Children Living in Squalor:
Shelter, Water and Sanitation Deprivations in Developing Countries

Shailen Nandy
School for Policy Studies
University of Bristol, UK

David Gordon
Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research
School for Policy Studies, University of Bristol, UK

Citation: Nandy, Shailen and David Gordon (2009). "Children Living in Squalor: Shelter, Water and Sanitation Deprivations in Developing Countries ." Children, Youth and Environments 19 (2): 202-228. Retrieved [date] from http://www.colorado.edu/journals/cye/

Read this Article (PDF) | Comment on this Article

Abstract

Hundreds of millions of children in developing countries are growing up in squalid conditions, yet anti-poverty policies targeted at children tend to focus upon human capital interventions such as improved schooling, healthcare and nutrition through school nutrition/feeding programs. The primary concern seems to be with children as future citizens who need human capital interventions in order to ensure they will be productive workers when they grow up. However, children are not future citizens, they are current citizens with human rights that are independent of and equal to those of the adults with whom they live. There is certainly a need for human capital interventions in education and health, but children’s needs for better living conditions are equally or more important. Squalid living conditions can kill young children and make older children sick and miserable. Better health care can treat the symptoms but not the causes of this ill health.

Keywords: child poverty, basic needs, housing, sanitation, children’s rights, deprivation