This study shows that children are the poorest in refugee settings

For the first time, UNHCR and academic partners have estimated poverty rates that account for intra-household inequality among refugee populations. Our analysis of refugees in Kenya and Uganda finds that refugee children can be up to three times more likely to be poor than adults; as many as two out of three refugee children are extremely poor.

After adjusting for age and gender differences in consumption requirements, the poverty rates for refugee children range from 39% in Kenya’s Kalobeyei refugee settlement to 59% and 69% in West Nile and South-West Uganda, respectively. The local communities that host the refugees are similarly destitute, with child poverty at 27% in West Nile Uganda, 54% in Kalobeyei, and 66% in South-West Uganda.

The data used for this analysis (2018-2019) precedes the COVID-19 pandemic and thus, poverty and the fragility of children have likely increased overall as a result of the recent large economic shocks including from the pandemic, the drought in Somalia and the rise in food prices.

The findings are important as four out of 10 refugees globally are children. Further, 400,000 children are born into a refugee life each year. Two out of three refugees in Kenya and Uganda camps are under 18 in the Eastern Horn of Africa and the Great Lakes. At last count, the region hosts 67% of all refugees on the African continent and 20% globally, with Uganda being the largest and Kenya, the third-largest refugee host in Africa.

Having granular data on the well-being of refugees is essential for successful poverty alleviation strategies, without which a productive future for refugees and their children is almost impossible. It further predisposes them to an intergenerational cycle of poverty. More resilient refugees also benefit host communities, with studies showing the potential to increase the GDP of host economies and bring social and economic benefits to local communities.

This new evidence is timely for policy and support as Kenya and Uganda continue receiving refugees. More than 130,000 people have arrived in Kenya over the past two years, fleeing Somalia’s insecurity and unrelenting drought, while Uganda has received close to 30,000 arrivals from South Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo since the start of 2023.

Our intra-household approach to measuring poverty exposes a previously unknown trend among refugees: almost half of the impoverished children live in non-poor households. They may be left out of targeted assistance based on means testing.

This omission has important implications for humanitarian support as agencies delivering aid tend to use targeting methods that rely on poverty measures that assume equal sharing across all household members. Researchers have long found evidence of intra-household inequality in non-refugee settings, with vulnerable women and children experiencing inferior outcomes in food intake, body measurements and non-food expenditures.

Estimates show that if all countries share the cost burden – regardless of whether they host refugees – it is possible to eliminate poverty among refugee children. Our calculations show it would take an estimated $732 per day to eliminate child poverty among refugees in Kenya and $379 per day in the host community. South-West Uganda would require $1,783 per day for each refugee child and $377 per day for a non-refugee child. The differences required between refugee and non-refugee children are driven by the combination of lower incomes and higher intra-household inequality confronting refugees.

It is worth noting that despite the different policy environments at the time of data collection, with Uganda touted as one of the most welcoming and Kenya as having more restrictive rights, refugee children in both countries are disproportionately poorer than the host communities surrounding them. This finding underlines the inherent vulnerability and unique transversal fragility of refugee children and their families in both countries.

Despite the numerous interventions to fight poverty among refugees, the situation remains critical. In Kenya, the prevalence of stunting among refugee children aged six to 59 months living in Kalobeyei was 32% in 2019. In comparison, North America’s average stunting rate for children under five years of age is 3.2% in 2022. The findings of our study thus call for tailored policies to reduce inequality and poverty among refugees and host communities and to reach the most vulnerable individuals in such contexts.

To this aim, we apply a supervised machine learning algorithm to identify the most critical predictors of child poverty. It turns out that a small set of observable traits predicts child poverty remarkably well, such as a child’s age, household composition, and access to sanitation and clean water.

Using these predictors, we propose low-cost approaches to target child poverty and show how they potentially outperform per-capita household expenditure methods and improve standard targeting strategies.

A vital game changer in promoting long-term solutions for refugees is the involvement of development actors, as called for by the Global Compact on Refugees. Improving equitable outcomes across refugee and host communities necessitates development partners expanding their food security and human development programmes to include refugee households, with particular attention to accurately identifying the most vulnerable members, such as poor children.

Especially when resources are limited, programmes that support the nutrition and well-being of children and their pregnant and lactating mothers should be prioritized.