Young Lives - An International Study of Childhood Poverty

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Our policy work

Young Lives research spans many aspects of children’s lives and among these are a number of key priority areas for international and national policymaking.

Over the 15-year lifespan of the Young Lives study, the policy contexts in each of the four study countries, as well as internationally, are constantly evolving. It is vital that our analysis of the data we are collecting responds to these shifting priorities, as well as challenging orthodoxies and opening up new questions for debate.

When the first round of Young Lives research was collected in 2002, all four of the study countries – Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam – were experiencing varying degrees of economic growth, in part driven by the increasing liberalisation of their respective economies. This raised questions for our research around childhood poverty and inequalities in the context of economic growth.

Two rounds of research later, the Young Lives study countries, along with much of the rest of the world, are experiencing the shocks of a global financial crisis with ramifications for food prices, household incomes, aid budgets, and public spending. We are now looking to our data with new questions: What are the impacts of this global crisis on children and young people? How will it affect global targets for poverty reduction over the medium and longer-term?

The timeframe of the Young Lives research mirrors that of the Millennium Development Goals and the global targets of the Education For All movement. By taking a multi-sector approach Young Lives evidence is able to both challenge and support progress in many of these global priority areas, as well as highlighting the vital interconnections which are often missed.

From addressing child malnutrition and mortality, to improving education quality, a consistent message arising from the Young Lives research is that a focus on children and equity, along with a multi-dimensional understanding of poverty, can help to tackle overall poverty towards more equitable development and growth.