Global Study On Child Poverty And Disparities (PDF) - Social Policy ...

The deprivation approach to
measuring poverty
Deprivation studies are likely to yield results closer
to the reality of people’s perceptions of poverty
and well-being in Vanuatu. Earlier poverty studies
show that hardship, as perceived by Ni-Vanuatu,
is characterized primarily by lack of or limited
access to basic services such as education,
health, good roads, and safe water supply, which
fits well with the deprivation approach to poverty.
Extensive consultations on appropriate poverty
measures for Vanuatu provided the following
working definition of Pacific poverty or hardship
(ADB, UNDP, Government of Vanuatu, 2008):
• lack of access to basic services such as health
care, education and clean water
• lack of opportunities to participate fully in the
socio-economic life of the community
• lack of access to productive resources and
income generation support systems (rural credit,
capital, markets, skills training) to meet the
basic needs of the household and its customary
obligations to the extended family, village
community and church
Box 3 summarises the deprivation measures
used in this report, which are derived from the
2007 MICS. Deprivation is measured in seven
dimensions – shelter, sanitation, safe drinking
water, information, food, education and health.
Deprivations are measured as severe or less
severe. Children are defined as being age 0-17
years, but, as noted in the box, some deprivations
are relevant to a smaller age group within that
range.
The discussion of deprivations that follows for
the most part excludes information deprivation,
as lack of access to media (radio, TV, telephone)
was the norm in rural Vanuatu (over 60 per cent)
at the time of the MICS, and counting information
deprivation would considerably increase the
number of children experiencing multiple
deprivations and thus potentially skew the profile
of children’s relative disadvantage.
There is also evidence that information
deprivation has been subject to rapid change, and
the picture provided in the MICS appears to have
altered very significantly following amendments
to the Telecommunications Act in 2007, opening
the telephone market to competition. According
to the Pacific Institute of Public Policy (2009),
there has been a rapid increase in mobile
telephone coverage, particularly in rural areas 12
According to the most recent census, 76 per cent
of households in Vanuatu had mobile phones in
2009, with access varying between 71 per cent in
Penama and 87 per cent in Shefa. The two major
exceptions are Tafea (63 per cent) and Torba (10
per cent). The entire country can now receive
the Radio Vanuatu signal—up from 70 per cent
in 2008 and only 15 per cent in 2007. Combined
with the expansion in mobile phone coverage, this
has significantly reduced information deprivation.
Thus, excluding this category is in keeping with
the focus of this report on the pillars of child wellbeing
– areas identified by UNICEF as critical to a
child’s development: health, nutrition, sanitation,
water, and education.
Levels of deprivation
Figure 2.6 shows the occurrence of severe and
less severe deprivations. Some deprivations
are individual (for example, whether a child is
immunised or is attending school), and some are
experienced at the household level (for example,
housing and access to water), but all results
are reported at the individual level. It is readily
apparent that, with the exception of information
deprivation (51 per cent), severe deprivations
are relatively uncommon, ranging between 3 per
cent for severe sanitation deprivation and 5 per
cent for severe education deprivation to 17 per
cent for health deprivation. However, significant
proportions of the child population experience
less severe deprivations, particularly health (65
per cent), information (55 per cent), shelter (44
per cent) and sanitation (38 per cent). Lower but
still significant numbers of children experience
less severe deprivations in the areas of water,
education and food.
Figure 2.6: Children who are severely and less
severely deprived, 2007 (%)
Shelter
Sanitation
Water
Information
Education
Food
Health
3
5
8
10
14
16
17
23
0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70
Source: Estimated from data in 2007 MICS.
26
38
44
51
55
65
Severe
Less Severe
12 The Pacific Institute of Public Policy has noted that 80 percent of rural respondents had
acquired a mobile phone within the year preceding the study, compared to 51 percent of
all respondents. Positive impacts included more contact with family and friends, improved
information on family events, reduced travel costs and increased speed of communication.
There is also a positive relationship between perceived access to telecommunications
and perceived livelihood improvements. However, interviewees with higher cash incomes
expressed anxiety over the added financial burden of having a mobile telephone, including
subsidising relatives’ credit or charging costs. In rural areas in particular, interviewees were
concerned about the unprecedented increases in the speed of information and communication
introduced by mobile telephony (Pacific Institute of Public Policy 2009).
44