Child Poverty

and Inequality

New Perspectives

Isabel Ortiz, Louise Moreira Daniels and

Sólrún Engilbertsdóttir (Editors)

Division of Policy and Practice

Child Poverty and Inequality

The 21st century starts with

vast asymmetries for children

in terms of income, access to

food, water, health, educa-

tion, housing, or employment

for their families. Half of the

world’s children are below

the poverty line of $2 a day

and suffer from multiple de-

privations and violations to

basic human rights. More

than 22,000 children die each

day, and most of their deaths

are preventable.

The consequences of poverty and inequality are very significant for children. Children

experience poverty differently from adults; they have specific and different needs. While

an adult may fall into poverty temporarily, falling into poverty in childhood can last a

lifetime – rarely does a child get a second chance at an education or a healthy start in

life. Even short periods of food deprivation can impact children’s long-term development.

If children do not receive adequate nutrition, they grow smaller in size and intellectual

capacity, are more vulnerable to life-threatening diseases, perform worse in school, and

ultimately, are less likely to be productive adults. Child poverty threatens not only the

individual child, but is likely to be passed on to future generations, entrenching and even

exacerbating inequality in society.

This volume presents some of the critical acknowledged voices to move a necessary

equitable agenda forward. They argue for multidimensional poverty measurements,

explain current trends on global poverty and inequality, and policies to redress them

such as socially-responsive macroeconomic and sector policies, including social pro-

tection, good governance and human rights, as well as addressing systemic issues such

as inequalities among and within countries.

Engilbertsdóttir (Editors)Ortiz, Moreira Daniels and

Contributors in this volume:

Hanna Alder

Sabina Alkire

Armando Barrientos

Sheridan Bartlett

Laurence Chandy

Alex Cobham

Paul Collier

Sarah Cook

Giovanni A. Cornia

Matthew Cummins

Sólrún Engilbertsdóttir

Gaspar Fajth

Geoffrey Gertz

Caroline Harper

Sir Richard Jolly

Jomo Kwame Sundaram

Nicola Jones

Naila Kabeer

Bill Kerry

Sharmila Kurukulasuriya

Nora Lustig

Bruno Martorano

Alberto Minujin

Deepa Narayan

Isabel Ortiz

Paola Pereznieto

Kate E. Pickett

Amjad Rabi

José Manuel Roche

Andy Sumner

Timo Voipio

Richard Wilkinson

Jennifer Yablonski

7811059 531750

ISBN 978-1-105-53175-
90000