Risk and resilience

Adversity is not an exceptional circumstance but, to a degree, forms part of everyday life for all children. At the same time poverty and related deprivations remains one of the most significant sources of risk for children throughout the world. Poverty is also associated with other adversities, including those at the household level such as losing a parent, and those affecting wider populations, like natural disasters or human conflict. Often the development and well-being of poor children is doubly compromised by the interaction of multiple hardships.

Young Lives looks at a variety of adverse events that affect families at both community and household levels, including financial shocks, unemployment, environmental, crop failure, death, illness, divorce and crime.

However, risk cannot always be defined objectively and the subjective perceptions and actions of affected populations can be crucial to impact and outcome, especially in the case of ‘social’ risks like workplace exploitation and migration. Children’s perceptions are seldom predictable and their actions (and those of their families and communities) can make a major difference to outcomes, even in situations of severe hardship.

So we look at how national, community and household-level shocks (for example, drought or the death of a caregiver) affect children’s health, well-being and development; and how exposure to risk varies with poverty and what makes particular children more vulnerable or resilient.

We also explore the effects of policy interventions on reducing children’s vulnerability (for example, through social protection or child protection programmes) and how these interact with the strategies of children and their families to manage risk.

Currently the Oak Foundation is supporting a sub-study to specifically look at the challenges and opportunities for linking research-to-practice in the areas of orphans and vulnerability among children in Ethiopia. We are carrying out a similar project in India focusing on child labour.