Multidimensional Child Poverty in Kazakhstan

About

This publication was released as part of strengthening the national system for monitoring the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), in particular SDG 1. The national Multidimensional Child Poverty Index was developed with methodological guidance and financial support from UNICEF in collaboration with the Bureau of National Statistics of the Agency for Strategic Planning and Reforms of the Republic of Kazakhstan (BNS).

This report presented calculations of child poverty, on the basis of which it is recommended to develop appropriate methodological guidelines and provisions for the implementation of the EU Child Deprivation Index in BNS reporting. It is recommended that the Index be updated and monitored annually. Its methodology also allows for comparative analysis with EU countries. It is recommended to develop interactive dashboards to visualize data on multidimensional and monetary child poverty in various sections and time periods. The results of monitoring child multidimensional poverty are recommended to be included in the country’s Sustainable Development Goals Report.

For the practical application of this Index for the purpose of developing/improving social policy, it is recommended to include this Index as an additional indicator for assessing the level of social well-being of individuals (families) via the Digital Family Card. At the same time, due to the fact that the data allows disaggregation only at the level of regions and type of settlement (urban-rural), all families belonging to the n cluster (for example, rural areas of the Akmola Region) will get the same indicator value corresponding to the level of multidimensional poverty of a given cluster. This Index can receive appropriate weight and be taken into account in the total score assigned to the family in the well-being rating. Due to that the indicators included in the Index are unique and can only be collected by surveying households, they can be informative and complement the administrative data available in the DFC. Thus, the overall family rating will be more sensitive to multidimensional child poverty.