The adequacy of Australian children#146;s living standards : comparing three approaches within a human rights framework

摘要

The purpose of this thesis is to develop a feasible rights-based approach to evaluation of the adequacy of Australian children’s living standards. Article 27 of the Convention on the Rights of the Child states that children have the right to ‘a standard of living adequate for their physical, mental, spiritual, moral and social development’, while Article 29 states that children have the right to education for the development of their personality ‘.... to their fullest potential’. I interpret these two articles as meaning that the material and non-material resources that constitute the child’s standard of living should be sufficient to ensure outcomes for all children on a par with those that the most privileged children in society can achieve. I first discuss the meaning of human rights and the rights of the child, focusing in particular on the implications of economic and social rights. The meaning of fullest potential is also explored. I then consider living standards as interpreted in three different approaches – Material Welfare, Capabilities, and Social Exclusion. I operationalise these meanings and approaches using two Australian datasets: the Household Expenditure Survey, and the Longitudinal Study of Australian Children. I show that the Material Welfare approach has several advantages in terms of monitoring and holding governments to account; it can also to some extent reveal how public policy and private action can counteract each other. The Capabilities approach is useful for defining fullest potential and provides a fuller insight to the contradictory effects of public and private action to foster children’s development. The Social Exclusion approach is effective in terms of providing an understanding of contradictory processes, and is particularly useful in identifying structural factors associated with these processes. All three approaches reveal the conflicting nature of states’ and parents’ goals for child development. I conclude with a discussion of the implications of this conflict for the fulfilment of children’s right to living standards that give them secure access to development to their fullest potential.