Underlying these actions, three important underlying principles that can form the foundation for efforts to tackle child poverty are: Building support for child poverty reduction As a recent report by the End Child Poverty Global Coalition notes, effective child poverty reduction policies require governments to place child poverty reduction at the heart of their priorities.67 Governments also have a critical leading role to play in building broad support for child poverty reduction through the engagement of other actors, including civil society, community leaders, employers, trade unions and non-governmental organizations, as well as of children and adults living in poverty. As that report points out, building this level of support may also require challenging myths about the causes of poverty. Generating better data The ability to learn from other countries, through comparative international analysis, rests on the availability of high-quality, comparable data. As highlighted in this report, there are still many gaps in such data. While it has been possible for this report to accumulate comparable, aggregate data on income poverty rates from most of the 43 countries covered, disaggregated information on poverty is limited. Moreover, data about the depth of child poverty – the poverty gap – are scarce. These shortcomings hamper the meaningful monitoring of children’s income poverty. There is even less information to work from in terms of non-monetary poverty. The current potential to analyse deprivations across countries is therefore limited. Also striking is the almost complete lack of data gathered directly from children about their experiences of poverty. Children from at least as young as 8 years old can reliably report on their access or lack of access to key items and experiences that constitute multidimensional child poverty.68 Gathering data from this age group is therefore a matter of choice. National statistics offices and other key organizations gathering data should ensure that more priority is given to including children in their ongoing plans for data-gathering. Involving children in the poverty debate Building on the previous point, this report concludes with a call for a more child-centred approach to poverty measurement and to poverty reduction efforts. We still know surprisingly little about children’s own ideas of what poverty is. When children have been asked, their views and ideas have often differed from those of adults. The opportunity for children to become involved in policy areas affecting their lives is supported by Article 12 of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child. Their potential to do so, and to be competent political actors, has started to be recognized in environmental debates.69 The time is overdue for them also to have the opportunity to be more actively engaged in debates about child poverty. Children’s views and ideas should play a central role in tackling this pervasive and persistent social problem. 49 Child Poverty in the Midst of Wealth Innocenti Report Card 18