Social Justice and Child Poverty

The proposed research project will examine child poverty from a social justice perspective. In three interrelated research areas, it aims at answering three key questions: What special content does social justice have for children? What kinds of violations of social justice are inherent in child poverty? Who are the agents having the obligations to alleviate child poverty and secure social justice for those children in poverty? All three of these questions are of high social and philosophical importance and to a great extent unanswered in contemporary philosophical research. While there is a growing literature on children as well as poverty from different normative perspectives, the topic of child poverty is nearly non-existent in philosophy as one of its own right. We will therefore develop a first comprehensive and systematic philosophical examination of child poverty from a social justice perspective situated within the capability approach and based on a thorough examination not only of the philosophical but also of the relevant social scientific literature. We will explicitly recognise insights into the special status of childhood and child poverty that separates it from adult poverty and demands particular attention. In the first research area we will develop the normative framework for examining child poverty and social justice and engage with the issue of social justice for children. Here, the overall aim is to flesh out a characterization of social justice that both gives sufficient consideration to the special case of children and provides useful and employable guiding principles for the treatment of child poverty in the following research areas. In the second research area we examine child poverty from a social justice perspective and develop a theory of the different forms of injustice that are connected to child poverty. The research in this is area is the main focus of our project and it can be further distinguished into four topics: (a) the deprivation of capabilities and functionings as the core injustice of child poverty; (b) structural causes of this injustice; (c) the developmental and life course injustice of child poverty; and (d) the different justice status of relative and absolute child poverty. Our main argument here is that child poverty diminishes or even prevents children to achieve those capabilities and functionings that are necessary to develop and sustain well- being and well-becoming. In the third research area we ask what should follow from the developed insights into the violations of social justice through child poverty and who is responsible to secure social justice for children living in poverty. In particular, we will follow up two topics: (a) the different responsibilities of core agents in the child`s ecology and (b) the major obstacles to secure social justice for children affected by poverty.

The project "Social Justice and Child Poverty" broke new ground in ethical theory, since it was the first one to explicitly investigate the topics of poverty and exclusion in childhood. The central insight of the project, which was elaborated in detail, was that children are entitled to a sufficient level of capabilities which constitute their well-being and well-becoming and that living in and growing up in child poverty violates this claim. Consequently, child poverty is a social injustice that harms children in different ways.Based at the Centre for Ethics and Poverty Research of the University of Salzburg, three research areas were explored: What constitutes social justice for children? Why is child poverty unjust? Who is responsible for alleviating child poverty and how should this be done? All three questions are of uttermost social and ethical importance; however, they have been neglected widely in academic research so far. The project was the first to address child poverty systematically and in depth from a social justice perspective. The theoretical background was mainly based on the Capability Approach as it was developed by economist Amartya Sen and the philosopher Martha Nussbaum. In addition to the relevant philosophical literature on children and poverty, social scientific research was incorporated as well. In the first research area, we developed the normative framework for the project and investigated thoroughly how social justice must be defined in the case of children and how child poverty violates the respective claims of children. We showed that a lack of capabilities and functionings (such as health, education, housing, clothing, nutrition, or participation) constitute the core of the injustice of child poverty. This lack of capabilities and functionings endangers the well-being of the child in childhood, but it must also be considered an enormous risk for the whole life course and the good life later on in adulthood. In another research area, we scrutinized what should follow from an ethical perspective from the insights of the injustice of child poverty. Who is responsible for establishing social justice for children living in poverty? We identified four grounds which are crucial for the distribution of responsibilities (causation, power, priviledges, interests and proximity) and investigated in detail the role of the family and the state in the alleviation of child poverty.