Gill Main International Society for Child Indicators conference 2011

 Rationale  Process  Findings  Conclusions

 Is there a need for a child-centric measure of child poverty?  If so, what is the best way to develop such a measure?  Does the measure add to our understanding of child poverty and its relationship to subjective well-being?

 Focus on English context  Policy review  Current definitions and measures of child poverty  Relative low family income  Combined low family income and (adult-defined) material deprivation  Absolute low family income  Persistent poverty (meeting above conditions for at least three out of the previous four years)  Very low income and material deprivation  “A new approach to child poverty: tacking the causes of disadvantage and transforming families’ lives” (emphasis added)  Policy tension between children’s ‘rights’ and children’s ‘best interests’

 Two main approaches to research on childhood:  Developmental approach – focus on children as adult-becomings  New sociology of childhood – children as active agents  BUT circularity in investigating poor children as active agents – tendency to pre-classify children as poor according to policy definitions and seek only the opinions of these ‘poor’ children

Poor families Poor children

Children Poor children

 ‘Poverty’ and ‘child’ both contested concepts.  ‘Poverty’ difficult if not impossible to measure directly.  How to test construct validity of a new measure?  Tools used here:  Relationship to existing poverty measures.  Relationship to children’s subjective well-being.

 Selection of an appropriate approach to new child poverty measures  Focus groups with children  Pilot survey of parent-child pairs (300 pairs)  Mainstage Children’s Society survey (almost 5500 children 8-16)  Quarterly Children’s Society survey 2011 (2000 children, linked to parentally-supplied data)

 Traditional measures of child poverty useful but flawed:  Not good at picking up variation between children  Weak associations with subjective well-being  Socially Perceived Necessities approach useful in gaining a direct picture of children’s material situation; items identified by children have some overlap with and some significant differences to items identified by adults  Children and adults provide very similar responses to objective poverty measures; more difference in responses to subjective poverty measures

 List of 20 items identified in focus groups. Reduced through pilot data to list of 10, based on scalability and strength of relationship to traditional poverty variables  10 items included in mainstage and quarterly surveys:  Some pocket money each week  Some money to save each month  A pair of brand-named trainers  An iPod or similar MP3 player  Cable or satellite TV at home  A garden or somewhere similar nearby to spend time safely  Access to a family car  Clothes to fit in with other people their age  A holiday away from home for one week each year  Monthly day-trips with family  All items associated with traditional poverty variables and subjective well- being; items form an acceptable scale.

 In mainstage and quarterly surveys, all items individually significantly associated with:  Having any adults in paid employment  Receipt of free school meals  Whether respondent has their own bedroom  Whether the respondent has any weekly spending money  How well off the respondent believes their family to be  In quarterly survey, all items but having cable/satellite TV at home related to parentally- reported household income  In both surveys, all items significantly associated with subjective well-being (measured using the Huebner scale)

 Scalability of items within an acceptable range (Cronbach’s Alpha=0.74).  Inter-item correlations all significant and within acceptable ranges (r=0.15**-r=0.5**).  All items contributed to Cronbach’s Alpha score.  Scale significantly associated with all traditional poverty variables and subjective well-being.

High likelihood of heterogeneity amongst those scoring 20.

VariableDemographics+ poverty+ deprivation School year (6 as reference group) **-1.48**-1.45** **-3.21**-2.94** Sex0.64**0.79**0.71** Family type (two parents as reference) Lone parent-1.34**-1.58**-1.43** Step family-1.20**-0.71 NS-0.51 NS Other-2.37**-3.18*-2.97* Free school meal receipt0.05 NS0.36 NS Own bedroom-0.47 NS-0.32 NS Some weekly money-0.53 NS-0.21 NS Adults in paid work (none as reference) One0.49 NS-0.37 NS Two1.01 NS0.07 NS Three+0.35 NS0.62 NS Deprivation score (lacking none as reference) One-0.89** Two-2.27** Three-four-2.90** Five ** r²

VariableDemographics+ poverty+ deprivation School year (6 as reference group) 81.64**1.87*1.61 NS **3.88**3.10 ** Sex0.59**0.47**0.48** Family type (two parents as reference) Lone parent2.35**2.98**2.87** Step family2.52**1.77 NS1.61 NS Other2.72 NS4.14 NS4.01 NS Free school meal receipt1.06 NS0.68 NS Own bedroom1.12 NS1.09 NS Some weekly money1.45 NS1.21 NS Adults in paid work (none as reference) One0.75 NS0.92 NS Two0.56 NS0.75 NS Three+1.10 NS1.07 NS Deprivation score NS 22.59** ** ** Nagelkerke r²

VariableDemographics+ poverty+ deprivation School year (6 as reference group) 80.51**0.49**0.43** **0.21**0.20** Sex1.39**1.47**1.40* Family type (two parents as reference) Lone parent0.61**0.64*0.62* Step family0.67**0.80 NS0.88 NS Other0.43 NS0.25 NS1.01 NS Free school meal receipt1.14 NS1.16 NS Own bedroom0.82 NS0.89 NS Some weekly money0.89 NS1.01 NS Adults in paid work (none as reference) One1.58 NS1.66 NS Two1.79 NS1.78 NS Three+1.51 NS1.57 NS Deprivation score 10.64* 20.34** ** ** Nagelkerke r²

 Categorising families as poor  Non-poor – neither no adults in paid employment nor child receives free school meals  Poor – either no adults in paid work or child receives free school meals (12.5% of children)  Very poor – both no adults in paid work and child receives free school meals (2.5% of children)  Categorising children as poor:  Non-poor – lacking fewer than 2 items (71.2% of children)  Poor – lacking 2+ items (28.8% of children)  Very poor – lacking 3+ items (16.2% of children)  Extremely poor – lacking 5+ items (5% of children)

 Child poverty does appear to be distinguishable from family poverty.  Variations in children’s subjective well-being are more associated with variations in poverty at the level of the child than poverty at the level of the family.  Treating poor children as a sub-set of children rather than a sub-set of poor families provides a different kind of insight into child poverty.  Using the socially perceived necessities approach can provide valid and reliable indicators of child poverty  This measure of child poverty explains all and more of the variation in subjective well-being that was previously explained by traditional poverty measures  Child poverty (or an absence of poverty) is useful as a predictor of both low subjective well-being and of high subjective well-being.

 Child-centric measures of child poverty should be included in policy.  Targeting poor families does not guarantee targeting poor children.  Policies should focus on improving children’s situations in the present as well as educating them to become non-poor adults.  Despite policy focus on positive aspects of well-being, child poverty is as useful as a predictor of low well- being as it is of high well-being. Remedial efforts to improve low well-being should not be rejected in favour of efforts to promote high well-being.