Fighting child poverty is necessary in order to reach Sustainable Development Goal 1 (SDG1): ‘End Poverty in all its form, everywhere’ by 2030. Across the world, one out of two people living in extreme poverty is a child. Children born and living in poverty are more likely to suffer from undernourishment, lack of access to school or health care and die before the age of five. 

On Friday 18 November, the Impact Initiative at the Institute of Development Studies (IDS) and the Global Coalition to End Child Poverty are hosting the Global Coalition Child Poverty Research Day in the aim to explore the main policy areas which need to be addressed in order to drastically reduce child poverty. Researchers will be discussing three main areas of intervention:

• Monetary child poverty

• Multidimensional child poverty

• Support of adolescent transitions for reducing economic and non-economic forms of child poverty.

The Chronic Poverty Advisory Network, with the Overseas Development Institute are partnering in the fight against child poverty as members of the Global Coalition to End Child Poverty. The Impact Initiative aims to increase the uptake and impact of research from the Joint Fund for Poverty Alleviation Research programme jointly funded by the UK's Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC) and the Department for International Development (DFID).

Yisak Tafere, who has been working closely with CPAN on the ESRC/DFID-funded project ‘Understanding and supporting sustained pathways out of extreme poverty and deprivation,’ will present on the role and impact of the Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) on children’s livelihood in Ethiopia. The PSNP targets chronically insecure rural families and provides food aid and conditional cash transfers on a regular basis. However, Yisak’s research reveals that PSNP only prevents children and families from hunger and migration but has a limited impact on changing their poor economic situations. Additionally, because it demands engagement in public work in order to be included in the project, it eats out much of children’s time, which could be invested in education instead. Yisak argues that child-focused social protection programmes are needed in order to tackle child poverty more efficiently.

This Research Day combines research presentations, reflections and general discussions with the aim to increase and widen the understanding of child poverty and deprivation dynamics and to identify the knowledge gaps that need to be filled. Whilst progress towards reducing child poverty has already been made in terms of nutrition, access to school and basic care, more research is needed to fully characterise, identify and find effective solutions to this worldwide phenomenon.

You can follow the event on twitter using the hashtags #ChildPovertyResearch and #ENDChildPoverty. Stay tuned.

This post was written by Sophie Bridonneau, Research and Communications Assitant at CPAN.

Related blogs from Impact Initiatives: 

• Ensuring all children can escape the cycle of poverty

• Building the bridge between policy, practice and research