Consumption Poverty, Child

Introduction: Conceptualization of Child Consumption Poverty

Generally, income has been used to assess poverty and welfare. A household is considered poor if its income is below a minimum standard, [Page 290]which is deemed necessary for meeting basic needs (UNICEF, 2011). Recently, the World Bank has incorporated consumption alongside monetary indicators in its measures of poverty and welfare. Among these is Child Consumption Poverty, understood as a multidimensional approach to measure poverty among children. This approach takes household expenditure and consumption as a basis to measure poverty. The rationale for this has been that the use of income as the primary indicator for poverty and welfare may be problematic in that income-based measures tend to overlook the multidimensionality of vulnerability including consumption, access to resources and social ...