ABSTRACT
In this chapter I try to explore what is meant by child poverty. Definitions and understandings of poverty differ-not everyone shares in the pervasive consumerism of the North and poverty is not exclusively related to lack of possessions or money. I explore some of these measures of poverty in more detail, and examine the different kinds of models that are used in the North and the South to describe and analyse child poverty. I also explore why toleration of child poverty is much greater in some countries than others-especially in the USA. I describe some of the approaches countries use to try to combat child poverty. At one end of the spectrum, especially in the Nordic countries wealth is redistributed. People pay higher taxes but very few children are poor. At the other end of the spectrum, in the USA, taxes are lower, but child poverty is high. Poverty is seen as a personal failing. In this case, a strategy for poverty reduction is to target interventions towards poor children, especially towards very young children, in the hope that they will learn skills and habits that will enable them to lift themselves out of poverty when they become adults. It is this latter approach that has been frequently advocated in the South.
