Children's views of poverty

Here we focus on how notions of what constitutes a ‘good childhood’ vary between groups of children (including by wealth, gender or ethnicity) and explore the factors including poverty that shape these views.

Worldwide, there are many studies of adults’ understandings of well-being or ill-being. Children’s views and experiences are rarely covered. Young Lives uses survey and qualitative data to address how understandings of a good life and what is needed to achieve this differ between different types of community and children from different backgrounds within those communities.

For example, in Ethiopia we found that children’s material ambitions were higher in the cities, where they wanted ‘a table full of a variety of food like a buffet’ rather than simply ‘sufficient food’. Urban children wanted cars and DVDs, whereas rural children wanted irrigated land or cattle.

Young people growing up in poor communities are usually aware of inequalities and injustices, including their own disadvantaged situations. They see material inequalities as indicative of wider power and position differences, of which they are very much a part. But as children get older, the social impacts of poverty become more debilitating. Material deprivation impacts on young people’s social relations and their capacity to participate in the wider world.

Children’s concerns, explanations, and experiences of the effects of poverty may differ from adults. They often have distinct roles and responsibilities within their families for managing hardship and risk related to household poverty (such as caring for siblings, carrying out essential household chores, working for pay, and going to school).

There may also be important differences in patterns of children’s awareness and understanding or inequality, reflecting their varied positioning in the social hierarchy and the range of social hierarchy and the range of social expectations they manage (which may, for example, be related to age, gender, class and ethnicity/caste).

Focusing on children’s descriptions, explanations, and experiences of poverty and inequality highlights implications for research, policy and practice, and rights. For example, our research in India has highlighted the importance of social relationships, namely their families and friendships, for shaping children’s experiences of poverty; this should therefore be reflected in children-centred policies and programmes.