Introduction: child poverty and the centrality of schooling

In the year 2000, the United Nations agreed on time-bound Millennium Development Goals to be achieved by 2015. Children are strongly affected by the development agenda, both directly and indirectly. Two of these goals, namely achieving universal primary education and reducing infant mortality, target children directly. Most of the other goals — on maternal health, combating disease, gender equality, and environmental sustainability — have a strong impact on children’s well-being. Goal 1, ‘eradicating extreme poverty and hunger’, is especially signifIcant for children for two main reasons. First, childhood is the most signifIcant period in shaping long-term outcomes in terms of physical, mental, social, and emotional development, when poverty, malnutrition, and limited opportunities for learning can have strong adverse consequences. Inequalities are typically established even before children reach school age and permanently influence their opportunities later in life — something that affects the children as individuals, their families, and society as a whole. Second, children comprise a large proportion of the population in low- and middle-income countries and are disproportionately represented among the very poor; numerically, children deserve serious attention when considering poverty