Panel Paper: Child Poverty in Cambodia: An Integrated Approach to Monetary and Non-Monetary Measures of Child Poverty and Deprivation

Thursday, November 7, 2013 : 3:00 PM
Lincoln (Ritz Carlton)

*Names in bold indicate Presenter

Martin Evans and Valentina Calderon, UNICEF
Child poverty is multidimensional issue, yet, to date, there have been two distinct approaches to child poverty measurement. The first approach has calculated measures based on aggregating child deprivations (i.e. indicators for nutrition, education, water and sanitation, health, etc.); while the second approach has taken a monetary measure of economic child welfare using household income or consumption. Using data for Cambodia Socio-Economic Survey 2009 we carry out a poverty assessment that integrates these two distinct approaches to estimate several child poverty ranges and identify a near poor category using the distributions of deprivation and consumption together. Using an ordered probit model, we estimate the likelihood of falling into monetary poverty as a result of a change in the non-monetary poverty measures. Our estimates indicate that changes in non-monetary poverty status appear to be largely associated with the risk of falling into monetary poverty, highlighting the importance of using an integrated approach to better target children at risk.