Introduction

The first part of this volume presents an overview of the most recent facts on the extent and trends of child poverty in industrialised nations. Although poverty is often referred to as being a multidimensional phenomenon, both chapters focus on the financial dimension of poverty. In part this can be explained by the fact that the availability and comparability of income data has improved considerably in the last two decades, which allows a far more comprehensive study of the extent and trends in income poverty rates. In contrast, the cross-national measurement of non-monetary dimensions of poverty in industrialised countries is still in a prospective phase. The focus on poverty of income can also be explained by the geographical scope of this volume, as it is assumed that in modern nations, characterised by a highly monetarised economy, the disposability of a sufficiently high income is an important precondition for reaching certain levels of well-being and social participation deemed minimal in these societies.

The first chapter by Bruce Bradbury and Markus Jäntti describes the extent of child poverty in a wide range of industrialised and transition countries. Their analysis relies on the Luxembourg Income Study database, the most recent and largest collection of income survey data for OECD countries that is currently available. They use three different poverty lines: one ‘absolute’ and two ‘relative’ poverty lines. ‘Absolute’ or, more properly, fixed real price poverty lines, are thresholds which permit people living in specified family types to purchase the same bundle of goods and services in different countries or times. Families that fall below the common consumption threshold are therefore considered to be poor. Bradbury and Jäntti use the US official poverty line for a couple plus two children in 1995 (US$15,299). In order to apply this poverty line to the other countries included in the study, Bradbury and Jäntti convert national currencies to US dollars by using the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Purchasing Power Parities (PPPs) for 1995, and national inflation rates to deflate incomes over time. ‘Relative’ poverty lines are typically defined with reference to a measure of ‘typical’ consumption levels (for example, half median income).