China, inequalities in income, wealth and others has increased.
Thus, the pace of progress is unequal.
New approaches show an understanding of poverty as
multidimensional. As long as policy debates focus solely on income
poverty, children and their priorities will be missed out, and the
battle to end the cycle of poverty will be undermined. UNICEF is
working to mainstream a multidimensional approach of poverty, to
reflect how and where children are experiencing poverty, and to
allow a different set of policy responses that would structurally
address children being lifted out of poverty in the long-term by
addressing their different deprivations.
In “Making the Case for Child Poverty,” Alberto Minujin discusses the
idea that child poverty differs from adult poverty and explains why
it should be measured differently, providing examples of some
initiatives that use multidimensional approaches. Furthermore, he
discusses how child poverty can be inserted in the policy discourse.
In “Beyond Headcount: The Alkire-Foster Approach to Multidimensional
Child Poverty Measurement,” Sabina Alkire and José Manuel Roche
discuss their methodology for multidimensional poverty
measurement, and how it can be used to inform policy. This
methodology formed the basis for the now well-known
Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI).
Using the progressive University of Bristol methodology, Sharmila
Kurukulasuriya and Sólrún Engilbertsdóttir demonstrate in “A
Multdimensional Approach to Measuring Child Poverty” how a
multidimensional approach is an essential supplement to the
traditional income approach to poverty. In addition they discuss
how such multidimensional child poverty measures can inform
child friendly policies.