Push for national child poverty measures gathers momentum
Posted on March 28, 2013 by blogeditor
By Paola Ballon Fernandez and
José Manuel Roche
UNICEF’s Regional Office in Cairo recently hosted a training course on ‘Child Poverty and Disparity Measurement and Analysis’. The aim of the course was to give technical experts, from governments across the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) as well as from UNICEF, an in-depth overview of the conceptual and methodological aspects of measuring child poverty, using both monetary and multidimensional approaches.
The training was a joint effort by UNICEF, Laval University’s Partnership for Economic Policy (PEP) network, the International Development Research Centre’s (IDRC) MENA Office, and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI). As OPHI research officers, we and others had the pleasure of helping Laval University’s Professor Jean-Yves Duclos lead the training, and engaging with the high-level and dynamic group of professionals that participated.
The timing of the training could not have been better. As discussions about the post-2015 development agenda intensify, there is increasing recognition of the need to focus on the overlapping aspects of child poverty, including the role of the joint distribution of deprivations, their association and the association with income poverty.
OPHI’s global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) identifies ‘who is poor’ by considering the range of deprivations they suffer simultaneously. It includes indicators on child poverty, and can also be tailored to measure child poverty specifically. Those identified as multidimensionally poor are not necessarily identified as income poor or vice versa, as an increasing body of research has shown. See, for example, the presentations at a research workshop we co-hosted with the University of Göttingen last November, or OPHI’s recent findings that a reduction in multidimensional poverty in 22 diverse countries did not always go hand-in-hand with a drop in income poverty.
Understanding the joint distribution of multidimensional indicators of deprivation is critical in considering how to measure progress in reducing poverty post-2015. Our on-going research into association across these indicators convinces us that the analysis of overlapping deprivations should be normatively driven. If two indicators are highly associated, and if there is a normative view supporting the need to monitor both indicators for policy purposes, then both can be included separately in the construction of a multidimensional index. However, it may be that their weights should be less. If the indicators have a low association, and if each is independently important, then both can be entered in the summary measure.
The training in Cairo also provided a platform for sharing a range of methodologies. We were delighted at the interest of participants in understanding the role of the different methods, their empirical applications and the differences between the two; for example, the difference between OPHI’s Alkire Foster approach and its applications, such as the MPI, Colombia’s national MPI and the Women’s Empowerment in Agriculture Index.
OPHI’s forthcoming special issue of Social Indicators Research (Volume III, No. 1, March 2013) comprises nine papers that apply the Alkire Foster method to different topics and contexts, including one on ‘Monitoring Progress in Child Poverty Reduction’.
During the course, our colleagues from UNICEF’s Innocenti Research Centre presented their ongoing project MODA (Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis), which also builds on the adjusted headcount of the Alkire Foster method and associated techniques. Developed with support from UNICEF’s Division of Policy and Strategy, this is a valuable tool for measuring child poverty and disparities which follows a life-cycle approach.
As our colleagues explained, MODA builds not just on the Alkire Foster approach, but on OPHI’s global MPI and on UNICEF’s Global Study of Child Poverty and Disparities. The web portal that UNICEF is developing presents an array of data in two applications: one which enables comparisons between countries, and once which aims to facilitate child poverty measures tailored to the national context.
We believe strongly in this approach at OPHI, having seen countries such as Colombia and Mexico adapt the global MPI to create national measures whose dimensions, indicators and cutoffs reflect their own priorities. We would like to see UNICEF’s country offices and national partners produce tailored measures in a similar way, through a process of public deliberation that results in national ownership.
UNICEF’s regional team did a superb job in organising this training course, which in one short week built a great energy around the various methods discussed, and concluded with a set of commitments to put what had been learned into practice. We hope that in doing so, synergies can be built with networks both South-South and South-North which share the same aims, including the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network which will be officially launched in June.