What is Child Poverty?

It sounds like a simple question. What exactly is child poverty? Is it not having the latest computer games? Is it having to buy clothes at thrift stores? How about not having enough food to survive? Because all countries suffer from child cheap Nike Air Max poverty, including the United States, the definition and degree of poverty will vary.

The National Center for Children in Poverty estimates that nearly 15 million American children live at or below poverty level. Across the world, UNICEF reports that 24,000 children die each day mostly from poverty-related causes. In UNICEF's words, they "die quietly in some of the poorest villages on earth, far removed from the scrutiny and the conscience of the world. Being meek and weak in life makes these dying multitudes even more invisible in death." That statistic includes only children under age 5. If it included children up to age 7 or 8, the number would, according to UNICEF, be much higher.

Child poverty - everyone's concern

Child poverty is a specter that casts a shadow across the entire globe. Poverty has an official definition if you want to be pedantic: It is defined as a lack of "money or material possessions such that a person is unable to meet the basic needs necessary for survival." The definition of poverty varies depending on the social context and what is held to be an "acceptable" standard of living.

So child poverty is a significant lack of the basic needs required for a child's healthy physical, mental, emotional and spiritual development. It is also defined as a lack of opportunities (known as capability deprivation), a lack of control over one's life, social isolation and discriminatory treatment at the hands of others.

So what exactly is an "acceptable" standard of living? In the West, we might think that it should include a TV, a car and the opportunity to visit a fast-food restaurant regularly. But for children across the world living in abject poverty, the term is relative. For them, it means not having access to basic medical care, adequate food, clean drinking water and a basic standard of education. These are things that we take for granted, even among the poorest families in the United States. It is this concept that many people often struggle to deal with - what poverty actually means and what it means to be truly poor.