poverty' as parents have less time for child care. As a result, children do not receive important life skills education at home, older siblings have to take on child care activities instead of attending school and children could be physically and emotionally neglected.
• Family and social bonding to nurture, guide, love and protect children is crucial as it can encourage positive aspirations, boost confidence and enhance many aspects of an individual's life from employment potential to emotional security. Damage to the social fabric through economic stress, war or HIV will adversely affect children.

Children who cannot attend school, live on the streets, work in dangerous and exploitative conditions, carry out hard labour, are exposed to physical, mental or emotional hazards and violence or are abandoned or orphaned are all entitled to protection and support from their communities, nations and the international community. But can childhood poverty be overcome? Is it possible to break poverty cycles? We understand a great deal about childhood poverty, its causes and the possible solutions. However, acting on this knowledge appears to be more difficult. The articles in this issue of id21 insights argue that policy needs to be more sensitive to the ways in which it may lead to or perpetuate childhood poverty. They outline a broad approach to reducing child poverty.

Children can be trapped in poverty for long periods of time, as Jane Falkingham and Shamsia Ibragimova's evidence from the Kyrgyz Republic shows - a situation that can create irreversible problems. Specific child-centred actions that are required to break potential poverty cycles, however, are often treated as minor aspects rather than as essential elements of social policies addressing chronic poverty.

Economic policies can be made more sensitive to children's needs. The importance of maintaining funding for education or comprehensive health programmes during periods of economic crisis cannot be stressed enough. As Hugh Waddington points out, pro-child interventions relating to economic growth, trade and macroeconomic policy are critical. Economic policies must be designed with child-focused social policies and outcomes in mind. No single policy can reduce child poverty: health, for example, is dependent on water and sanitation, education and economic policy not just in terms of adequate finances but in relation to generating family income, controlling inflation and encouraging genuine pro-poor growth.

Javier Escobal illustrates how women's education has addressed the critical issue of child nutrition in Peru. Evidence shows that each additional year of maternal education can lower the risk of premature child death by about eight percent. Comprehensive health care services are also essential as is ensuring food security through food supplements, income support and subsidies. Cash transfers, too, as part of broader social protection programmes, can address immediate needs and contribute to the longer term aim of breaking poverty transfers. Armando Barrientos' article clearly shows that cash transfers can enhance incomes, enable children's education and health care.

Economic policies should aim at enhancing family income but should not compromise children's well-being by forcing women and other carers to migrate for work or by making children work. However, as Jo Boyden's article points out, if child labour is neither hazardous nor exploitative and if it offers a way out of poverty or into school then a blanket ban on child work is not necessarily the solution.

Public commitments to equity in meeting basic needs and government accountability are crucial. Poverty Reduction Strategies provide a good opportunity for countries to discuss children's issues and commit themselves to ending childhood poverty. But as the Ethiopian experience highlighted by Nicola Jones shows, childhood poverty has not received much attention. Governments can be challenged to define and identify priorities and can be held accountable. Shaamela Cassiem demonstrates how budget planning and implementation help to promote children's rights in South Africa. The circumstances and conditions that have helped ten countries to reduce childhood poverty, as explained in Santosh Mehrotra's article, provide powerful evidence that childhood conditions can be improved.

To sum up, it is critical that policy aiming to reduce childhood poverty takes account of relevant social, economic and political contexts and is integrated within broader poverty policy. Rather than only promoting isolated 'projects for children', donors and implementing agencies should develop childhood poverty reduction strategies as part of their wider programme of work. Improving children's nutritional status to prevent irreversible damage and ensuring at least ten years of education have to be the core elements of any strategy. It is equally important to address gender inequalities. Today's children are tomorrow's adults. We have to make childhood poverty history.

Caroline Harper
Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre
Save the Children
1 St. John's Lane
London EC1M 4AR
UK
T +44 (0) 20 70126793
F +44 (0) 20 7012 6963
c.harper@savethechildren.org.uk
www.childhoodpoverty.org

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