Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Center Website

After exploring this website, I discovered the "CHIP" program. The CHIP program was funded by the UK Department of International Development , Save the Children and Chronic Poverty Research Center. Although this program has been discontinued, the website remains as a source of information to practitioners, policy makers and child advocates who are concerned about childhood poverty. Information is researched based and used in compiling reports and briefings.

The country I chose to explore regarding childhood poverty was India. In 2001, India was the second most populated country in the world with 260.2 million people living in poverty from 1999 -2000 (http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/). There are several factors contributing to India’s poverty status, ecological situations such as drought, inequalities among the people due to social and caste subclasses, and gender discrimination.  Some regions are poorer than others. Persons living in rural regions of the country are the poorest due to the lack of access to assets, education, health and skills. 

There has been some progress, however the numbers remain high. During the past five decades, efforts have been made to alleviate poverty by means of creating economic growth.  Between 1973 and 2000, the percentage of the population below the poverty line declined continuously from 54.9 percent to an estimated 26 per cent. Rural poverty reportedly declined from 56.4 per cent to 27.1 per cent during the same period (http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/). Despite these declines, there is still much controversy about the accuracy of these numbers. Overall, the absolute poverty numbers remain very high. 

In terms of how children are impacted by poverty in India, I found it interesting that girls are most impacted due to gender discrimination.  For girls, the poverty cycle begins at birth.  Depending on their social class and or caste (heredity hierarchy), girls are typically neglected, least likely to be educated and are more likely to participate in the child force labor. Overall, almost half of India’s children (about 62 billion) under the age five are malnourished, and 34% of newborn infants are extremely underweight (http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/).   

Despite some improvements, India’s children make up 20% of the world’s population of children not enrolled in school and has the largest number of children under the age 16 working (http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/). 

Three insights I have gained from this website are as follows; 1) The first step in eradicating poverty is to create a worldwide awareness about the issue of poverty and how it impacts children. 2) In terms of children experiencing poverty, children are the most vulnerable population as they can not speak up for their rights. I realize that in order to rid the world of childhood poverty, we (adults) will have to get involved in advocating for the well being of children at all policy levels. The CHIP website is a voice for children who can not speak up for themselves’ and provides information and photos that can be downloaded for the use of advocating against childhood poverty. 3) After reading several case studies from the website, I realized that poor families are no different from families that are not poor in terms of wanting their children to be educated. It was also enlightening to see how the children themselves communicated their desire to get an education as well. In contrast to the United States, our children seem to be more occupied with material gains rather than their education. Perhaps we should incorporate worldwide childhood poverty awareness in school curricula to help our children develop an appreciation for the education we have access to here in America. We could also involve our children in fund raising projects to support programs like CHIP. 

References

Childhood Poverty Research and Policy Centre (CHIP). (n.d.). Knowledge for tackling childhood poverty. Retrieved from http://www.childhoodpoverty.org/