Measuring Child Poverty
What is child poverty?
Poverty broadly refers to “pronounced deprivation in well-being”, and is most widely measured in monetary terms: households having insufficient income to purchase the minimum goods and services they need to survive and thrive. Children are considered poor if they’re living in households whose consumption falls short of this threshold. This threshold differs in each country, depending on the standard of living, prices of goods, and other factors. In lower- and middle-income countries, absolute poverty lines are commonly used, while in richer countries, poverty is usually defined relatively, in comparison to the economic status of other members of the society.
But poverty is about more than income to purchase goods and services - poverty is a multidimensional phenomenon and manifests itself in poor nutrition, poor health, poor education and limited capability to maintain livelihoods or participate in society. For children, the multidimensional aspects of poverty are especially important as deprivation in early life puts them at a disadvantage throughout their life -affecting their health and capacities, increases vulnerability to exploitation and abuse and limits future prospects, which further harms communities and societies. For instance, children from the poorest households are twice as likely to die before reaching age 5, compared to their richer peers. Child poverty can also alter the trajectory of societies and economies. In Guatemala, children who received early nutrition interventions were likely to earn much higher wages compared to those who didn’t, indicating the potential of multidimensional child poverty reduction to drive long term economic growth.
Recognizing this, in 2007 the United Nations General Assembly adopted a definition of child poverty as the following:
“Children living in poverty are deprived of nutrition, water and sanitation facilities, access to basic health-care services, shelter, education, participation and protection, and that while a severe lack of goods and services hurts every human being, it is most threatening and harmful to children, leaving them unable to enjoy their rights, to reach their full potential and to participate as full members of the society.”
How is child poverty measured?
Measurement provides critical information about the nature of child poverty, its extent and depth, and helps monitor the impact of existing anti-poverty interventions. Child poverty can be measured using monetary and multidimensional approaches, and both measurements are required under SDG monitoring.
Monetary child poverty measurement: Monetary measures (measured based on household income or consumption) count children as poor if they’re living in households below a set poverty line.
Multidimensional child poverty measurement: Multidimensional measures can provide a fuller picture of poverty as they capture non-income aspects of poverty such as malnutrition, ill health and poor living conditions faced by children. Children are considered to be living in poverty if they’re deprived in critical areas such as nutrition, education, health and housing.
What global estimates exist of child poverty?
Globally, monitoring child poverty helps create a shared language to compare trends across countries and regions. Reliable, comparable data also enables policymakers to track progress against global commitments, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to mobilize international support where gaps persist. A webinar in 2025 hosted by the Global Coalition to End Child Poverty brought together experts to summarize and compare the most widely used global estimates.
No single estimate tells the full story. Each of these approaches captures a different dimension of how poverty is lived — from the dollars a household earns to the education a child can access, the water they drink, or the roof over their head. Used together, they give policymakers, researchers, and advocates a far more complete picture of child poverty in all its dimensions than any one measure could provide alone.
What’s the difference between absolute poverty, relative poverty, and multidimensional poverty?
Poverty can be understood and measured in different ways — and the approach a country or institution chooses reflects both technical judgments and political ones about what deprivation means and who deserves to be counted.
When researchers use an absolute monetary approach, they set a fixed income or consumption threshold — the minimum required to meet basic calorie needs and essential non-food goods — and identify as poor anyone living below it. Because this threshold stays constant over time, it allows for comparison across years and across countries. It is the basis for international poverty lines like the World Bank's extreme poverty threshold.
When a relative approach is used, analysts measure deprivation in relation to the living standards of a given society, identifying as poor those whose income falls so far below the national median — typically below 50% or 60% of it, adjusted for household size — that they are effectively excluded from ordinary life. What counts as a necessity varies by context: plumbing may be a basic right in one place and a luxury in another. Relative measures take these differences seriously, which is why they are most common in higher-income countries.
Multidimensional approaches go further, recognizing that income alone does not capture how deprivation is actually lived. Even households that clear a monetary threshold may lack access to clean water, adequate nutrition, or quality education. By measuring deprivation across several dimensions simultaneously — through tools like the Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), the Multidimensional Overlapping Deprivation Analysis (MODA), or the Bristol approach — analysts can make the hidden faces of poverty visible.
No single approach is complete on its own. That is why both monetary and multidimensional measurement are required under SDG monitoring — and why the Global Coalition to End Child Poverty advocates for understanding child poverty in all its dimensions.
What’s the difference between international poverty lines and national poverty lines?
A poverty line, also called a poverty threshold, is the line below which it is difficult, if not impossible, to afford basic needs, which is either determined by a country, based on costs of basic needs and income, or calculated through international standards.
National poverty lines are either absolute poverty lines calculated as the minimum income required to meet basic calorie intake and other non-food goods or relative poverty lines, defined in reference to the overall distribution of a country’s income or consumption. Relative poverty lines frequently define people as poor if their household income is below a certain percentage of the median income of that country, and they are commonly used in higher-income countries.
The international poverty line – an absolute poverty line – (for example, the extreme poverty line of $3.00 per day per person) is set by the World Bank, with reference to the national poverty lines in some of the poorest countries, to measure the population living in extreme poverty. As differences in the cost of living across the world evolve, the global poverty line has to be periodically updated to reflect these changes. Since the first estimation in 1990 that formed the dollar-a-day poverty line, the value was updated.
Similarly, there are international and national versions of multidimensional poverty measures. For instance, the global MPI applies a uniform structure to allow for comparability across countries, whereas national and regional measures define their structure according to deprivations considered to be most relevant to their context. Similarly, the N-MODA is a tailored version of the MODA approach, adopting country specific definitions of deprivation and providing more in-depth analysis appropriate for the country context.
Why measuring child poverty is harder than it sounds
Good data is the foundation of good policy — but getting good data on child poverty is far from straightforward.
Most of what we know about child poverty comes from household surveys: nationally representative studies that ask families about their income, consumption, and access to basic services. These surveys are the backbone of both monetary and multidimensional poverty measurement. But they are expensive to design and implement, require significant technical capacity to analyze, and — crucially — are not conducted with regularity in many countries. In large parts of sub-Saharan Africa and South Asia, data may be several years old by the time it reaches policymakers, making it difficult to track progress or respond to shocks in real time.
Even where surveys do exist, they do not capture all children equally. Households in unregistered settlements, conflict zones, and nomadic populations are frequently excluded from sampling frameworks altogether. Children living outside of households — on the streets, in institutional care, in correctional facilities, or in child-headed households — are often missed entirely. These uncounted children are very likely to be among the most vulnerable, and if efforts to address child poverty do not shed light on them, they risk being ignored in both programme and policy responses.
Regular and consistent data collection on child poverty remains rare, which means that during crises — a pandemic, an economic shock, a surge in conflict — we are often flying blind precisely when it matters most. The costs of conducting complex surveys at the frequency needed to monitor rapidly changing conditions are prohibitive for many governments, particularly those already facing constrained fiscal space.
There is also a systemic risk in how aggregate data is used. Unless child poverty is specifically monitored, policymakers may have the misconception that progress is being made to reduce poverty overall, when in reality children are not benefiting — or are being left further behind.
None of this means measurement is impossible — it means it requires sustained investment, political will, and technical partnership. The Coalition's work on multidimensional child poverty estimates represent major strides in expanding coverage and comparability. But data gaps remain, and closing them is not a technical footnote: it is a prerequisite for ending child poverty in all its dimensions.
Explore the data
The Global Coalition maintains a collection of databases tracking child poverty estimates across countries and regions. Explore our child poverty databases to access the latest figures, compare trends, and see where the data gaps are.