Measuring child poverty in Burundi

Highlights

How do we measure child poverty? Whilst monetary poverty is crucial, it overlooks non-monetary dimensions, such as nutrition, health/education, water, sanitation, protection, housing, and so on.

Unlike most child poverty analysis methods  that use income or expenditure at the household level as variables, the Multiple Overlapping Deprivation Analysis (MODA) is a methodology that focuses on access to a variety of goods and services essential for the survival and development of children.

The child, instead of the household, becomes the unit of analysis.

This report, focusing on child poverty in Burundi, presents a detailed analysis of the deprivation of children in terms of food, access to health and education services, drinking water, sanitation services, housing and access to information. All these dimensions are essential for the survival and good development of the child One of the key findings using the MODA methodology is that the majority of children in Burundi suffer from several deprivations at the same time.

 Whilst using the monetary poverty approach (using the national poverty line of 636,510 BIF per year and per adult) we obtain a child poverty rate of 69%, the multidimensional approach reveals a child poverty rate of 78.2%

 Hence, this analysis presents a holistic picture of child poverty in Burundi, and will enable to guide policies and programmes to ensure children have a better childhood and a brighter future.