Child poverty and child rights: Edging towards a definition

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to consider how one might develop a definition of child poverty that is based on the Convention on the Rights of the Child (and the human rights treaties with which it is associated), but also draws on the development of poverty research in the social sciences. It focuses in particular on Article 27(1) of the Convention because of the Article's dual emphasis on an adequate standard of living as an input and a child's development as an outcome. Three perspectives in the social sciences – economic welfare, capabilities, and social exclusion – are compared in order to determine what they can contribute to this input- and outcome-based definition of child poverty. All are found to have advantages and disadvantages. The paper concludes that there are two challenges faced by researchers and policymakers: first, the construction of conversion factors used in the capability approach to link inputs to outcomes; and second, the adoption of national inequality-based standards for assessing indicators of child poverty, thus placing the onus on states to reduce child poverty through redistribution.