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Child Poverty
Globally, around 600 million children live in extreme poverty. When families don’t have enough money they cannot invest in their children – such as buy food or clothes. Neither can they afford to take their children to see a doctor when they get sick or to keep them in school.
Furthermore, when already poor families are hit by unexpected shocks – such as drought, earthquakes, increased food prices, death of livestock, or conflict – their livelihoods suffer but it is children that suffer most as families are often forced to pull them out of school to work.
Even though it is the children who are suffering most from poverty’s effects, child poverty is often missing from overall national strategies for poverty reduction. Save the Children wants the world to put children and young people at the heart of its action to reduce poverty; to strengthen the low and insecure incomes that prevent children from surviving, learning and being protected; and thereby stop the transmission of poverty to future generations.
In 2018 the Child Poverty global theme launched three organisation wide common approaches driving forward our best work and best thinking to ensure we achieve more for children in more places across the world. Our common understanding is helping to ensure best programming for new born age upwards. We work to provide cash plus for better nutrition of children in the first 1000 days of life; we work to strengthened understanding of family economic situations to determine if households have the food and cash they need to survive and prosper; and we work to ensure young people acquire the core life skills to identify and capitalise on decent life and work opportunities in the future.
Save the Children works with partners and governments and directly with families and children to reduce the numbers of girls and boys in extreme poverty and seeks to increase young people’s hopes and skills for better lives.
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Key Findings from the YouthSave Project
YouthSave is a consortium project led by Save the Children in partnership with the Center for Social Development at Washington University in St. Louis, New America, CGAP, and supported by the MasterCard Foundation. The YouthSave consortium and local partn
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Outcomes for Children from Household Economic Strengthening Interventions: A research synthesis
Traditionally, Economic Strengthening (ES) programmes have focused on the head of the household and were designed on the assumption that any benefits would trickle down to other members of the household including children. Despite this assumption, the imp
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Healthcare Through Child Sensitive Social Protection
Child Sensitive Social Protection works! This video from India presents a concrete example on how poverty, vulnerability and inequality are effectively reduced through strengthened social protection systems. The Community Health Protection Programme is a
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Doing More, Doing Better: Social Protection for Adolescent Girls
This story shows the process of how to better include adolescent girls in the existing social protection framework in Bangladesh. Through evidence-based strategic advocacy, Save the Children has tried to better link with social protection systems and stru
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The Prevalence of Household Risk Factors for Children Age 0-17, Estimated for 2000-2015 Using DHS and MICS Surveys
Produced by ICF International with support from USAID, this publication uses data from the Demographic Health Surveys Program (DHS) to estimate the prevalence, different parts, and combinations of vulnerability for children aged 0-17. Data was examined fr
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How Gender Shapes Adolescence: Diverging paths and opportunities
This Young Lives policy brief emphasizes the need for a greater understanding of how gender inequalities appear and form during adolescence, and what causes inequality to shift and persist in different ways within and between countries. By using a unique
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Advancing Adolescence: Getting Syrian refugees and host-community adolescents back on track
The conflict in Syria and subsequent exodus of Syrians into neighboring countries has reached its fourth year. This report analyzes the impact on Syrian refugee and host-community children. A recent study by UNHCR has shown that adolescents are experienci
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Working Children in Bangladesh: Inspiring stories from the field
Working children in Bangladesh are denied access to basic services such as education, health, nutrition and other child development services, which subsequently lead to inter-generational transfer of poverty. Further, prevalence of high levels of violence
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Progress for Children Beyond Averages: Learning from the MDGs (No. 11)
This publication, through the use of UNICEF data, explores the progress and disparities for children after the arrival of the end date for the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The analysis provides a range of outcomes: although a child’s chance to sur
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Social Protection for Children: Key policy trends and statistics
Published as an instalment of the International Labour Organization’s (ILO) Social Protection Policy Papers, this publication examines the case of social protection policies as an essential element of realizing children’s rights, ensuring their well-being
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Intra-Household Inequalities in Child Rights and Wellbeing: A barrier to progress?
This paper attempts to measure the extent of inequality between boys and girls within households and its contribution to overall levels of inequality in child wellbeing. Without better knowledge of this area, our view of progress towards eliminating child
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Mellan Stolarna, Episode 10, På Lika Villkor
On this episode of the podcast “Mellan Stolorna”, Save the Children Sweden psychologists talk about mental illness amongst children in Sweden in relation to the standard of living they have while growing up. The economic and social conditions that childre