Poverty and Marginalisation of Children

Content

Meaning and definition of poverty
Poverty and how it affects children
Effects of Poverty on children
Child Poverty and Marginalisation
Child Poverty Indicators
Bristol’s Deprivation Indicators
Deprivation Findings
Role of UNICEF
Measures to be taken to reduce Child Poverty
Child Poverty and Gender

Meaning and definition of poverty

Sociologist Townsend defines poverty as follows:

Individuals, families and groups in the population can be said to be in poverty when they lack the resources to obtain the type of diet, participate in the activities and have the living conditions and the amenities which are customary, or at least widely encouraged or approved in the societies to which they belong. Their resources are so seriously below those commanded by the average family that they are in effect excluded from the ordinary living patterns, customs, and activities

’According to the UNDP, child poverty is the poverty faced by children and adolescents during childhood. Childhood poverty varies from adult poverty in that its origins and effects are distinct, and the repercussions of childhood poverty are persistent. Children are susceptible to hardship; even brief bouts of deprivation can have long-term effects on development. "The environment of poverty is detrimental to the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual development of children. Consequently, it is crucial to widen the definition of child poverty beyond traditional concepts such as low home income or low consumption levels. Yet, child poverty is rarely distinguished from poverty in general, and its unique characteristics are hardly acknowledged.

Poverty and how it affects childre

Poverty has the greatest impact on children. Children's rights to survival, health and nutrition, education, participation, and protection from injury and exploitation are particularly threatened by a severe lack of commodities and services. It produces an environment that is detrimental to the mental, physical, emotional, and spiritual growth of children. The majority of individuals living in poverty are children. Poverty violates the rights of children. It erodes a kid's protective environment since child abuse and exploitation are linked to pervasive and entrenched poverty. It negatively impacts their health, nutrition, and physical and mental development. It saps their strength and erodes their faith in the future. No civilization has ever had a widespread reduction in poverty without substantial and consistent investments in the health, nutrition, and basic education rights of its people. Children living in poverty are deprived of the material, spiritual, and emotional resources necessary for survival, development, and growth, preventing them from enjoying their rights, realizing their full potential, and participating as full and equal members of society.

Effects of Poverty on children

Lack of fundamental education: Poverty produces a lack of resources and skills that prevents individuals from leading a good and independent life. Poverty affects all age, ethnic, and religious groups, and these groups share many of poverty's causes and impacts. Most research indicate that disadvantaged families do not enroll their children in school because their other requirements are unmet.
malnutrition: The adverse health effects of insufficient nutrition are substantial. It was estimated that nearly 30% of infants, children, adolescents, adults, and the elderly in the developing world suffer from one or more of the multiple forms of malnutrition; 49% of the 10 million deaths among children under the age of 5 that occur annually in the developing world are associated with malnutrition; and 51% of these deaths are associated with infections and other causes (WHO, 1999). Recent studies have also shown that mothers who were malnourished as children are more likely to give birth to infants with low birth weight, indicating that child malnutrition has intergenerational effects. Dietary intake is marginal due to household food poverty, lack of clean water, lack of sanitation skills, and lack of alternative revenue sources.
Lack of medical resources may have additional significant effects for children, such as school dropout and denial of essential health treatment. Poverty causes bad health because it pushes people to live in unhealthy conditions, without enough housing, clean water, or sanitation. Each year, infectious and neglected tropical diseases kill and weaken millions of the world's poorest and most vulnerable individuals. Adults, on the other hand, do suffer from poverty's ills, but the effects may not be as long-lasting as they are for children. "Children are unable to revert stunting. They are unable to recover from preventable impairments. They cannot recover those 15 years of growth and development later in life".
Social stigma: Children are frequently stigmatized by their peers for their lack of financial resources and for wearing worn or ripped clothing. In addition, lack of access to essential social services and family resources is likely to result in long-term emotional effects for children.

NICEF defines child poverty as the deprivation of social services. In works like the Bristol study, UNICEF has listed a basket of goods and services that it considers essential to ensure children’s wellbeing. UNICEF’s working definition of child poverty, presented in The State of the Worlds’ Children 2005,

“This definition suggests that the poverty children experience with their hands, minds and hearts is interrelated” (UNICEF, 2005b: pg. 18). For example, material poverty leads to malnutrition, which in turn affects health and education, which in turn may impact a child’s long term development. Furthermore, to address the lack of financial resources, children from poor households may be engaged in child labour which may negatively impact a child’s cognitive and physical development by depriving the child from school. Children in rich households may not be free of suffering from deprivation. “Living in an environment that provides little stimulation or emotional support to children ... can remove much of the positive effect of growing up in a materially rich household” (UNICEF, 2005b: pg. 18)

NICEF’s definition also suggests that economic security is only one of the many components to addressing child poverty. “Other aspects of material deprivation like access to basic services, as well as issues related with discrimination and exclusion that affect self-esteem and psychological development, among others, are also central to the definition of child poverty” (Minujin, 2005: pg 2).

“In (the year) 2000, over 150 million pre- school children were estimated to be under- weight and over 200 million children stunted. These figures imply that a shocking number of adults will suffer from ill health by 2020” (UNDP, 2004: pg. 4). This link between children and adults points to the undeniable fact that “poverty in childhood is a root cause of poverty in adulthood. Impoverished children often grow up to be impoverished parents who in turn bring up their own children in poverty. In order to break the generational cycle, poverty reduction must begin with children” (UNDP, 2004: pg. 15).

Today’s children embody tomorrow’s world. Uneducated, malnourished, poor children are likely to become tomorrow’s uneducated, malnourished, poor adults (UNDP, 2004; Bradbury, Jenkins, and Micklewright, 2005). In essence, children living in poverty become adults living in poverty. To break the cycle, children must be provided with the appropriate food security, shelter, healthcare, education, public services (i.e. water and sanitation), and with a voice in the community (UNDP, 2004).

Child Poverty and Marginalisation

Social exclusion is not synonymous with poverty alone. It manifests itself in domains such as housing, education, health, and access to services, in addition to employment. It impacts not just people who have endured severe setbacks, but also societal groups, especially in urban and rural regions, who are susceptible to discrimination, segregation, or the deterioration of traditional forms of social relations. More generally, by highlighting the defects in the social fabric, it reveals something beyond social disparity and, concurrently, these interrelationships, and it identifies three stages in the circulation of income. Poverty has a strong correlation with social marginalization. Some use the phrase "social exclusion" as a trendy synonym for income poverty, while others prefer to use it as a broader word encompassing polarization, differentiation, and inequality in addition to the monetary approach of measuring poverty. For example, the UNDP defines social exclusion as "lack of recognition of essential rights, or when recognition exists, lack of access to political and legal processes necessary to make those rights a reality"; and "in Scandinavia, the socially excluded are considered the "poorest of the poor." (Burckhardt, Le Grand, and Piachaud, 2002: p 3) . Social exclusion is not synonymous with poverty alone. It manifests itself in domains such as housing, education, health, and access to services, in addition to employment. It impacts not just people who have endured severe setbacks, but also societal groups, especially in urban and rural regions, who are susceptible to discrimination, segregation, or the deterioration of traditional forms of social relations. More generally, by highlighting the defects in the social fabric, it reveals something beyond social disparity and, concurrently, these interrelationships, and it identifies three stages in the circulation of income. Poverty has a strong correlation with social marginalization. Some use the phrase "social exclusion" as a trendy synonym for income poverty, while others prefer to use it as a broader word encompassing polarization, differentiation, and inequality in addition to the monetary approach of measuring poverty. For example, the UNDP defines social exclusion as "lack of recognition of essential rights, or when recognition exists, lack of access to political and legal processes necessary to make those rights a reality"; and "in Scandinavia, the socially excluded are considered the "poorest of the poor." (Burckhardt, Le Grand, and Piachaud, 2002: p 3) .

Empirical ways to operationalize the concept of social inclusion, based on a specific or broad conception of it, are rooted in the monetary approach to assessing poverty. Nonetheless, social isolation has contributed additional dimensions to the notion of poverty. It has emphasized agency and procedure. Room examines these interrelationships and identifies three steps in the progression from income poverty to social inclusion.

From income or expenditures to multi-dimensional disadvantage;
From static to dynamic analysis;
From resources at the individual or household level to local community.

According to Burchardt, Le Grand, and Piachaud (2002), exclusion is the result of a lack of agency: it is the product of the system (unintended or at least beyond the control of an individual or organization), and those who are socially excluded do not have the opportunity to change their condition. This position assumes that the agency exercised by some to safeguard their own interests excludes others. Marginalization due to poverty is not limited to a lack of income. It manifests itself in domains such as housing, education, health, and access to services, in addition to employment. It impacts not just people who have endured severe setbacks, but also societal groups, especially in urban and rural regions, who are susceptible to discrimination, segregation, or the deterioration of traditional forms of social relations. In addition to highlighting the faults in the social fabric, it hints at something beyond socioeconomic disparity.

Child Poverty Indicators

The deprivation approach to measuring poverty looks at a set of observable and demonstrable disadvantages. “The notion of deprivation focuses attention on the circum- stances that surround children, casting poverty as an attribute of the environment they live and grow in” (UNICEF, 2005b: pg. 20). A team of researchers from the University of Bristol and the London School of Economics conducted an empirical study that established seven measures of basic needs and looked at how children in developing countries are affected by severe deprivations. This study is “the first ever scientific measurement of the extent and depth of child poverty in all the developing regions of the world” (Gordon, et al, 2003: pg. 1). The measures of child poverty are based on internationally agreed definitions based on child rights. The measures are: adequate nutrition, safe drinking water, decent sanitation facilities, health, shelter, education, and information (Gordon, et al, 2003; UNICEF, 2005b; Minujin, 2005).

Bristol’s Deprivation Indicators

Severe food deprivation: children whose heights and weights for their age were more than 3 standard deviations be- low the median of the international reference population, that is, severe anthropometric failure.
Severe water deprivation: children who only had access to surface water (for example, rivers) for drinking or who lived in households where the nearest source of water was more- than15 minutes away (indicators of severe deprivation of water quality or quantity).
Severe deprivation of sanitation facilities: children who had no access to a toilet of any kind in the vicinity of their dwelling, that is, no private or communal toilets or latrines.
Severe health deprivation: children who had not been immunized against any diseases or young children who had a re- cent illness involving diarrhoea and had not received any medical advice or treatment.
Severe shelter deprivation: children in dwellings with more than five people per room (severe overcrowding) or with no flooring material (for example, a mud floor).
Severe educational deprivation: children aged between 7 and 18 who had never been to school and were not currently attending school (no professional education of any kind).
Severe information deprivation: children aged between 3 and 18 with no access to radio, television, and telephone or news- papers at home.
(Gordon, et al, 2003, pg. 7-8)

Deprivation Findings

These were the findings of a study conducted by Bristol University on more than 1,8 billion youngsters in underdeveloped nations.

Severe food deprivation: 15 per- cent of children under five in the developing world are severely food deprived
Severe water deprivation: Nearly 376 million children, 20 percent, do not have access to safe water sources or have more than a 15 minute walk to water
Severe deprivation of sanitation facilities: More than half a billion children, 31 percent, suffer from sanitation deprivation
Severe health deprivation: 265 million children, 15 percent, suffer from health deprivation · Severe shelter deprivation: More than 500 million children, 34 per- cent, suffer from shelter deprivation
Severe educational deprivation: 134 million children aged 7 and 18, 13 percent, have never been to school
Severe information deprivation: almost half a billion children, 25 percent, suffer from information deprivation
(Gordon, et al, 2003, pg. 7-8)

Role of UNICEF

The contrast between absolute and relative poverty is a key idea in poverty discussions.

Absolute Poverty measures the number of people living below a certain income threshold (poverty line) or the number of households unable to afford certain basic goods and services, such as food, shelter, water, sanitation, or health. Needs are considered to be fixed at a level which provides for subsistence (Wratten, 1995).
Relative Poverty measures the ex- tent to which a household cannot reach a “certain” standard of living common to a country in particular. It is an indicator that measures whether an individual or household’s income is low relative to other sectors of society; it does not imply that the basic needs are not being met. Relative poverty measures are also used as indicators of social inequality (Boltvinik, 1998).

Breaking this cycle of poverty requires investments by governments, civil society, and families in the rights and well-being of children and women. Spending on a child's health, nutrition, education, social, emotional, and cognitive development, as well as on establishing gender equality, is an investment not only in a more democratic and equitable society, but also in a healthier, more literate, and ultimately more productive population. Investing in children is the morally correct action to take. Additionally, it is a wise economic investment with high rates of return. Therefore, UNICEF encourages donors to "Finance Development: Invest in Children." This is also why UNICEF states, "Reducing poverty begins with children." The world has reached consensus on this. Six of the eight Millennium Development Goals (external link) include children directly.

The Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis (MODA) is a method created by the UNICEF Office of Research, with cooperation from the Division of Policy and Strategy, to increase the equity emphasis of child poverty and deprivation analyses around the world.

MODA embraces a holistic concept of child well-being, focusing on the child's access to essential goods and services for survival and growth. It acknowledges that a child's experience of deprivations is multifaceted and interconnected, and that such multiple, overlapping deprivations are more likely to occur and have greater negative impacts among socioeconomically disadvantaged populations.

MODA is based on UNICEF's Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities, OPHI's Multidimensional Poverty Index, and other research conducted in the subject of multidimensional poverty (for context, see "Lost (in) dimensions"). MODA is distinguishable from the majority of previous research by its four primary characteristics:

It selects the child as the unit of analysis, rather than the household, since children experience poverty differently from adults especially with regards to developmental needs;
It adopts a life-cycle approach that reflects the different needs of early childhood, primary childhood and adolescence;
It applies a whole-child oriented approach by measuring the number of deprivations each child experiences simultaneously, revealing those most deprived; and
It enriches knowledge from sector-based approaches through overlapping deprivation analyses and generating profiles in terms of the geographical and socio-economic characteristics of the (multiply) deprived, thereby pointing towards mechanisms for effective policy design.
This web portal contains the following outputs and resources:
Cross-country Deprivation in Children (CC-MODA) analyzes child deprivation for low- and lower-middle income countries according to internationally accepted standards of child wellbeing, utilizing internationally comparable datasets that contain child-specific information, i.e. DHS and MICS. The 'CC-MODA Technical Note' describes the technicalities of this analysis.
National Deprivation in Children (N-MODA) is an application of the MODA methodology to specific national contexts with customized dimensions, thresholds and indicators, utilizing richer information available from national datasets. This section is based on the input of countries carrying out N-MODA and will be regularly updated with new country results.
The 'Step-by-step guidelines to MODA' assists in carrying out the entire process of the multidimensional deprivation analysis.

Measures to be taken to reduce Child Poverty

The transmission of poverty from one generation to the next. For instance, malnourished and impoverished moms frequently give birth to infants with low birth weight. These infants are more likely to perish, and if they do survive, they are less likely to reach their full growth and development potential. Inadequate academic performance might result from chronic starvation, nutritional deficits, and recurrent illness. Consequently, afflicted children are more likely to drop out of school and work in occupations that pay less than the poverty level, if they are able to obtain employment at all.

Reducing child poverty contributes to the realization of the rights of children to survive, develop, participate, and be protected. It entails complying with international human rights conventions, such as the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC), which guarantees "every child a good start in life" (Vandemoortele, 2000: pg. 1). Nonetheless, this legal obligation has not yet been met.

According to the UNDP, child poverty is the violation of the socio-economic rights stipulated in articles 26 and 27 of the CRC (UNDP, 2004). In accordance with the CRC and procedures of international law, states are legally obligated to provide "resources, such as health, education, and social welfare support, for the family to fulfill its responsibilities to the child" (White, 2002). Similarly, UNICEF asserts that "the idea of child poverty and estimates of its size can be derived from access to a variety of key economic and social rights." This includes pre-mature death, hunger, malnutrition, and lack of access to clean water, sanitation, education, health care, and information (UNICEF, 2004: pg. 2).

UNICEF is devoted to the realization of children's rights. In this regard, "UNICEF pioneered a human rights-based approach to development" that is governed by the CRC and "other international human rights values – universality, non-discrimination, the best interests of the child, participation, and taking into account the child's opinions" (UNICEF, 2005e: pg. 57). This human rights-based strategy emphasizes the close relationship between child poverty and human rights violations. Its implementation contributes to the improvement and maintenance of the realization of children's rights and attempts to minimize child poverty through the following measures:

Directing attention, long term commitment, resources, and development assistance from governments, donors, and international organizations and UN Agencies to (children)
Supporting parents, caregivers and families to meet their responsibilities for the upbringing, care and development of their children
Empowering parents, caregivers, women, families and civil society to participate in local and national decision-making and in democratic processes, and to hold the state accountable for the quality of services and availability of resources for children
Building the capacity of the state to be accountable to its citizens through macro-economic and social policy, law, institutional reviews and reforms which are transparent and responsive to families’ needs
Require a full analysis and under- standing of the situation of children, as a basis for devising interventions which tackle its basic and underlying causes
Ensuring that Poverty Reduction Strategies integrate gender analysis and recognize structural inequalities between boys and girls in the enjoyment of their rights
Providing opportunities to children, adolescents and youth to express their views and participate in all matters affecting them, and ensuring that their views are given due weight according to their gender, age, level of knowledge and maturity
Using and benefiting from international monitoring and reporting mechanisms and from the work of independent human rights treaty bodies, such as General Comments and concluding observations and recommendations on state party implementation reports.
The CRC, along with the socio- economic rights enshrined inthe Universal Declaration of Human Rights (UDHR), de- tails the legal responsibilities that put the onus on the state and the international community to address child poverty (UNDP, 2004; White, 2002; and OHCHR, 2002; CHIP, 2004). This human rights-based approach involves a long-term investment in providing children with the resources and services to become active members of society who can influence their country and can hold “their government accountable for its promises” and commitments to human rights
(UNICEF, 2005b: pg. 93).

Child Poverty and Gender

In numerous aspects of life, girls occupy precarious positions. According to a study by the University of Bristol and the London School of Economics, around 600 million children live in poverty and 100 million are out of school - the majority of whom are girls (Gordon, et al, 2003). Girls are more likely to be deprived of fundamental requirements, such as education, in emergency situations (Women's Com- mission for Refugee Women & Children, 2004). Such heightened susceptibility of girls to deprivation and child poverty may be due to cultural prejudices, highlighting the importance of addressing gender problems within the child poverty discussion. In a similar vein, the UNICEF report State of the Children 2005 notes that child poverty is lowest in nations where a large proportion of women are employed. In a number of OECD nations, the reduction of child poverty in the 1990s was aided by higher employment rates among women (including those who are single parents) (UNICEF, 2005b: pg. 31). Implementing anti-poverty policies that empower women economically could be a strategy for reducing child poverty. Compared to boys, just 9.5% of girls from low-income families complete eighth grade.

Indian Government’s anti poverty programmes

The PDS, the oldest and most expensive single program, distributes subsidized rice, wheat, edible oil, kerosene, and sugar through a network of around 400,000 fair-price stores in urban and rural regions. If the PDS operates as intended, customers are protected from price changes on the open market, farmers are safeguarded from excessive losses during seasons of surplus, and the general populace is protected from food shortages and hunger during poor harvest years.

Recognizing that food subsidies did not always reach the poorest households, authorities implemented the targeted PDS (TPDS) in 1997 to link state-level allocations (and thus the PDS subsidy) directly to each state's share of the total population living below the official poverty line and to provide poor households with 10 kg of cereals per month at half the prevailing economic cost. In contrast to APL (above the poverty line) households, poor households are those with income levels below the official poverty line (BPL).

The Integrated Child Development Services (ICDS), a nutrition and child development program for children under the age of six, provides an integrated package of services including growth monitoring, health education for mothers, early childhood education, health check-ups, immunization, referral, and supplemental feeding as part of a program designed to break the malnutrition-disease cycle by integrating nutritionally deprived children into the formal health system. The midday food program for schoolchildren is another essential nutrition initiative. Although it is more extensive than the ICDS, it is also less targeted. Other programs for tribal and scheduled castes offer a vast array of benefits, including monetary and in-kind transfers, employment development, and investment initiatives. Introduced in 1995, the National Social Aid Program provides for the first time a vehicle for direct central government assistance to states in the provision of retirement, survivor, and maternity benefits.

The Jawahar Rojgar Yojana (JRY) and the Employment Assurance Scheme (EAS) are two of the largest and best-known urban and rural employment programs. Their primary purpose is to help ensure gainful employment for poor households and contribute to the expansion of infrastructure and other social overhead capital in backward areas.

The Integrated Rural Development Program (IRDP) is the most well-known credit-based anti-poverty program in India. In recent years, the initiative has reached over 50 million families, granting between 2 and 2.5 million loans annually. The Development of Women and Children in Rural Areas, a sub-plan of the IRDP, targets women in poor rural families (about 0.5 million per year). Training of Rural Youth for Self-Employment is a sub-plan of the IRDP that provides technical and entrepreneurial skills to rural youth (0.3 million annually).

The Ministry of Labour of India's Elimination of Child Labour Programme mandates the rehabilitation of working children and the abolition of child labor. National Child Labour Projects (NCLPs) have been established in several regions to combat child labor. Under the NCLP, special schools that provide non-formal education, vocational training, and supplemental nourishment to children have been developed. resigned from work The Ministry of Women and Child Welfare is implementing the Shishu Gruh Scheme to promote adoptions of abandoned/ orphaned/ poor children within the country and to ensure minimum standards of care for children.

Reference

UNICEF India website http://www.unicef.org/india/child_protection.html accessed on 15.06.2014
UNICEF India website http://www.unicef.org/india/children_3220.htm accessed on 16.06.2014 Planning Commission website http://planningcommission.nic.in/news/pre_pov2307.pdf accessed on 20.06.2014