| dc.description.abstract | This thesis, entailed Growing up in Poverty in Ethiopia: A Life Course Perspective, explores the experiences of cohort children living in poverty in specific communities in Ethiopia. By adopting the life course perspective and drawing on longitudinal data, the study investigates the children’s changing experiences of poverty over the course of their childhood. The life course approach helped understand childhood poverty in time and in contexts, and the interplay between structure and children’s agency.
The study adopted the ‘mosaic’ approach involving mapping, drawings, group discussions, individual interviews and observations. Children remained as the main source of the data.
The children followed diverse life courses, mainly because poverty and other structures dictated their life trajectories differently. It also shows that children demonstrated their agency in a variety of ways, which in return influenced their trails. Unlike some of the theoretical suppositions which claim that people remain poor and transfer poverty over generations because of their beliefs, attitudes and behaviors this study confirms that children hold the belief, and act to change their poor economic situations.
Children from poor families carry high aspirations and are motivated for actions that would help them move out of poverty. Through their aspirations, children postulate their life course, then act to realize it, but, ultimately, their trajectories are determined by the interplay between social structure and their agency. Poverty, policy contexts, local norms and family situations challenges children’s endeavour to change their lives through education. Poor children were more likely to do paid work to earn a living, rural children were unable to access preschools and private schools because they are not available in their areas, and in some contexts girls had to marry ending their educational aspirations.
The study concludes by suggesting that ending national poverty entails breaking intergenerational poverty. As child poverty is multidimensional and longitudinal, it requires comprehensive interventions to continue until children make a successful transition to adulthood. National poverty reduction begins with overcoming children’s ‘life course poverty’ through ‘life course development.’ | nb_NO |
