Child poverty in South America: reflections on its magnitude, and the basic-need developmental approach. A retrospect on the International Year of the Child.
Extreme economic poverty in children with its adverse consequences on their mental and physical growth is becoming an increasing concern of governments in South America. There is now a search for effective intervention strategies to alleviate these problems as they are also a bottleneck for national development. Some of these programs are likely to be defined as fitting within the general theoretical framework of the basic-need approach to development. This paper postulates that intervention programs (e.g., nutrition, health and education) directed to economically deprived children will not be successful and are not representative of the basic-needs approach unless they also attend to the broader economic and social needs of families and communities. Although child-directed programs have proven to be moderately successful they do not eliminate the mental and physical growth differences between children determined by economic inequality.