UNICEF and the National Institute of Statistics (INE) recently published the Child Poverty Report for Angola, which SPRI Global was happy to collaborate on. The institutes adopt the Child-Rights approach advocated by UNICEF and reflected in the MODA methodology. This approach emphasises the importance of the nature of the UN Convention on the rights of the child, by giving equal weights to the dimensions in which children can be deprived.
This rights-based approach voids giving arbitrary weights to each of the dimensions, stating that children need adequate nutrition, education and health care as well as access to safe water, sanitation and protection from violence and abuse. Each of these dimensions is equally important and they cannot be weighted hierarchically, which is suggested by other multidimensional poverty estimates.
Given that the needs of children differ depending on their age, the analysis evaluates the variations in deprivations across four age groups, considering an age-group-specific set of indicators and child dimensions of well-being which contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of child deprivations compared to studies using household data. Overall, the MODA analysis provides relevant evidence for advocacy and programmatic purposes, and provides the Government of Angola with a baseline for the child-related SDG 1.2 indicators.
Download the report from UNICEF ESARO
In the near future Cambodia, Zambia, Lesotho, Swaziland, Ethiopia and Libya will publish a child poverty study based on MODA.