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Introduction: Themed section on Children's Perspectives

on Poverty and Disadvantage in Rich and Developing
Countries

Tess Ridge and Peter Saunders

Social Policy and Society / Volume 8 / Issue 04 / October 2009, pp 499 - 502
DOI: 10.1017/S1474746409990078, Published online: 11 September 2009

Link to this article: http://journals.cambridge.org/abstract_S1474746409990078

How to cite this article:

Tess Ridge and Peter Saunders (2009). Introduction: Themed section on Children's Perspectives
on Poverty and Disadvantage in Rich and Developing Countries. Social Policy and Society, 8, pp
499-502 doi:10.1017/S1474746409990078

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Social Policy & Society 8:4, 499502

C Cambridge University Press 2009 doi:10.1017/S1474746409990078

Introduction: Themed section on Childrens Perspectives on

Poverty and Disadvantage in Rich and Developing Countries
Te s s R i d g e a n d P e t e r S a u n d e r s
Department of Social and Policy Sciences, University of Bath, UK

E-mail: T.M.Ridge@bath.ac.uk
SocialPolicy Research Centre, University of New South Wales, Australia
E-mail: p.saunders@unsw.edu.au

The purpose of this themed section is to bring together a set of papers that highlight
childrens perspectives of poverty and disadvantage. The articles selected explore the
experiences, paid and unpaid resource contributions, and perspectives of children
who face economic adversity in different countries across a range of diverse settings.
They reveal some of the complexity of childrens lives using different methodological
approaches drawn from a spectrum of qualitative research with disadvantaged children
that is growing and changing as it responds to new and innovative ways of engaging with
children. The themed section includes findings from a qualitative longitudinal study in
the UK, findings from a survey of childrens views in Norway that includes a qualitative
component, and snapshots across time from seven years of research with working children
in Indonesia. These papers, coupled with an extensive review of the growing body of
literature on childrens perspectives on poverty present a valuable insight into a developing
field of research.
While child poverty, measured according to standard household income and
consumption measures, has decreased in many countries in recent years, it is now
clear that, in even the richest countries, significant numbers of children still experience
economic adversity and deprivation, lack the educational opportunities appropriate to
their needs, or face exclusion from activities that other children take for granted, or live
in areas where formal and informal support structures are limited.
Although past poverty research has been dominated by income studies of statistical
poverty, a consensus has emerged that to fully understand the underlying causes,
outcomes and dynamic nature of poverty there is a need for more than an income-
based measure. The income approach creates problems in relation to the ambiguities
(and indeed politicised debates) surrounding where to set the poverty line, the lack of
agreement about how to apply the equivalence adjustment and the difficulty of accurate
measurement and reporting of income itself. Above all, income poverty studies fail to
connect with the realities of poverty because they reveal nothing about the living standards
actually experienced. Therefore, to understand the lived experience of poverty and the
powerful social and relational dynamics that accompany economic disadvantage, it is
important to engage in a meaningful way with those who are experiencing it.
The voices of economically disadvantaged people are now starting to be heard in
policy and practice, although the development of meaningful research with economically
disadvantaged children has been particularly slow in coming. The reasons for this lie in
part in the duality of their social status as both children and as impoverished citizens.
Traditionally, children have been cast as passive objects of research rather than active

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subjects with their own voices and perspectives, and children by virtue of being children
are socially and politically powerless. They are largely dependent on adults for their
economic and social welfare and they are easily overlooked or obscured within their
family settings. As a consequence, the marginalised social and political status of poverty,
coupled with the low and dependent status of childhood, means that disadvantaged
children have tended to be doubly silenced, and their experiences and the issues that
concern them have largely remained unheard.
However, there is now a growing body of international research which recognises
childrens agency and the complexities of their interactions with family, peers, school and
community. Informed in part by the new sociology of childhood, which posits children
as competent social actors, and by the growth of childrens rights and the new politics
of participation, this body of research has the potential to bring childrens voices and
experiences to the very centre of the political stage. This in turn can lead to better policy
making through the formulation of coherent, informed policies for disadvantaged children
and their families across a wide range of policy areas, including poverty reduction,
employment, education, social assistance and health.
Each of the articles in this themed section examine what it means to be in poverty
from the perspective of children and adolescents and addresses key areas of policy.
In the case of Ridges article the underpinning policy context is the UK governments
attempts to eradicate child poverty, especially through the medium of welfare to work
policies for lone mothers. The article explores childrens perspectives on the everyday
challenges of living in a low-income working lone-parent family. The article is drawn
from findings generated by a larger qualitative longitudinal study of low-income working
family life, which has engaged with children and their lone mothers over a period of
four to five years. The focus is on children who have experienced considerable changes
in their social, economic and familial lives as their mothers attempts to sustain low-
income employment have faltered. This has resulted in children experiencing episodes of
their mothers employment and unemployment over a span of several years. The article
reveals that when mothers entered employment there was an expectation from children
that their lives would improve and in some cases although not all that was the
case and children experienced increases in income, social activities and social status.
However, their mothers employment was not without costs for children, especially in
terms of reduced family time, changes in family practices, the need to resolve care
issues and increased stress for their mothers. The longitudinal nature of the study shows
that mothers were often working in highly unstable labour markets and children had
acute anxieties about the economic and social consequences of the shift between work
and unemployment. For some children, secure employment never materialised for their
mothers, and over time they became less interested in their mothers returning to work.
In other cases, dislike of some aspects of their mothers employment was addressed by
mothers returning to employment under different circumstances, including reduced hours.
With lone mothers increasingly pressured to enter low-paid employment in the UK and
elsewhere, often in unstable labour market conditions, the effects of repeated movements
in and out of the labour market on their childrens lives is an important issue for policy. It is
clear from childrens accounts that, whilst an increase in income and social participation
is an essential need for children, the circumstances under which work is undertaken, and
the uncertainties and insecurities that unstable work transitions can generate, can have
an adverse effects on childrens lives and their perceptions of the value of work.

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Sandbaeks article also deals with relationships between children and their parents,
and touches on the impact of poverty on intra-familial relationships. The study draws
on both qualitative and quantitative longitudinal survey data from Norway to report on
disadvantaged and more affluent childrens perspectives on their well-being and social
integration across a range of dimensions. Focusing on the perspectives of low-income
children, the article explores how children view their parents and the type of support they
feel they gain from them under adverse circumstances. Comparing the responses of low-
income children with more affluent children in Norway, she finds that, while low-income
children try to protect their parents by reducing and monitoring their needs, there are
also signs that income disadvantage can result in stress, and, for some children, poorer
relationships with their parents. However, as Sandbaek argues, unhappy children may be
more critical of their parents and feel their family economy is poor; conversely, negative
relationships between parents and children may result in unhappy children. Sandbaeks
data reveal the need for considerably more attention to be given to childrens perspectives
on family relationships. This is especially the case given the increasing development of
policy interventions in family life driven in part by social investment policies and
the fundamental need for adequate and appropriate support for impoverished children
and their families. As Sandbaek argues, information from children and young people
themselves is vital if there is to be a more nuanced and informed insight into the
complex linkages between parentchild relationships and resource distributions within
disadvantaged families.
Family relationships also play a key role in understanding the lives and experiences
of working children in Bessells study. Based on research between 1994 and 1999 on
working children in Jakarta, Indonesia, this article turns the spotlight on to the role
of work in impoverished childrens lives. The article discusses disadvantaged childrens
attitudes to work in Indonesia, and examines how children view their employment and
whether for these children work is associated purely with poverty, or whether other
factors are influencing their labour supply decisions. Bessels work, like the articles that
precede it, reveals the complexity of childrens lives and the multidimensional nature
of childhood poverty and exclusion. The key factor in childrens work decisions was
their lack of income, and like children in previous research, they sought money from
work to meet both basic needs and familial needs, but also for some consumption
items to fit in with prevailing norms. However, while poverty was a driving factor in
childrens engagement with work, the article reveals that this was one factor among a
complex set of pressures and constraints that shaped their lives and those of their families.
The experience of work and poverty was mediated by childrens diverse circumstances,
and the relationship between work and poverty was viewed very differently by children
according to their circumstances. For some, employment offered an opportunity to gain
control over economic resources, albeit very low ones. For these children, employment
had the potential to provide choice and for some, especially boys working in the informal
economy, a degree of independence. Employment also opened up choices for girls, who
through their factory work gained a greater measure of control over their lives than they
could otherwise expect, although these choices did not extend to their conditions of
work. For other children, family obligations and constrained choices in work gave little
opportunity for independence and control. These impacts can be reinforced by policies
designed to affect adults that end up constraining childrens options and/or send powerful
messages about childrens roles that can reinforce their sense of alienation. However,

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despite significant burdens of family responsibilities, these children often expressed a

sense of pride in the role of their employment in family survival. For children in the most
extreme deprivation, there was little sense that employment was a strategy for taking some
control, but rather that work and poverty were relentless pressures which offered little
prospect of reward or respite. Bessels research highlights the value of incorporating
childrens perspectives in policy making to improve insight and understanding into
poverty, gendered aspects of disadvantage and childrens work.
The final article in the section is a review by Redmond that summarises the main
trends evident in the growing literature on childrens perspectives on poverty and explores
the notion of agency by examining how literature and research approach childrens agency
in relation to disadvantage. He categorised childrens agency in a number of ways,
including self-exclusion (children excluding themselves from participation in activities
that other children take for granted or from a range of aspirations for their future lives);
exclusion of children by other children (children excluding other children because of
their poverty); getting by (everyday actions by children to cope in small ways with their
situation, and to help their families cope); and getting out (children taking steps towards
getting themselves and their families out of poverty). Examples of all four can be found
in the three preceding articles, highlighting their relevance and value. Redmonds article
reminds us that this is a relatively new field of study and, whilst early studies have
established the importance of recognising children as active social agents and valuing
and acknowledging their engagement with poverty in the context of their social and
familial lives, he cautions us that there is still much that we do not know, particularly in
relation to childrens lives outside of the family setting. He argues that there is a need for
systematic studies to discover how children themselves define poverty, their perceptions of
need in childhood and the inclusion of their perspectives in the development of indicators
of childhood well-being and deprivation.
The articles in this themed section reveal the damaging and pervasive effects of
hardship in childhood. Poverty penetrates every aspect of childrens lives, mapping on to
their everyday economic, social and familial experiences and moulding and shaping their
lives. However, they also reveal that children are active in trying to mediate and make
sense of their experiences and are often engaged in managing, negotiating and seeking
to control the experience of deprivation where and when they can.
Children living in poverty (and their families) are some of the most intensively
governed groups in society, frequently the object of political and social concern, but also
often subject to intense official scrutiny and measures of control. The development of
research, which presents the experiences, opinions and concerns of children themselves,
has an important role to play in ensuring that policies targeted at children in poverty
are meaningful and appropriate for addressing the lifeworlds of the children they are
intending to support. Without this key subjective dimension, such policies may fail to
deliver any significant or lasting change in childrens circumstances.

Acknowledgement

The editors and authors would like to thank the referees for their time and their helpful
comments

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