ABSTRACT

The last decade has seen an increasing number of expressions of concern about the relative economic status of children in developed societies. For example, in the past the United Nations Children’s Fund concentrated its attention on the status of children in Third World countries. However, in the late 1980s it became alarmed that ‘changes in labour markets, environmental conditions, in family structure, in internal and international migration, in the organisation of society and in other aspects of life…(may have caused) new and subtler forms of deprivation’ (cited in Bradshaw, 1990, p. 1) in industrial societies and launched an enquiry into child poverty and deprivation in industrialized countries including the UK.