This book highlights current debates about concepts, methods, and policies related to poverty in Latin America. It focuses on child and adolescent well-being and the issue of inclusive societies. Its goal is to promote new and critical thinking about these issues globally and in Latin America. The authors emphasize the need to develop new conceptual and practical avenues that can address the issues of poverty, marginalization, exclusion, and old and new inequalities in post-neoliberal times. The objective is to advance the rights of all children and adolescents in the region. This urgent book represents a unique opportunity for practitioners, policy makers, researchers, and students to get access to the most up-to-date perspectives on child poverty and inequality from a conceptual and practical point of view.

This edited volume studies the complex interrelation of poverty, work, and different stages in the life course, and how it contributes to the permanent existence of poverty and inequality in vulnerable groups in society. Mechanisms of productions and reproduction of these relationships are identified through empirical research carried out in four Latin American countries: Mexico, Argentina, Brazil, and Cuba. This book centers on the experiences of individuals in those less favored social groups who may have suffered structural poverty for decades, or who may have been simply deprived of a basic income to cover their most essential needs.

About half of the region's poor live in cities, and policy makers across Latin America are increasingly interested in policy advice on how to design programmes and policies to tackle poverty. This publication argues that the causes of poverty, the nature of deprivation, and the policy levers to fight poverty are, to a large extent, site specific. It therefore focuses on strategies to assist the urban poor in making the most of the opportunities offered by cities, such as larger labour markets and better services, while helping them cope with the negative aspects, such as higher housing costs, pollution, risk of crime and less social capital.

Exploring the lives of the street children of Latin America through their own eyes and voices, Hidden Lives builds on the concept of children's rights enshrined in the 1989 UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. Through interviews with children across the continent, as well as teachers, welfare workers and other adults involved in their lives, Green argues forcefully that child participation is both a fight and a necessity if child-centered social programs are to succeed. More broadly, harnessing the energy of children could help the region tackle pressing environmental and social problems.

Child poverty is a central and present part of global life, with hundreds of millions of children around the world enduring tremendous suffering and deprivation of their most basic needs. Despite its long history, research on poverty and development has only relatively recently examined the issue of child poverty as a distinct topic of concern. This book brings together theoretical, methodological and policy-relevant contributions by leading researchers on international child poverty. With a preface from Sir Richard Jolly, Former Assistant Secretary General of the United Nations, it examines how child poverty and well-being are now conceptualized, defined and measured, and presents regional and national level portraits of child poverty around the world, in rich, middle income and poor countries. The book's ultimate objective is to promote and influence policy, action and the research agenda to address one of the world's great ongoing tragedies: child poverty, marginalization and inequality.

The (Human Opportunity Index) HOI calculates how personal circumstances (like birthplace, wealth, race or gender) impact a child's probability of accessing the services that are necessary to succeed in life, like timely education, running water or connection to electricity. It was first published in 2008, applied to Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The findings were eye-opening: behind the enormous inequality that characterizes the region's distribution of development outcomes (income, land ownership and educational attainment, among others), there is an even more worrying inequality of development opportunities. It is not only rewards that are unequal; it is also chances. The problem is not just about equality; it is about equity too. The playing field is uneven from the start. This book reports on the status and evolution of human opportunity in LAC. It builds on the 2008 publication in several directions. First, it uses newly-available data to expand the set of opportunities and personal circumstances under analysis. The data is representative of some 200 million children living in 19 countries over the last 15 years. Second, it compares human opportunity in LAC with that of developed countries, among them the US and France, two very different models of social policy. This allows for illuminating exercises in benchmarking and extrapolation. And third, it looks at human opportunity within countries across regions, states and cities. This gives us a preliminary glimpse at the geographic dimension of equity, and at the role that different federal structures play. The overall message that emerges is one of cautious hope. LAC is making progress in opening the doors of development to all. But it still has a long way to go. At the current pace, it would take, on average, a generation for the region to achieve universal access to just the basic services that make for human opportunity. Seen from the viewpoint of equity, even most successful nations lag far behind the developed world. And intra-county regional disparities are large, and barely converging. Fortunately, there is much policy makers can do about it.