Introduction

Ultimately we are interested in the effects of child poverty rates on children’s physical and mental development, health and survival rates, educational achievement and job prospects, incomes and life expectancy. In Part 2 of this volume various authors try to answer the question of whether those that spend their childhood in poverty are at a marked disadvantage, as measured by various indicators.

In the first chapter Shelley Phipps explores connections that exist among values, policies and outcomes for young children in three nations: Canada, Norway and the United States. Phipps analyses three collections of microdata from the early to mid-1990s: the World Values Survey (1990); the Luxembourg Income Study (1994 and 1995 LIS); and three national surveys (the Canadian Longitudinal Survey of Children and Youth, the Norwegian Health Survey and the US National Longitudinal Survey of Youth – Mother/Child Survey). This is a ground-breaking study because of Phipps’ ability to combine all three types of data in one study. It is among the first to address child poverty and outcomes in one crossnational study.

The results emphasise the importance of values in shaping social policies that affect the well-being of children, while existing social policies may help to shape the values of the people who experience them. The results also confirm that social policies available to households with young children have important associations with household poverty status as well as being indicators of children’s well-being such as physical or emotional health or success at school. In addition the results provide evidence to support the underlying hypothesis of most of the chapters in this volume: child outcomes vary negatively and systematically across nations; more national child poverty is correlated with negative outcomes for children.

In Chapter Four John Micklewright and Kitty Stewart consider a set of measurable differences in the well-being of children between current European Union member states and the ten Central and Eastern European countries. The authors adopt a broader view than is typically taken, which includes a comprehensive picture of the well-being of children similar to that of the UNDP’s Human Development Report and the associated ‘capability’ approach of Amartya Sen.