Abstract
Both political attention to, and research on, child poverty in rich countries is clearly on the increase. At the Lisbon European Union Council in March 2000, EU member states were formally invited to set ‘adequate targets’ for the reduction of poverty, in addition to which it was for the first time recommended that children should be one of the specific groups singled out for concern (Ruxton & Bennet, 2002). However, most of today’s research on child poverty in rich countries is quantitative in nature and concentrated on determining its extent, trends and future outcomes. Much less attention is paid to the question of what poverty might mean to children themselves. This chapter aims to disclose poor children’s perspectives on their own poverty on the basis of the primary results from an ongoing qualitative study on child poverty in the Netherlands. The main objective of this study has been to explore children’s personal experiences and own actions (coping strategies) that follow upon the fact that they grow up in limited financial circumstances while living in an affluent society such as the Netherlands. Qualitative in-depth interviews have been conducted among six to sixteen-year-old children in the Netherlands who grow up in families with an income at the Dutch minimum benefit level.
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van der Hoek, T. (2005). Growing Up in Poverty While Living in an Affluent Society: Personal Experiences and Coping Strategies of Dutch Poor Children. In: Goddard, J., McNamee, S., James, A., James, A. (eds) The Politics of Childhood. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523197_7
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230523197_7
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