Children's experiences of poverty
This theme focuses on children’s well-being and how boys and girls experience poverty and related adversities. It will explore the impact these experiences have on their lives, the role of their family and peer relationships in moderating impact, and the protective effect of public policies and informal actions undertaken by children, their peers, their families and communities.
The development and well-being of children and young people is often doubly compromised by the interaction of multiple risks. This is large to due to the close association between poverty and environmental, structural and individual risks. This theme is concerned to identify how diverse risks, including structural inequalities and related social exclusion, play out in the lives of children as they grow up. It will look at ‘subjective’ indicators (children’s own perspectives on poverty, their aspirations, choices and priorities) as well as ‘objective’ indicators such as their health, nutrition, education and social outcomes, and how these intersect with their learning and the process of growing up.
At the same time, children living in poverty are often involved in the reduction of risks for themselves and their families from an early age; hence the importance of analysing the roles and responsibilities of boys and girls in this context, their own agency and ways of managing risk, and their expectations and aspirations for the future. This also enables us to further investigate the multiple routes of poverty transmission from the point of view of children’s experience.
Our research questions in this area are:
- What are the different factors that shape children’s well-being in different developmental domains?
- What are the major sources of risk, vulnerability, resilience and protection in children and young people’s lives?
- How do policies and the actions of children and young people, their peers, families and communities affect their well-being and protection?
