Young Lives: An International Study of Childhood Poverty is a collaborative project investigating the changing nature of childhood poverty in selected developing countries. The UK’s Department for International Development (DFID) is funding the first three-year phase of the project.
Young Lives involves collaboration between Non Governmental Organisations (NGOs) and the academic sector. In the UK, the project is being run by Save the Children-UK together with an academic consortium that comprises the University of Reading, London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, South Bank University, the Institute of Development Studies at Sussex University and the South African Medical Research Council.
The study is being conducted in Ethiopia, India (in Andhra Pradesh), Peru and Viet Nam. These countries were selected because they reflect a range of cultural, geographical and social contexts and experience differing issues facing the developing world; high debt burden, emergence from conflict, and vulnerability to environmental conditions such as drought and flood.
Objectives of the study
The Young Lives study has three broad objectives:
• producing good quality panel data about the changing nature of the lives of children in poverty.
• trace linkages between key policy changes and child poverty
• informing and responding to the needs of policy makers, planners and other stakeholders
There will also be a strong education and media element, both in the countries where the project takes place, and in the UK.
The study takes a broad approach to child poverty, exploring not only household economic indicators such as assets and wealth, but also child centred poverty measures such as the child’s physical and mental health, growth, development and education. These child centred measures are age specific so the information collected by the study will change as the children get older.
Further information about the survey, including publications, can be downloaded from the
Young Lives website.