The Dynamics of Child Poverty in Industrialised Countries

Description

A child poverty rate of ten percent could mean that every tenth child is always poor, or that all children are in poverty for one month in every ten. Knowing where reality lies between these extremes is vital to understanding the problem facing many countries of poverty among the young. This unique study goes beyond the standard analysis of child poverty based on poverty rates at one point in time and documents how much movement into and out of poverty by children there actually is, covering a range of industrialised countries - the USA, UK, Germany, Ireland, Spain, Hungary and Russia. Five main topics are addressed: conceptual and measurement issues associated with a dynamic view of child poverty; cross-national comparisons of child poverty rates and trends; cross-national comparisons of children's movements into and out of poverty; country-specific studies of child poverty dynamics; and the policy implications of taking a dynamic perspective.

Bruce Bradbury is a Senior Research Fellow at the Social Policy Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. During 1998 he was a consultant at the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre. His research interests include inequality and poverty, income support and labour market policies, household equivalence scales, and intra-household allocation. Stephen P. Jenkins is Professor of Applied Economics at the Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex and Research Professor at DIW, Berlin. His current research focuses on poverty, income and labour market dynamics. He was co-editor of The Distribution of Welfare and Household Production (Cambridge, 1998). John Micklewright is Head of Research at the UNICEF Innocenti Research Centre, Florence, and Research Fellow of CEPR, London. His current work focuses on various aspects of child well-being in industrialised and transition countries. He was the co-author of Economic Transformation in Eastern Europe and the Distribution of Income (1992) and The Welfare of Europe's Children (2000).

'This book is a major step forward in our understanding of the dynamics of child poverty in rich and transition nations. There are both conceptual and empirical breakthroughs here. For the first time, one can systematically and comparatively assess exits and entries to poverty, their associated changes in family structure and incomes, and the policy implications of these changes in seven nations. The volume will stand as a landmark piece of research for quite sometime. Copies belong on the shelves of academics and policymakers with an interest in poverty, social exclusion and its alleviation amongst our most important future resource, our children.' Professor Tim Smeeding, Syracuse University 'We still know surprisingly little about the dynamics of childhood poverty and hence about the nature, causes and consequences of the deprivations suffered by so many of the world's youngest generation. This volume is an exceedingly valuable contribution to our understanding - at long last the gaps in our knowledge are being filled, and in some cases with unanticipated results. All that is needed now is the political courage to respond.' Professor Robert Walker, School of Sociology and Social Policy, University of Nottingham '... a very well-written and useful collection that should advance thinking about child poverty.' European Sociological Review 'There is something for everyone interest in the topics of poverty and income dynamics ... The book is original in content and long overdue, the writing quality and integration across chapters is outstanding ... The book will appeal more to academics than to policy analysts, but will be appreciated by the insights it offers to all serious academic and nonacademic analysts of poverty dynamics. It makes a great deal of basic information very accessible and straightforward ... The sheer weight of the coordination of analytics across seven nations, which is evident here, is too much to ask most authors to undertake. this makes for a fresh, high quality and very hard to duplicate effort. Serious analysts of the dynamics of disadvantage mobility should all have this book on their shelves.' Professor Tim Smeeding, Syracuse University