Multidimensionele armoede bij kinderen in Makala (Kinshasa): Profielstudie, analyse en aanpak. Multidimensional child poverty in Makala (Kinshasa): profiling, analysis and anti-poverty strategy

The doctoral research focused on the multidimensional child poverty in the commune of Makala in the city of Kinshasa with the general aim of contributing to the description, characterization, measurement, analysis of the causes and the identification of the determinants associated to the multidimensional poverty in a child- based approach in order to suggest appropriate strategies for its eradication or its alleviation.

After having posed the theoretical framework of poverty in general and child poverty in particular, the socio-economic realities of the Makala’s commune and the methodological framework of the research were presented. At the end of the data collection, by an individual survey, with a convenience sample of 1,200 "heads of household-children aged from 10 to 14 years" pairs, drawn using four-stage stratified random sampling, we organized complementary focus-groups with resource people from the municipality of Makala as well as ten children. The information collected was analyzed using the method of multiple overlapping deprivation analysis and the main results found are: at the threshold of 3 simultaneous deprivations, multidimensional child deprivation headcount ratio, the average intensity of deprivation and the adjusted deprivation headcount ratio are estimated at 73.30 percent (854), 48.68 percent and 35.05 per cent respectively. According to the gender of the children, the number of boys affected by multidimensional poverty (434) is higher than girls (420). 40 deprived children, or 3.43 percent, suffer simultaneously in the dimensions of health-sanitation-housing. The cumulative percentages of deprived children show that 67.99 percent of children are affected from 3 to 6 deprivations.

In addition, the analysis of the four functionings was carried out using ordinal logistic regression at the threshold of 1, 5 and 10 per cent respectively. The following determinants have been identified. For psychological self-feeling: school attendance, physical violence and abuse in the household, frequency of television programs for children, level of education of the head of household, self- food appreciation, parental survival, and availability of children's toys; regarding to school attendance: type of housing, frequency of television programs for children, survival of parents, self-assessment of food, physical violence and mistreatment, availability of toys, number of children aged from 10 to 14 years in the household, frequency of children's play during the week and total household income; about the school understanding: frequency of anxiety in children and survival of parents; factors associated with mental health are physical violence and mistreatment in the household, the purchase of new clothes and shoes during the year, as well as the frequency of children's games. Moreover, the deprivations affecting children of Makala were analyzed both separately and in a holistic way in order to know their direct and indirect causes.

Finally, the scientific contributions and the limits of the research have been mentioned. We suggest that future research on child poverty should focus more, from the design of investigations on the definition and analysis of the children’s functioning, especially those that have not been explored in this research.