A recent report form the city of Buenos Aires measuring multi-dimensional poverty, using the consensual method, has found that in 2019,15.3% of households were multi-dimensionally poor, rising to 25.7% for households with children under 18 years of age. The method established will be used to measure nu,ti-dimensional poverty on an ongoing basis.
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South Korea
In 2018, child poverty in South Korea was measured using a Child Deprivation Index based on data from the 2013 Korean National Children Survey. Using the combined income and material deprivation poverty line found that around 10% of the child population in South Korea are in poverty. This is twice the rate of the official Korean child poverty rate which is based only on household income and suggests that conventional income only measures insufficiently identify poor children.
The survey asked about 14 items and activities for children following similar questionnaires used by the UNICEF research in high-income countries (Innocenti Report Card 11, UNICEF, Office of Research, 2013). In the Korean survey these items were not tested to see if they were seen as necessities in Korea or not - but used as is for comparability with the UNICEF analysis. The Korean survey also didn’t asked whether respondents ‘don’t have necessities because they don’t want them’ so those seen as deprived are those who do not have the item. In total, a sample of 4007 children was selected and then reduced to 3990 children who reliably answered questions on material deprivation.
The table below shows the percentage of children who do not have each of these items.
In ‘Multidimensional Child Poverty in Korea: Developing Child-Specific Indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals’, Eunju Kim and Shailen Nandy constructed a 14-item-based Child Deprivation Index based on this data, which was then tested for reliability and validity. To test validity, each item/activity was compared with disposable household income (equivalised using the OECD modified scale), where we expected to see statistically significant correlation with income. Each of 14 items have significant negative correlation with disposable income, demonstrating that those who were deprived of an item also had much lower average equivalised incomes than those who are not deprived.
The optimum poverty threshold was then estimated combining income and material deprivation according to the methodology of the PSE study (see 'Producing an objective poverty line in eight easy steps', David Gordon. This determines the objective combined poverty line at the point where differences between the ‘poor’ and the ‘not poor’ group are maximised and differences within two groups are minimised, using ANOVA and Logistic Regression. The study found a score of 5 or more on the deprivation index was the optimum position for the poverty line.
Children deprived of 5 or more of the 14 items and activities, were classed as materially deprived; these accounted for approximately 13.5% of the entire child population in South Korea – around 1.29 million children. In order to analyse the dynamics of child poverty, the study divided children into four groups—Poor, Rising, Vulnerable, and Not Poor—using the combined income and deprivation poverty line. The results of this study using the combined income and material deprivation poverty line found that around 10% of the child population are found to be in poverty.
This is twice the rate of the official Korean child poverty rate which is based only on household income. This suggests that conventional income only measures not only insufficiently identifies poor children, but also excludes more than half of the potential recipients from the social assistance system. In addition, Kim and Nandy’s analysis offers strong evidence that deprived children are mostly living in working-poor and single-parent households. These findings lead to the conclusion that support for the working poor should be considered as important child policy agenda.
For full details see:
‘Multidimensional Child Poverty in Korea: Developing Child-Specific Indicators for the Sustainable Development Goals’, Eunju Kim and Shailen Nandy, Child Ind Res (2018) 11:1029–1050
PSE:UK is a major collaboration between the University of Bristol, Heriot-Watt University, The Open University, Queen's University Belfast, University of Glasgow and the University of York working with the National Centre for Social Research and the Northern Ireland Statistics and Research Agency. ESRC Grant RES-060-25-0052.
