Children, Adolescents and Intra-urban inequalities in Latin America and the Caribbean[1]
Diego Born.
Victoria Colamarco.
Enrique Delamónica.
Alberto Minujin.
Page 26ABSTRACT
By 2010, 80% of the population in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) was living in urban areas. This proportion is clearly above the global urbanization average of more than 50% and similar to highly developed regions.
Although children in urban areas, on average, live under better conditions than children in rural areas, there are millions of children in urban areas struggling to overcome poverty, without proper access to the “urban advantage,” especially in Latin America and the Caribbean, a region with high inequalities.
In this context, it is vital to gather information to understand the inequalities affecting children that exist within urban areas. This knowledge will be crucial for promoting and designing public policies to reduce inequities between children and adolescents in the region. Although there is a large amount of quantitative analysis on the gaps between urban and rural areas, inequities within cities is still an area to explore.
The objective of this article is to present some results obtained from national household surveys, Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys and Demographic and Health Surveys carried out between 2005 and 2010. These surveys provide information to describe intra-urban inequalities affecting children and adolescents in terms of access to social services and the full realization of their rights in twenty countries in LAC.
Based on housing characteristics, income level and parents educational status, children were classified in three groups determined by whether the children live in households that are highly deprived, moderately deprived or non-deprived. Relative and absolute gaps for several well-being indicators (health, education and child protection) were analyzed according to the incidence of these among children living in highly deprived and non-deprived households.
The results show that in most countries the intra-urban disparities are larger than urban-rural ones. They also point out the indicators and countries where the disparities are highest.
Keywords: Children – Latin America and the Caribbean – Inequality – Intra-urban inequality –Urban deprivation– Education – Health – Child Protection -Equity
Page 26INTRODUCTION
The objective of this paper is to analyze, based on the most recent available quantitative information, intra-urban inequalities that affect the fulfillment of child rights in selected countries in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC).
The first section sets out the framework for the issues in which the paper focuses and briefly mentions some related research. The second section explains the methodological characteristics taken into account to analyze the information available. Thirdly, the paper presents some empirical findings. Finally, a few considerations close the paper.
1. BACKGROUND
Similar to highly developed areas, the urban population in LAC reaches 80%. In addition the high urbanization rates are long-standing. In 1962 LAC crossed the 50% threshold, while at the global level, this took place in 2008 (UN Habitat, 2011). Living conditions of the urban population, however, are far from equitable, especially in a region well-known for its high level of inequality (Wagstaff 2002, CEPAL 2010, UN Habitat, 2012) and where material deprivations, as well as income poverty, disproportionately affects children and adolescents. This situation has negative implications for the effective realization of child rights.
Although it is accurate to state that children living in urban areas are, on average, better off than their rural peers, it is also true that millions of children in urban areas struggle with poverty and have no access to the “urban advantage” (Barlett, 2008, Montgomery, 2009, Satterthwaite and Bartlett 2002).
Studies on social inequities are heterogeneous and use several different methodologies, dimensions, indicators and thresholds to define the socio-economic situation of children. Over the last few years, the number of studies focusing on urban inequities has significantly increased, often including issues related to children and comparisons between countries and among regions (SITEAL, 2009 and 2010, UNDP, 2010, UN Habitat 2011). In fact, how prevalent intra-urban ‘vertical’ and ‘horizontal’ inequalities affect children and adolescents trajectories and how to develop territorial policy approaches to cope with them is an area that is calling for increasing research and action.
International studies on urban issues generally emphasize how the living conditions in slums- especially related to infrastructure and access to services- must be prioritized, as they constitute a determining factor in urban poverty, deteriorates productivity and has a direct impact on the well-being of individuals (UN Habitat 2003 and 2011, Cohen 2011, Cohen and Debowicz 2001).
Another topic frequently analyzed is related to urban segregation (Veiga and Rivoir 2001, Veiga 2007, Villaça 2011) aiming to understand the links between society and urban space, or more precisely, determining the different ways in which people live depending on socio-economic status (De Pablos y Susino 2010).
These approaches have highlighted the fact that differences in living conditions among children and adolescents are a result of several factors, among them, economic inequality, lack of public policies, indifference, discrimination and lack of long and medium term strategic political vision. These factors drastically diminish opportunities for children and adolescents.
There are also several studies on children in urban settings, limited in scope, focusing on dimensions such as child labor (Mendonça and Rodrigues 2010), crime and violence (Alvarez de la Torre et al, 2005; Waiselfisz 2008; Rizzini 2009). Some of these mostly qualitative studies provide a general overview of the situation under discussion but do not evaluate the factors behind intra-urban inequity.
In spite of the growing concerns related to child poverty and of the analyses on quality of life and well-being of children in developing countries, quantitative information is scarce. Although new studies present information on the differences between urban and rural populations (Gordon et al, 2003; ECLAC and UNICEF, 2010; SITEAL, 2010), there is still much to learn about intra-urban inequalities, in particular, how these are distributed and how they affect poor children living in urban areas.
In this paper we analyze intra-urban disparities among children and adolescents in the region. This knowledge will be vital in the design and promotion of policies to reduce inequities among children in the region.
Page 262. METHODOLOGY
In this paper we present a quantitative description of the current intra-urban inequalities affecting children fulfilling some of their rights (health, education and child protection) based on all recently available household surveys. The findings show not only the impact of inequality within and among countries, but also the topics with highest levels of inequalities.
Interest in analyzing poverty through a multi-dimensional perspective has increased in recent years. Studies at the global level, such as those carried out by the University of Bristol for UNICEF (Gordon et al, 2003, Minujin et al, 2006) have developed analyses that accounts for the multiple deprivations of poverty in developing countries. At the regional level, the already classic contributions by ECLAC that combine the basic unmet needs and income poverty lines are worth mentioning, as are the more recent child poverty estimates based on the Bristol - London School of Economics - UNICEF multiple deprivation method. Discussions on the need to address multidimensional poverty are taking place in several countries in the region. Mexico is, without a doubt, the country with the most concrete achievements in this topic (CONEVAL, 2010, 2011).
Building on this progress, in this paper we classify children and adolescents in urban areas according to their living conditions (defined in relation to housing characteristics, availability of current income and parents’ education) an approach similar to the one used by Montgomery (2009) and Mugisha (2005). Based on this classification, intra-urban disparities among groups of children and adolescents with good or bad (deprived) living conditions are analyzed through indicators accounting for several dimensions of child well-being. For these purpose national household surveys, Multiple Indicators Cluster Surveys (MICS), and Demographic and Health Surveys (DHS) carried out between 2005 and 2010 in twenty countries were used[2].
As previously mentioned, the classification of urban households is based on three dimensions (Figure 1).
Figure 1. Variables for the classification of children and adolescents according to the level of deprivation.
The first dimension is related to housing conditions, considering the quality of housing materials, overcrowding and access to water. If the household experiences two or three of these deprivations (e.g., overcrowding and lack of access to water), the household is classified as highly deprived. If there is only one deficiency or deprivation, the household is considered as moderately deprived[3].
The second dimension analyzes the parents’ educational level. If the average number of years of schooling is below six, the parents’ education is considered low. If this average is above 6 the parents’ education is considered not deprived. For the purpose of this paper we do not distinguish between average or high levels of education.
The third dimension relates to monetary poverty. Determining whether or not a household is poor depends on the criteria used in the original source of the data. Official household surveys, for example, use a monetary poverty line, which we applied too. For countries with MICS and DHS, we used the Wealth Index as a proxy (Rutstein and Johnson, 2004). In these cases, households were ranked according to the value of the wealth index. There is information on the incidence of urban poverty (either multi-dimensional child poverty or monetary poverty) for these countries. For each country the incidence of urban poverty was used as the threshold to classify households as poor. This threshold can be expressed as a percentile (e.g. if the incidence of urban poverty is 30%, the threshold is the 30th percentile). All households below this country-specific percentile according to the distribution of the wealth index are considered poor.
Based on these indicators, households are classified as highly deprived, moderately deprived or non-deprived (Figure 2).
Figure 2 Outline for the classification of households according to the level of deprivation.
Households are classified as non-deprived when they do not register any housing deficiencies, whose parents have an average or high education and are not income poor.
Households are considered moderately deprived when they suffer only one deficiency (and for housing it is only a moderate one). The possible cases are: i) there is a moderate housing deficiency (with no income poverty and with a parents’ education level either high or average), ii) there is income poverty (with average or high educational level of the parents and without housing deficiencies), or iii) if the parents’ education level is low (but there is no housing deficiency and no income poverty). Any other combination of factors would result in the household being classified as highly deprived[4].
As seen in Figure 3, almost three out of every ten children and adolescents in the region live in highly deprived households (29%), while a similar proportion (27.6%) lives in moderately deprived households and two out of every five children and adolescents live in non-deprived households (43.4%)[5]. There are differences among countries. In a first group of five countries (Southern Cone, Costa Rica and Panama) less than 20% of children and adolescents live in highly deprived households. A second group of seven countries including Mexico, Brazil and Colombia (the most populated ones in the region), registers intermediate figures (between 20% and 40%) of children and adolescents living in highly deprived households. Finally, in six countries (the majority of Central American countries, as well as Bolivia and Paraguay) the incidence of children and adolescents living in highly deprived households is above 40%.
Figure 3. Distribution of children and adolescents by area of residence and distribution in urban áreas according to de level of deprivation, by country. Latin America and the Caribbean , circa 2009. In %.
The analysis of intra-urban disparities among children will focus on comparing the incidence of several child well-being indicators according to the household level of deprivation. In order to provide summary information, comparisons through relative gaps (i.e., the correlation between incidence of children living in highly deprived households and those living in non-deprived households) will be prioritized. For example, if 20% of urban adolescents in highly deprived households of country A do not attend school and 5% of urban adolescents living in non-deprived areas do not attend school, the relative gap indicates that it is four times more likely that an adolescent living in highly deprived households will not attend school compared to an adolescent living in a non-deprived household[6].
3. Evidence of intra-urban inequities that affect childhood and adolescence
This section analyzes the disparities for a set of indicators relative to different dimensions of child well-being which show distinct situations among countries in the region. The order in which these indicators are presented is associated with stages in the lifecycle[7]. We first review indicators of early childhood, followed by those of adolescence (education and health).
3.a Early Childhood
Prenatal Care (8 countries) [8]
The lack of professional prenatal care affects 4.8% of children under age 5 in these countries. In rural households, this proportion is four times higher than in urban ones (9.5% and 2.4%), similar to the disparity within urban households among children living in highly deprived (4.6%) and not deprived (1.1%) households. The intra-urban gap is greater than the rural/urban in Dominican Republic, Honduras and Colombia, while in Peru and Bolivia the contrary occurs.
Honduras and Bolivia display the highest percentages of lack of prenatal care in urban households, but while in the former intra-urban inequality reaches one of the highest points, in Bolivia the levels of inequality are slightly below the average of all countries considered. Dominican Republic presents the lowest incidence of this indicator, and, in turn, the highest intra-urban disparity.
Birth Registration (8 countries)
For this set of countries, 8.2% of children under the age of 5 do not have a birth certificate. In rural households, 11% of children have not been registered, while in urban ones the rate is of 6.6%. The rural/urban gap is of 1.68, while the gap between highly deprived urban households and non-deprived ones is of 3.37.
In non-deprived urban households, 3.2% of children have not been registered, while 10.6% of children have not been registered in highly deprived urban household. This level is similar to the rural average.