Multidimensional child poverty and the SDGs: from measurement to action

The Sustainable Development Goals require countries to report on progress in reducing poverty in all its dimensions, for adults and children, according to national definitions; this requires changes to how poverty data are collected and analysed. This chapter examines how, following the integration of the Consensual Approach (CA) in the Uganda National Household Survey (UBOS, 2017), democratic definitions and measures of child poverty can be developed on the basis of national consensus about what constitutes an acceptable standard of living. This chapter also provides unique insight on the application of the CA in refugee and host communities. Indicators are based on age-appropriate criteria and reflect children’s economic and social rights and national frameworks, such as the Constitution of Uganda. In this chapter we focus specifically on developing democratic measures of socially perceived educational necessities, use them to derive Uganda’s multidimensional child poverty profile, and show inequalities across households