Global Child Poverty and Well-Being: Measurement, Concepts, Policy and Action

Description

Child poverty is a central and present part of global life, with hundreds of millions of children around the world enduring tremendous suffering and deprivation of their most basic needs. Despite its long history, research on poverty and development has only relatively recently examined the issue of child poverty as a distinct topic of concern. This book brings together theoretical, methodological and policy-relevant contributions by leading researchers on international child poverty. With a preface from Sir Richard Jolly, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, it examines how child poverty and well-being are now conceptualized, defined and measured, and presents regional and national level portraits of child poverty around the world, in rich, middle income and poor countries. The book's ultimate objective is to promote and influence policy, action and the research agenda to address one of the world's great ongoing tragedies: child poverty, marginalization and inequality.

Born in Argentina, Alberto Minujin is professor at The New School University, New York, researching and teaching about child poverty reduction and equity, human rights, monitoring and evaluation, and social research methods. He is director of the Equity for Children Program and Website. A UNICEF Senior Officer from 1990-2005 with expertise in North and South America, Africa, Europe and the Middle East, Minujin is a mathematician with training in Applied Statistics and Demography. Shailen Nandy is Research Associate in the School for Policy Studies at the University of Bristol, UK. He co-authored of Child Poverty in the Developing World and has done research for UNICEF, the WHO and DfID.

"This important book provides a comprehensive and damning indictment of the extent of child poverty across the globe, in rich countries as well as poor. Yet as, argued here, child poverty could be radically reduced and eventually eliminated through appropriate and feasible policies. This book should be read by policy-makers world-wide. " --Frances Stewart, Professor Emeritus, University of Oxford. "This is an important and ground-breaking study of an issue which should be of serious concern to every human being on the planet. Alberto Minujin & Shailen Nandy's text needs to be widely and closely read." --Lord Puttnam, CBE.