Multidimensional Child Deprivation in Ireland: A New Child Rights-Informed Approach

Despite an increasing body of literature that conceptualises child poverty as distinct from household poverty, it is still commonly measured as the proportion of children living in low-income households. This study used longitudinal data from the Growing Up in Ireland study on a cohort of children born in 2008. The child rights framework was applied to identify six dimensions of child deprivation: nutrition, access to healthcare, protection from violence, access to information, leisure, and housing. The study’s objective was to combine these dimensions into an index of child deprivation to investigate the relationship between child deprivation and household income at ages 9 and 13. Our analyses show that household income poverty alone is insufficient for identifying deprived children. However, low income remains a statistically significant predictor of child deprivation. Children whose mothers were single, younger, or had a lower level of education were more likely to experience multidimensional deprivation at ages 9 and 13. At age 13, girls were at a higher risk of deprivation than boys. Overall, this study highlights the potential of rights-informed multidimensional deprivation indices to identify areas of deprivation that are less sensitive to household income. The study indicates the advantages of using child-centred indices over household-level measures when suggesting policy interventions to combat child deprivation in higher-income countries.