An important component of the Ethiopian government's poverty reduction strategy is investment in skills, knowledge, and training. Investment in education represented almost one-fifth of annual public spending in 2004/05, and as such is significantly higher than that of other pro-poor sectors, such as health, transport, food security, and agriculture. To achieve its aim of providing all children with equal access to education, the Ethiopian government has paid particular attention to reducing inequalities in public education, and has achieved impressive results in educational access.

This paper assesses how the needs of children are incorporated in to Ethiopia's Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper – the Ethiopian Sustainable Development and Poverty Reduction Programme 2002-2005 (SDPRP). It proposes policy recommendations for the second PRSP drawn from a comparative content analysis of other countries'PRSPs.

This paper examines efforts to bridge multi-disciplinary research, policy engagement and practice to improve the lives of children living in poverty in a sample of developing countries. The paper is based on the experiences of Young Lives and draws on insights from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. It pays particular attention to the work of the Young Lives team in Ethiopia to make children's issues central to the Ethiopian Poverty Reduction Strategy Paper process.

This paper emphasises that malnutrition cannot be tackled without understanding its causes. Child malnutrition remains a major public health problem in Ethiopia, yet the government has no specific nutrition policy. Levels of wasting (acute malnutrition) and stunting (chronic malnutrition) in children aged 6 to 59 months are among the world's highest. As long as so many children remain malnourished, Ethiopia will not achieve the first Millennium Development Goal – eradication of extreme poverty and hunger.