The compulsion to address childhood poverty is driven by important moral, economic and social considerations as well as a recognition of children's rights. In addition the idea that children who have had a 'good' start in life, should be at much less risk of being poor as adults, and of initiating another cycle of poverty with their own children is persuasive. Tackling childhood poverty, and the mechanisms which lead to transmission of poverty between generations and over a lifecourse, would seem to be an effective route to address persistent or chronic poverty and therefore also adult poverty (Harper et al., 2002). This intergenerational approach is clearly also important to issues of ageing, perspectives on which are outlined in the companion policy arena on ageing in this volume. The potential and value of breaking inter-generational transfers in childhood is explored by Yaqub (2000Yaqub ( , 2002 (this issue) (this issue)) who, in discussing reversals of poverty in either childhood or adulthood, suggests that 'Anti poverty interventions should be prioritised to when the worst damage from poverty can be avoided, when the most gains in functionings can be obtained, and when the fastest poverty reversals occur' (this 2002, issue) and although the evidence is somewhat ambiguous, it is clear that many of these reversals are in childhood. The case for reducing childhood poverty is widely accepted.
Undoubtedly some gains have been made in recent years in improving children's wellbeing. Important indicators, in particular infant mortality, have shown considerable progress globally in the last 30 years. However, this picture is complicated by some alarming trends including increases in child morbidity, meaning children may survive but experience a low quality of life (UNICEF, 1998). There is also a worrying distributional picture which shows that poverty is concentrated among families with children and thus proportionately more children live in poverty than do adults. In addition there have been