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01 02 This collection brings together the latest evidence from Young Lives, a unique international study that focuses on children and poverty – particularly how poverty affects their development and their lives as children, and how children and their families respond to poverty. It shows how the persistence of inequality amid general economic growth is leaving some extremely poor children behind, despite the promises of the Millennium Development Goals. While schooling has become widespread to the extent that almost all children attend school, at least for a while, children from disadvantaged backgrounds often are left behind. Changing values, such as the growing belief in school education as a route out of poverty, raise questions about how children's early circumstances and experiences, and the choices they make, affect their later outcomes and well-being in adolescence and early adulthood. 13 02 Jo Boyden is Director of Young Lives, an ongoing 15-year study of childhood poverty based at the University of Oxford, UK. She is an international expert on issues relating to children in developing countries, how they grow up, the contributions they make to their families, and how they cope with the challenges of daily life. Michael Bourdillon was Professor of Sociology at the University of Zimbabwe for over twenty years. An academic and activist who has dedicated his life to improving the lives of street and working children, he is recognised for his passionate defence of children's rights to nurture and to learn the skills they need for a useful life wherever they are growing up. 04 02 Introduction: Child Poverty and the Centrality of Schooling; Michael Bourdillon and Jo Boyden PART I: POVERTY AND THE LIVES OF GROWING CHILDREN 1. How Does Where Children Live Affect How They Develop? Evidence from Communities in Ethiopia and Vietnam; Paul Dornan and María José Ogando Portela 2. Family Socio-economic Status, Mother's Psychosocial Skills and Children's Human Capital: Evidence from Four Low- and Middle-Income Countries; Andreas Georgiadis and Priscila Hermida 3. 'I Am Dependent On My Children's Support': Risk and Protective Factors for Children Experiencing Adverse Events; María José Ogando Portela and Kirrily Pells 4. Gender, Agency and Poverty: Children's Everyday Experiences in Andhra Pradesh and Vietnam; Gina Crivello, Vu Thi Thanh Huong and Uma Vennam PART II: HOW DOES SCHOOLING HELP THE POOR? 5. Schooling and Cognitive Outcomes from Childhood to Youth: A Longitudinal Analysis; Caine Rolleston and Zoe James 6. Changes in Rural Children's Use of Time: Evidence from Ethiopia and Andhra Pradesh, India; Virginia Morrow, Yisak Tafere, and Uma Vennam 7. The Role of Formal Education in the Subjective Well-being of Young Teenagers in Rural and Urban Peru; Alexandra Cussianovich and Vanessa Rojas 8. Fulfilling the Promise of School Education? Factors Shaping Education Inequalities in Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam; Helen Murray 9. How Much Difference Does School Make and For Whom? A Two-Country Study of the Impact of School Quality on Educational Attainment; Sofya Krutikova, Caine Rolleston and Elisabetta Aurino 10. Ethnic Minority Children's and Adults' Perceptions and Experiences of Schooling in Vietnam: A Case Study of the Cham H'roi; Vu Thi Thanh Huong 11. Educational Opportunities and Learning Outcomes of Children in Peru: A Longitudinal Model; Santiago Cueto, Juan León, and Ismael G. Muñoz 12. Reflections: Inequality, School and Social Change; Michael Bourdillon and Jo Boyden 02 02 This book presents the latest evidence from Young Lives, a unique international study of children and poverty. It shows how the persistence of inequality amid general economic growth is leaving some extremely poor children behind, despite the promises of the Millennium Development Goals.

This book is about how work enters and affects the lives of children in Africa, taking for granted neither the traditional values surrounding children's work, nor the international standards against it. Many African societies nurture their children on the ingrained notion that children must work as part of their process of growing up. Children participate in their families and communities through the work they do in the house and in whatever else their families do. Such views are, however, antithetical to the dominant views in Europe and North America which see childhood as a time of freedom from responsibility and economic activity. These views have become so popular with the elites in other countries to the extent that they now drive international campaigns against 'child labour', and have been incorporated into what are now considered universal international standards and conventions. This book was conceived within the framework of the CODESRIA tradition of taking African perspectives seriously and not allowing social research in Africa to become subservient to values from outside. African scholars remain keenly aware of the need not to isolate themselves from developments in the wider world, which could lead to stagnation. This book, through empirical observation of the lives of African children, the work they do, its place in their lives, and what the children say about it, proposes new perspectives towards a new understanding of this complex stage of human development. Work is not simply about the right to income: work provides identity and status in society, and participation in the community. People relate to one another through work. Those who do not work are often without status and are at the periphery of society. One of the major ways in which this book differs from most of the available literature is in the understanding it brings to the problem of 'child labour'. There are economic reasons why children may need an income of their own. There is the demographic fact that the proportion of children to adults in low-income countries is nearly double that in high-income societies. This book attempts to demonstrate that work is both necessary and beneficial in terms of a child's development to become a full, responsible, and respectable member of society.