Poverty – i.e., financial poverty – is exacerbated by other poverties. Food poverty, including hunger and malnutrition, lead to health problems that impact a person’s potential earnings. Similarly, inadequate schooling hinders a person’s ability to find work and earn sufficient income.
The #WorldBank developed the concept of Learning Poverty to represent the inability of a 10 year old child to read and understand a simple text.
Merely being enrolled in and attending school does not guarantee meaningful gains in education. #Illiteracy rates remain high despite school participation.
53% of children in low- and middle-income countries cannot read and understand a simple story by the end of primary school. In poor countries, the level is as high as 80%
–World Bank
https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/education/brief/what-is-learning-poverty
The Learning Poverty (LP) Indicator takes the number of students whose reading levels are insufficient (learning deprived/LD) and adds in children who do not attend school and are thus assumed to be learning deprived (schooling deprived/SD).
Also important is the learning poverty gap, that is, how far a student has to go to reach the minimum proficiency level.
Technical details on the calculations along with data can be found here: https://www.worldbank.org/en/topic/education/brief/what-is-learning-poverty.
Surprisingly, the data shows that girls have lower rates of learning poverty than boys. That means that despite many barriers to their participation in school – including reluctance of parents to pay school fees for daughters, necessity of staying home during menstruation and absences due to helping out at home – more girls are reading by age 10 than boys are.
