How Much Do Children Feel Poverty? New Measurements of Poverty and Deprivation from the Child's Point of View

Audrey Bousselin , Luxembourg Institute of Socio-Economic Research (LISER)
Anne Solaz, Institut National d'Études Démographiques (INED)

Child poverty is a political concern in all countries including those rich. Experiencing poverty or deprivation during childhood can result in lasting, lifelong negative effects for children. Poverty and living standards are generally measured at the household level by asking adults. In this paper, we mainly aim to measure the aged 8-12 children feeling about the financial situation of the household using diverse measurements of household poverty. May children feel poor in a rich household? Or conversely, may children feel not in the need in a poor household? Do parent and child have the same perception? Data comes from the survey on child well-being in Luxembourg collected in 2019 and associated to administrative records. Luxembourg is an interesting country: while being the richest country in the world in terms of GDP per capita, child poverty of around 30% is above the European average. Results show that girls and children with migration background, as well as children whose parent are less educated are more likely to worried about their financial situations, but child’s poverty perception does not differ by child’s age and the presence of siblings. Children whose parent mentioned difficulties are three times more likely to report being often and always worried about household income than children. Many of them do not seem worried at all. A regression on parent-child divergence about household financial difficulties show that parent-child divergence about financial difficulties is stronger among children from families with a migration background

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 Presented in Session P3. Migration, Economics, Policies, History