Children in monetary poor households

Yélé Batana, John Cockburn and Prudence Magejo

Chapter 5 in Handbook on Child Poverty and Inequality, 2025, pp 88-102 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Child monetary poverty is widely reported, yet understudied. Standard practice is to say that a child is poor if her/his household is poor. This poses several problems. First, the determination of household poverty depends crucially on the choice of poverty line and equivalence scales, i.e., economies of scale and discount factors, which are strongly influenced by the presence of children in ways that are not always fully considered. Second, equating child and household poverty assumes equitable distribution of resources within the household, yet there is strong empirical evidence of both positive (altruism) and negative (selfishness) discrimination towards children. This discrimination can vary by the sex, age, birth order, and other characteristics of the child, as well as the sex, education, and other characteristics of the parents. In addition to these issues, this chapter will consider the impacts of child monetary poverty on other dimensions of child well-being and lifetime opportunities.

Keywords: Children; Poverty; Monetary inequality; Intrahousehold allocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
ISBN: 9781802200423
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