You are here
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.
-
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
-
Child Sensitive Social Protection: Addressing child poverty in Sub-Saharan Africa
Child Sensitive Social Protection is an initiative that Save the Children and The Africa Platform for Social Protection (APSP) want to advance in Sub-Saharan Africa with the aim to reduce vulnerability and poverty among children by ensuring that social pr
-
World Development Report 2015: Mind, Society, and Behavior
Published by the World Bank Group, this publication aims to integrate recent findings on the psychological and social underpinnings of behavior to make them available for systematic use by both researchers and practitioners in development communities. Equ
-
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
-
Rio Stories
In Rio Stories you meet five young people living in the favela Maré in Rio de Janeiro. Children growing up in Maré face high levels of poverty, limited public services, social and economic exclusion and human rights abuses. Maré has suffered decades of dr
-
Toward Financially Capable Youth: Insights from YouthSave's financial education
As part of the YouthSave project, Save the Children carried out financial education activities in Colombia, Kenya, and Nepal to teach adolescent youth how to make the best use of their savings accounts and about sound personal financial management. Save t
-
Money Matters: Training young workers of tomorrow in Indonesia
Youth unemployment is increasingly linked to low skills and inadequate preparation for the labor market. Vocational training programs are an important tool for young people to invest in the skills they need to compete for jobs. These programs have led to
-
Digital Payments: Save time, save costs, save lives
This article reviews how mobile technologies can assist humanitarian organizations in overcoming an array of logistical challenges, to make crisis relief possible for children and families in vulnerable situations. In Yemen, Save the Children partnered wi
-
Using Mobile Money Payments for Cash Transfers: Save the Children and Econet
This is a webinar on Save the Children and Econet’s partnership in Zimbabwe. The aim of the programme was to distribute cash transfers electronically through mobile money services. The presentation covers each partner’s contribution, the benefits of digit
-
Strengthening a cash transfer programme for orphans and other vulnerable children
How to combat poverty and vulnerability through Child Sensitive Social Protection? This video presents a concrete example from India. The Palanhar Plus is a Save the Children initiative in Rajasthan, that make a cash transfer programme for orphans and oth
-
Assessment of Save the Children's 'Child Sensitive Social Protection' Approach in South Asia
The Child Sensitive Social Protection (CSSP) programme supported by Save the Children Finland in India, Bangladesh and Nepal aims to reduce vulnerability and poverty of children by ensuring that social protection measures lead to meaningful investment in
-
Child Sensitive Norms and Child Poverty: Maximising benefits, minimising harms
Child-sensitivity refers to that aspect of policies, programmes and interventions that aim to increase the benefits for children and reduce any harms, including gender discrimination. This involves assessing and monitoring both positive and negative impac