Ms Sabina Alkire, the Director of Oxford Poverty & Development Initiative has harped on the importance of Early Childhood Development (ECD) as an important factor in measuring multidimensional poverty and building children’s intellectual capacity.
Ms Alkire who spoke with The Nation at the launch of the 2018 global Multidimensional Poverty Index at the United Nations headquarters in New York, mentioned indices which can be used to measure child poverty other than school attendance.
“Are there soft toys in the house? Do somebody read with the child? Is there intellectual engagement? Do they go to pre-school? Are they neglected or left alone for some time each week?
“We are passionate about early childhood development because it is important for the intellectual development of a child,” she affirmed.
Citing Panama, a country in central America which launched a child Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI) with strong emphasis on early childhood development; she advised governments in sub-Sahara Africa to step up work on the deprivation of the current generation and accelerate progress by looking at the highest impact sequences of intervention when doing child budgeting for child MPIs.
According to the 2018 global Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), children account for 50 percent of the total number of poor people in 104 primarily low and middle-income countries. 662 million children are considered poor according to multiple different indicators.
Jointly developed by UNDP and the Oxford Poverty and Human Development Initiative (OPHI) at the University of Oxford, the 2018 global MPI provides a comprehensive view of the many ways in which 1.3 billion people worldwide experience poverty in their daily lives.
The MPI looks beyond income to understand how people experience poverty in multiple and simultaneous ways across the three key dimensions of health, education and living standards. Factors such as lack of clean water, sanitation and adequate nutrition or primary education also formed parts of the index.