Abstract
This paper applies a human-rights based deprivation approach to measure child poverty in China based on secondary data analysis. It discusses the following questions: How to select available deprivation indicators to measure child poverty in China? Are the available deprivation indicators valid, reliable and additive? How did child poverty change between1989 and 2009 and how did it vary by region? The main objective is to use existing longitudinal and cross sectional survey data to build scientific deprivation indicators to measure the living standards of children and produce estimates of child poverty in China across time and space. All waves from 1989 to 2009 of the China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS) data will be utilized. In order to choose a set of deprivation indicators, several statistical tests for the validity, reliability and additivity of the deprivation items are developed. Validity tests aim to check whether income has a significant association with deprivation indicators; A Classical Test Theory (CTT) model is used to determine if the list of deprivation items form a reliable scale/index.; The final test shows whether the deprivation indicators are additive or not. This methodology builds on the work of Gordon (2000, 2006) and final list of valid, reliable and additive deprivation indicators is applied to explore child poverty across time and space. The findings indicate that children’s living standards in China have improved over time but that significant regional disparities remain.
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Notes
Available at: http://www.unicef.org/socialpolicy/index_45357.html
Available at: http://www.younglives.org.uk/
Children’s wellbeing baseline survey in Shanxi, Henan, Yunan, Sichuan and Xinjianig, conducted in 2010.
It covers both rural and urban areas in 1988, 1995 and 2002, from http://www.icpsr.umich.edu/icpsrweb/ICPSR/series/243
Details of CHNS are available at CHNS official website: http://www.cpc.unc.edu/projects/china
In 1997, Heilongjiang province replaced Liaoning province and in 2000, Liaoning province was again included in the study.
None of these provinces are in the North Western sub-region of Western China.
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Acknowledgement
This research uses data from China Health and Nutrition Survey (CHNS). We thank the National Institute of Nutrition and Food Safety, Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention, Carolina Population Centre, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the NIH (R01-HD30880, DK056350, and R01-HD38700) and the Fogarty International Centre, NIH for financial support for the CHNS data collection and analysis files since 1989 and both parties plus the China-Japan Friendship Hospital, Ministry of Health for support for CHNS 2009. The authors are also grateful to two referees for their helpful comments on the earlier versions of this paper and to one of the author’s supervisor, Professor David Gordon, for his careful comment and advice. We would also like to thank the International Society for Child Indicators Research (ISCI) and European Science Foundation (ESF), to support grants for the author to make a presentation of this paper in Heidelberg, Germany.
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Qi, D., Wu, Y. Child Poverty in China-A Multidimensional Deprivation Approach. Child Ind Res 7, 89–118 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-013-9203-9
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-013-9203-9