The importance of working closely with key policymakers and practitioners to ensure that research is used to inform policy and action for reducing child poverty is widely understood. Yet the challenges experienced by those tasked with policy engagement are no better illustrated than in Ethiopia.

Worldwide there have been many studies about understandings of well-being, i.e. what constitutes and contributes to a life that people have reason to value in particular contexts. This chapter reports differences between Ethiopian children and their caregivers in expressed understandings of a good life and what is needed to achieve this. It explores whether the capability approach can be used to bridge the gap between shared local understandings of a good life and the universal prescriptions of global bodies such as UNICEF on what is 'good for children'.

The paper explores the dynamics of child and household poverty in rural Ethiopia using three rounds of household survey and qualitative data collected by Young Lives, a longitudinal study of child poverty. It uses a mixed-method taxonomy of poverty (Roelen and Camfield 2011) to classify children and their households into four groups: ultra-poor, poor, near-poor and non-poor. Survey and qualitative data are then used to analyse the movements in and out of poverty and explore the factors that underpin these movements.