Measuring child vulnerability to poverty: Material and psychosocial deprivation

Abstract

The analysis and measurement of what makes children vulnerable to falling into or remaining in poverty is key to ensure equality of opportunities across children, as well as fostering the sustainability of the societal well-being for future generations. This study aims at analysing the child vulnerability to poverty as a broader concept than child poverty because, besides the material deprivation, it also considers the psychosocial deprivation as a result of the relationships of children with their closest environments. We propose to address this issue by means of a multidimensional fuzzy approach. Following the 1989 United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, we measure the propensity to be deprived in six dimensions of material deprivation and four of psychosocial deprivation in 32 countries. We use the International Survey of Children’s Well-Being (wave 2016–2019), in which 10-years-old children are the respondents. Our study finds that whereas children in developed countries experience more psychosocial than material deprivation, in developing countries there is no clear pattern. Based on the above evidence, we would argue that material and psychosocial deprivation do not go hand in hand and their joint analysis represents a promising tool for a better understanding of children well-being to plan more effective policy measures.