Executive summary
Executive summary
Young Lives is an international longitudinal study aimed at improving our understanding of the causes and consequences of childhood poverty in four developing countries (Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam). The research is based on a panel survey which will track two thousand children, and their households, from each of the four countries over a fifteen-year period. The findings of the research, based on surveys to be conducted every three years, are expected to provide a better understanding of the problem of child poverty and to help in the formulation of policy to alleviate child poverty.
The Ethiopian part of the project is jointly implemented by the Ethiopian Development Research Institute (with researchers from Addis Ababa University) and Save the Children UK in Ethiopia.
This preliminary national report has the following objectives: to briefly present what is known about child poverty in Ethiopia; to review policies expected to have an impact on child poverty; to identify key stakeholders for this study; to describe the methods used in the study; to present preliminary results from surveys of 2,000 households with one-year-old children, and 1,000 households with eight-year- old children; and to present some provisional conclusions and policy implications. Twenty sentinel sites were selected from five regions of the country for the survey. A summary of the main results of the surveys is presented below.
Index (one-year old) children: Fifty-three per cent are male and 47 per cent female; 82 per cent live with both parents and 17 per cent live with single parents; 85 per cent live in male-headed households; 97 per cent are cared for by their biological mother.
Caregivers of index children: Ninety-seven per cent of caregivers are biological mothers of the index child; 85 per cent of caregivers have permanent partners; 82 per cent of caregivers’ partners live in the household; 89 per cent of caregivers have not completed primary school.
Households of index children: Thirty-five per cent of households live in urban areas and 65 per cent in rural areas; 63 per cent are very poor, 24 per cent poor and 12 per cent less poor households; average household size is 5.7 people; 87 per cent of household heads have not completed primary school; female-headed households are more common in urban areas (22 per cent) than rural areas (12 per cent); 53 per cent of household members are below 15 years of age, 26 per cent are children below 5 years of age, only 2 per cent are over 60 years of age.
Socio-economic status of households of index children: Eighty-six
per cent of children living in very poor households are in rural areas,
while 88 per cent of the less poor are in urban households. Water piped
into dwellings is almost exclusively found in urban areas, with 29 per
cent of study households having access to this. Only 3 per cent of urban
households and about 1 per cent of rural households have access to water-borne
toilet facilities; 87 per cent of the poorest households have no toilet
facilities, whereas 50 per cent of the less poor households use household
pit latrines. Earth is a widely used flooring material and is more likely
to be used by very poor (99 per cent) and poor (85 per cent)
households.
Pregnancy, vaccination and delivery (index child): Antenatal visits were undertaken by 71 per cent of urban biological mothers and 40 per cent of rural biological mothers, with wealthier households having better antenatal care. The majority of rural mothers (96 per cent) give birth at home, without the assistance of a medically trained person. In wealthier urban areas this figure falls to 57 per cent. About 40 per cent of children in very poor households had low birth weights compared to 15 per cent in less poor households; 42 per cent of rural households reported low weight of the child at birth compared with 20 per cent for urban households. Around 21 per cent of the children do not receive vaccinations against both tuberculosis (BCG) and measles. About 78 per cent of the respondents had two or more children and the remainder had only one child, a larger proportion of rural households (83 per cent) having more than one child compared with urban households (69 per cent). The death of a child under five years of age was reported in 25 per cent of the households.
Childcare (index child): Twelve per cent of urban households make use of non-household members for childcare while the corresponding figure for rural areas is 21 per cent. Very poor households (21 per cent) tend to allow non-household members to take care of their child more than the poor (12 per cent) and less poor (15 per cent), possibly because the relatively rich ones have sufficient resources to be able to allocate a household member to this task. A larger percentage of very poor households (15 per cent) allow children younger than five years of age to take care of the index child, compared to less poor households (4 per cent).
Health of index child: Twenty-seven per cent of rural caregivers perceive their child’s health to be worse than other children of their age, whilst in urban areas this drops to 19 per cent. In less poor households, 64 per cent of caregivers perceive their child to be healthier than other children of their age. The corresponding figure for the very poor is 28 per cent. 10 per cent of the index children have long-term health problems and these are more likely to be living in the poorer rural areas (12 per cent) than in wealthier urban areas (7 per cent). About 30 per cent of caregivers reported their child had been so sick that they feared she/he might die, with 34 per cent of the very poor reporting such cases compared with 22 per cent for the less poor category. Of these caregivers, 75 per cent sought medical help with less poor households appearing to be more likely to seek medical help than very poor ones. Twelve per cent of the index children have suffered a severe injury and 36 per cent of children experienced illness in the 24 hours before the interview. Rural children (39 per cent) and children born into very poor households (40 per cent) seem to be more vulnerable to illness than children from less poor households (23 per cent).
Livelihoods, diversification and debts (households of index
children): The three most frequent activities undertaken by household
members were agriculture, hunting, forestry and fishing (60 per cent);
community, social and personal services (27 per cent), and wholesale and
retail trade (20 per cent). The three least frequent activities are working
with electricity, gas and water (0.1 per cent); mining and quarrying (1.1
per cent) and not being involved in any activity (2.1 per cent). For very
poor and rural household members the most important activity is agriculture,
hunting, forestry and fishing, followed by community, social and personal
services. On the other hand, the largest percentage of urban household
members were involved in finance, insurance, real estate and business
services followed bywholesale and retail trade. In terms of diversification
of households, 56.7 per cent of the households were involved in activities
in only one sector. A larger percentage of households in rural areas (47
per cent) were involved in more than one sector, compared with urban areas
(32 per cent). These figures are higher for the very poor than for the
less poor. A smaller percentage of households reported having not been
involved in any activity in rural areas (0.7 per cent) than those in urban
areas (4.0 per cent). About a third of the households reported having
serious debts, of which 33 per cent thought they would be able to repay
on time. A larger proportion of households in the rural areas had serious
debts
(39 per cent) compared with those in urban areas (20 per cent). The percentage
of those who had serious debts appears to decrease with wealth.
Economic changes and events (households of index children): Most families faced up to five events or shocks (since the biological mother was pregnant with the index child), with the proportion experiencing shocks being higher in rural areas (72 per cent) than in urban areas (60 per cent), and higher amongst very poor and poor households than less poor households. The most common event was ‘decrease in food availability’ followed by ‘failure or theft of crops’ (noting, however, that the latter event can cause the former). Shocks related to agricultural failures (crop failure, natural disaster, death of livestock) are naturally more prevalent in rural areas. However, people in both rural and urban areas seem to face similar problems regarding food availability. Job loss, birth or new household members, paying for children’s education, illness and injury were more common in urban areas. The problems of theft or death of livestock, crop failure, natural disaster and decrease in food availability are the highest among the very poor households. Most households did nothing when confronted with negative events. However, some of the families responded to negative events by selling assets, eating less and/or the use of credit. The response ‘doing nothing’ is often an indication of perceived helplessness and may suggest an almost complete lack of resources.
Social capital (households of index children): The majority of households (58.3 per cent) have medium absolute structural social capital, medium social support (49.6 per cent), and high cognitive social capital (88 per cent). Of the caregivers, 56 per cent had zero citizenship, indicating that they neither join together to address common issues nor do they talk with the local authority on problems in the community. The proportion of households who have medium and high absolute structural social capital, medium and high social support, and high cognitive social capital is higher for the very poor than the less poor. The results suggest that poorer households who have little or no financial and physical capital have higher levels of social connectedness in order to reduce their vulnerability.
Psychosocial well-being of caregiver: About 33 per cent of caregivers reported having had some level of depression within the past 30 days, with little variation across location and poverty status.
Nutritional status of index children: Thirty-eight per cent of the index children are malnourished and 14 per cent are wasted. Rural children and children born in very poor households tend to be more wasted, or chronically) malnourished, than urban children and children born into less poor households.
Nutritional status of eight-year-olds: Thirty-three per cent of the children are stunted and 14 per cent are wasted. Rural children and children born in very poor households tend to be more wasted than urban children and children born into less poor households. Health of eight-year-olds: Forty-eight per cent of the children’s caregivers’ feel that the health of their child is the same as their peers; a larger proportion of caregivers in less poor families (compared to very poor households) see their children as being healthier than their peers. Ten per cent of the children have had long-term illness, while 20 per cent of caregivers reported their child so ill that they thought she/he might die – with the percentage being higher for children born into very poor households (21 per cent) than for the less poor (11 per cent). Seventy-five per cent of these sought medical treatment. Severe toothache is more common in urban than rural children, and in the less poor than very poor children. Some 20 per cent of the children had been ill in the two weeks preceding the interview.
Literacy and numeracy of eight-year-olds: Fifty-four per cent of the children cannot read or write anything. Only 20 per cent can read letters and 57 per cent are unable to write. Children in urban areas, and less poor households, appear to be better in literacy and numeracy than those in rural areas and poorer households.
Child’s schooling and feelings about school: Sixty-seven per cent of the children had attended school prior to, or during the time of, the survey year. School ttendance is higher in urban areas (86 per cent) compared to rural (56 per cent), and for children from less poor households (95 per cent) than from very poor ones (53 per cent). In 30 per cent of the households, the child did not go to school because she/he was needed to help the family in various work activities. The other two main reasons were the school being too far away (24 per cent), and it being too expensive to send the child to school (22 per cent). Over half (59 per cent) of the children felt that ‘teachers or pupils beating’ them is what they do not like about their school. A similar proportion (58 per cent) felt the thing they most liked was learning.
Child development – Raven’s test: For the simplest set of tests, 67 per cent of children obtained average scores and 27 per cent obtained high scores. Children from less poor families appear to have scored better than others. In the next levels of testing all children obtained low scores.
Child’s work and feelings about work: About 9 per cent of the children have worked for money (or goods) with a larger percentage of rural children working (11 per cent) than urban (4 per cent), and more children from very poor households (12 per cent) than from poor and less poor ones (3 per cent each). For almost 75 per cent of the respondents, the main reason the child is working is to supplement household income. Bonded labour was the second most frequent response for urban households (about 8 per cent), while for rural households it was what the children like to do (about 14 per cent). About 5 per cent of working children are reported to have been seriously hurt whilst working, with a larger percentage of cases reported in urban than in rural areas. More than half of 94 children responded that they like working. About 41 per cent of 39 children said that they do not like working because it is too tiring. About 28 per cent of 80 children said they have missed school because of being at work.
Child’s perception of well-being: Most of the children felt the water people drink (82 per cent) and the air people breathe (67 per cent) to be good, and the area they live in to be safe for children (76 per cent). However, only 33 per cent felt good about the rubbish on their street. Of those who feel bad about the rubbish, the proportion is higher for urban than for rural children. The child’s perception regarding the quality of water is better in urban areas, and among poor and less poor households, than in rural areas and among very poor households. Most of the children want to become teachers (41 per cent) or doctors (26 per cent) with urban children having a stronger ambition to be a doctor than rural children. Buying clothes is the most preferred activity of the majority of the children. Rural children feel happier than urban children when bought clothes and playing with friends. The desire to be bought clothes declines as the family becomes less poor. Forty-five per cent of the children dislike the area they live in because they are being beaten.
Child’s social capital: Seventy-five per cent of the children play with children daily. For 90 per cent of the children, there will always be someone who helps them when they have a problem, usually their mother – though in rural areas nearly double the number of children will be helped by a brother/sister.
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