Fair Shares and Families: Children's Perceptions of Material Resource Distributions and Decision-Making Within Families

This research is concerned with child poverty in the UK, and with the links between children's experiences of poverty and their subjective well-being (SWB). It will focus on how resources are shared within families, and how different patterns of resource sharing are associated with child poverty and SWB. A longitudinal mixed-methods approach will be adopted, collecting data from children and families through an ethnography and three waves of a longitudinal survey. This will enable the integration of rich qualitative data with representative survey data, and will help to ensure that children's views are central to how family sharing patterns are understood and measured. The use of longitudinal mixed methods will also facilitate methodological development, as such an approach has rarely been used in research with children. Children aged 10-18 and their families will be targeted, and families across the socio-economic spectrum will be involved so that the nature and impact of different sharing patterns can be explored in relation to socio-economic status. A theoretical model of intra-family sharing and a quantitative tool to assess sharing patterns from children's perspectives will be developed. The Children's Society and Leeds City Council Children's Services will act as partners on the project, and have been involved in developing this proposal.

This project addresses a topical issue and has the potential to inform policy and public debates about the nature of child poverty and its association with SWB. Child poverty and the SWB of children are both high on the UK policy agenda. The failure of successive governments to meet the goals of the 2010 Child Poverty Act has resulted in debates about the definition and measurement of poverty, and plans to scrap the Act's targets. This relates to parallel debates about the relative importance of economic factors versus SWB in assessing national performance. The Office of National Statistics was tasked in 2010 with developing national measures of well-being to supplement economic measures of progress. However, international analysis of children's SWB conducted as part of the Children's Worlds study (Rees and Main, 2015) shows that the UK performs poorly, ranked 14th out of 15 countries in terms of children's overall life satisfaction and 9th in terms of their satisfaction with material resources. This research will offer new insights on the extent to which material resources are important for children's SWB, thus contributing to debates around how child poverty should be measured and whether an ongoing commitment to its eradication should be reinstated.

The measurement of child poverty in the UK has to date largely relied on household income. This represents an indirect approach to poverty measurement, in that the extent to which household income translates into living standards for individual household members is mediated by factors such as household debts and outgoings, and the needs, preferences and influence on financial decisions of other household members. Previous research has found that adults report going without a range of necessities, and sacrificing a range of their own needs, to provide for children. But children's perceptions of how resources are shared are absent from this research. Partially as a result of this, the links between child poverty and children's SWB have been elusive. However, measuring child poverty directly and based on children's own perceptions of their needs can help to illuminate these links (Main, 2013). Additionally, findings from a survey of 800 14-year-old children indicated that their perceptions of the fairness of how resources are shared in their household can offer even more insight into the links between household poverty, individual material living standards, and SWB (Main, forthcoming). This project will build on this work through an investigation of how resources are shared within families, and the links between this and child SWB.

The proposed research is highly topical to public debates around the nature of child poverty, the relative importance of economic and subjective well-being in assessing national performance, and links between poverty and well-being. The ultimate goal is to influence and inform policy through contributing to the body of evidence needed to reduce child poverty and the negative effects this has on children, families, and society as a whole. The contribution of this research is through incorporating children's perspectives. It will have relevance to a range of users across the public and civil society sectors.
Achieving high impact is a central concern in the development and execution of this proposal, and a co-production model has been adopted with The Children's Society (TCS) and Leeds City Council Children's Services (LCCCS). Co-production will draw on the expertise of an advisory group comprising academics, policymakers (UNICEF), public sector partners (LCCCS) and civil society partners (TCS). The advisory group includes direct beneficiaries of the research and members will be able to mobilise their networks to help ensure findings reach a range of audiences to include:

1. Policymakers (eg. All Party Parliamentary Working Groups on Children, on Families, and on Poverty), campaigning organisations (eg. the Child Poverty Action Group and the Women's Budget Group) and think tanks (eg. Demos) who can use findings to improve the design of policies relating to child poverty and well-being, and to inform debates about the role of social policies in addressing them.

2. Public and civil society organisations including LCCCS,TCS and other practitioners in statutory and civil society roles, for example social workers for local authorities and the National Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children, who can use findings to inform their awareness of the issues children and families in poverty may be facing, and tailor interventions with families struggling to discuss and share limited resources.

3. Children and families who will be able to access materials based on research outputs and produced in accessible formats to increase their understandings of how they discuss and share material resources in their families, and whether different strategies may be useful to them.

4. The media and general public are interested in the issues of child poverty and well-being. Findings will contribute to wider public debate about maximising the effectiveness of public investment in poverty eradication and improving well-being, and about how we can best assist poor children and families.
Short term impact will primarily be via partner organisations who will incorporate findings into their bodies of knowledge and working practices. Alongside the PI they will mobilise their networks to disseminate findings through a project website hosted by TCS and linked to a University of Leeds site. TCS media and communications teams will work with the PI to maximise traffic to the website at key points such as on publication of blog posts and interim and final reports. Reports in plain English geared towards policymaker, practitioner, and lay audiences will be available via the website, enabling beneficiaries to access up-to-date information about progress and findings.

Policymakers and practitioners will be engaged via workshops towards the end of the project, and it is anticipated that evidence generated by the research will begin to filter into policy and public debates over the medium to long term. This process will be enhanced by further research which will springboard from this project. A Horizon 2020 (or suitable similar funder) proposal will be developed in collaboration with civil society partners and international advisory board members during the course of this project. This will help to build on this project and will result in international impact based on but beyond the life of this research.