From Childhood Poverty to Adult Life Socio-Economic Outcomes in India: A Comprehensive Review

Childhood poverty is a multifaceted concept that goes beyond income poverty to include multiple deprivations in the areas of health, nutrition, education, and housing. This review explores the impact of early life experiences of poverty on long-term socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood. Childhood poverty determines the economic, social, and physical characteristics and general trajectory of a person’s life in adulthood. This review draws on a wide range of international and national empirical evidence, including longitudinal tracking studies, the crosscountry Multidimensional Poverty Index (MPI), and national household surveys in India such as the National Family Health Survey (NFHS) to contextualize the issue. Qualitative, interdisciplinary, and critical approaches, including child-rights frameworks and cultural sociology, are utilized to better comprehend the cultural, legal, and relational dynamics that are unique to the poor child in marginalized and migrant communities. This mixed-methods approach ensures that the statistical definition of poverty has a correct basis in the socioeconomic and structural reality lived by the most vulnerable groups. Analysing childhood poverty through Capability, Life Course, and Biological approaches, the literature highlights the consequences of childhood poverty, reflected in a lack of quality education, skills, healthcare, and necessary recreation, on adult life outcomes manifested in material, mental, and physical deprivations. Such deprivations, along with intersectional dynamics, force people into the vicious cycle of poverty as it gets transmitted intergenerationally. The literature points to gaps in terms of longitudinal data in India and the psychosocial pathways of poverty, such as aspiration failure. To prevent the intergenerational transfer of poverty, policies should focus away from deficit thinking and consider the structural inequalities and barriers faced by the poor.