Research
You will find a complete range of our monographs, muti-authored and edited works including peer-reviewed, original scholarly research across the social sciences and aligned disciplines. We publish long and short form research and you can browse the complete Bristol University Press and Policy Press archive.
Policy Press also publishes policy reviews and polemic work which aim to challenge policy and practice in certain fields. These books have a practitioner in mind and are practical, accessible in style, as well as being academically sound and referenced.
Books: Research
Despite having per capita incomes well in excess of most other countries, the US also has some of the highest rates of child poverty in the OECD and compares poorly to most high-income countries on other critical indicators of child well-being. In this chapter, the authors make the case for the development and use of a ‘Tots Index’ for the United States, rooted in the human development approach, which would include key indicators of child well-being appropriate for use in an affluent country. The authors show why an index focusing on children under the age of five in the US is needed and evaluate their own American Human Development Index and other existing measures to determine if these are suitable proxies for measuring child well-being. Finding that all existing metrics have liabilities in this regard, the authors lay out a framework for a new multidimensional indicator for this purpose and discuss the types of indicators it should include.
The chapter brings together the key lessons and themes of the book. Future studies of child poverty need to reflect international definitions which set out its multidimensional nature. Effective policies for alleviating child poverty in developing countries have long been known as demonstrated by work done during earlier economic crises. The principles enshrined in Townsend and Gordon’s 2002 Manifesto of International Action to Defeat Poverty are still relevant to today’s anti-poverty strategies.
This chapter provides an overview of Young Lives, a longitudinal study of childhood poverty following the lives of 12,000 children in 4 developing countries (Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam) over 15 years. The authors outline the study’s conceptual and analytical framework and report on some early findings concerning trends in child welfare and the dynamics of child poverty, in particular looking at how poverty is transmitted across generations. Based on data collected when the children were aged 5 and 12, they conclude that economic growth itself will not solve the problems associated with poverty in childhood, and in some instances can accentuate inequalities. They also conclude that the experience of deprivations in childhood cast a very long shadow for children as they grow and develop, and that properly designed social policies can have a protective effect against economic shocks (such as the global financial crisis).
This chapter describes an approach to defining child poverty in South Africa using a socially perceived necessities method which was conceived in Britain in the mid 1980s. This approach, when applied to the measurement of child poverty, involves asking a representative sample of the (usually adult) population to state which of a list of items is essential for children to have an acceptable standard of living. It is then possible to measure in a survey how many children do not have the items defined as essential and can therefore be considered poor. The socially perceived necessities approach is described and a justification for the involvement of children, alongside adults, in defining poverty is put forward. The methodology used to apply this approach in South Africa is detailed. The definition derived from a survey module asking adults for their views on an acceptable standard of living is presented and compared to the views of children derived from focus group work. The chapter concludes with a discussion of some of the methodological issues that arise when applying this approach, including how to reconcile the adult and child definitions and the extent to which children’s own circumstances impact on their definition of necessities for all children.
Chapter 9 describes the indicators and the analytical framework used to analyse child poverty in the European Union. Comparative analysis is used to identify the main drivers of monetary poverty among families with children in the rich EU countries. It reveals that different factors prevail across countries of the Europe Union depending on how well parents are integrated in the labour market, and how much support is available to families with children. The indicators used are those that have been developed and agreed upon in support of the EU policy coordination process in the field of social inclusion policy. The chapter discussed the potential value added of politically agreed indicators and comparative analytical frameworks for evidenced based policy making.
While considerable progress is being made across the world in terms of human well-being, global statistics hide the fact that global progress has, by and large, by-passed those who are excluded, ignored, vulnerable, marginalised or dispossessed. The evidence is quite compelling that more equal societies do better in terms of progress in health, education and nutrition than less equal ones. Yet, the conventional narrative maintains that economic growth is the prime force for reducing poverty. The chapter stresses the need for an ‘equity-mediated’ approach to human development. Equity is not only important for its intrinsic value but also for its instrumental worth. The equity-inducing effects of putting children first will be more effective and efficient in improving human well-being than to continue with the simple ‘growth-mediated’ strategy. Equity-mediated development is not more ideological or politically divisive than fixing the national rate of interest or the inflation target, for instance. But it is frequently seen as tantamount to social engineering, if not to conducting ‘class warfare’. In such an increasingly polarised debate, children must be seen as the ‘Trojan horse’ to bring equity in from the cold.
Child poverty is a central and present part of global life, with hundreds of millions of children around the world enduring tremendous suffering and deprivation of their most basic needs. Despite its long history, research on poverty and development has only relatively recently examined the issue of child poverty as a distinct topic of concern. This book brings together theoretical, methodological and policy-relevant contributions by leading researchers on international child poverty. With a preface from Sir Richard Jolly, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, it examines how child poverty and well-being are now conceptualized, defined and measured, and presents regional and national level portraits of child poverty around the world, in rich, middle income and poor countries. The book’s ultimate objective is to promote and influence policy, action and the research agenda to address one of the world’s great ongoing tragedies: child poverty, marginalization and inequality.
The chapter introduces the key themes of the book, and summarises the contributions of each chapter. It makes clear how studies of child poverty need to reflect its important non-monetary dimensions.
The chapter discusses the pressing need for greater investment in social security schemes internationally and in particular for children. It sets out the consequences of poverty and deprivation for children and the importance and potential of using children’s rights as a framework for measurement, analysis and policy design. It highlights the responsibilities of international actors to resource social security, and details how a tax on currency transfers could be harnessed to provide an international child benefit.
The chapter describes how relative deprivation theory can be used to produce valid and reliable estimates of the extent and nature of child poverty both within and between countries. A worked example using data from Mexico is provided to show how the methodology can be used to produce scientific estimates of poverty which conform to national standards. The chapter also examines the practical and theoretical problems of adapting three commonly-used poverty measurement methods (World Bank’s ‘dollar-a-day’, the Wealth/Asset Index and the recent UNDP’s Multidimensional Poverty method) to study the child poverty.
