Children are especially vulnerable to poverty. Child poverty tends to be higher than poverty among adults, and the experience of poverty during childhood can have negative lasting effects on individuals’ lives. The 2030 Agenda, in particular target 1.2 of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), requires information on multidimensional poverty among children. Most commonly, this information will be obtained by disaggregating the national Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) by age to illuminate child poverty. It could however also draw on a stand-alone measure of child poverty*.
The global multidimensional poverty index (MPI) has been very useful in shining a light on child poverty. When, in July 2017, the global MPI was age-disaggregated to profile children’s poverty, the Executive Director of UNICEF at that time, Tony Lake, stressed in his High Level Political Forum address the headline that half of the world’s poor people who live in acute multidimensional poverty, according to the global MPI, are children. The global MPI is an index of acute multidimensional poverty that covers three-quarters of the world’s population –mainly those living in developing regions– and over 100 developing countries. It is produced by OPHI at the University of Oxford with UNDP’s Human Development Report Office.
We are devoting this edition of Dimensions to the littlest ones, who sadly are the poorest in the world. We begin with an article by Martin Evans, who brings us up to date on the latest in the measurement of child poverty, with a review of existing methodologies and key elements to keep in mind when working to reduce child poverty.