Do Mothers protect children from deprivation? Comparison of Mother and Child material deprivation within a household

Do Mothers protect children from deprivation? Comparison of Mother and Child material deprivation within a household | Research Square window.SnipcartSettings = { analytics: { enabled: false } }; (function() { var accessVector = localStorage.getItem('access_vector') || ''; window.dataLayer = window.dataLayer || []; if (accessVector) { window.dataLayer.push({ user: { profile: { profileInfo: { snid: accessVector } } } }); } })(); (function(w,d,s,l,i){w[l]=w[l]||[];w[l].push({'gtm.start':new Date().getTime(),event:'gtm.js'});var f=d.getElementsByTagName(s)[0],j=d.createElement(s),dl=l!='dataLayer'?'&l='+l:'';j.async=true;j.src='https://www.googletagmanager.com/gtm.js?id='+i+dl;f.parentNode.insertBefore(j,f);})(window,document,'script','dataLayer','GTM-K279D39R'); Browse Preprints In Review Journals COVID-19 Preprints AJE Video Bytes Research Tools Research Promotion AJE Professional Editing AJE Rubriq About Preprint Platform In Review Editorial Policies Our Team Advisory Board Help Center Sign In Submit a Preprint Cite Share Download PDF Research Article Do Mothers protect children from deprivation? Comparison of Mother and Child material deprivation within a household Aya Abe This is a preprint; it has not been peer reviewed by a journal. https://doi.org/ 10.21203/rs.3.rs-8114476/v1 This work is licensed under a CC BY 4.0 License Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Abstract Many prior studies suggest that parents, particularly mothers, sacrifice their own living standards to protect their children from suffering deprivation (Cantillon et al., 2016 ; Dunbar et al., 2013 ; Main & Bradshaw, 2016 ). This can result in an inaccurate estimation of child poverty. However, empirical evidence that the mothers engage in these ‘protecting’ behaviours is limited, mainly due to the difficulty of measuring the living standards of children and mothers individually. This study, using mother-child paired data of individual deprivations, advances prior literature by 1) improving the comparability of mother deprivation against child deprivation, 2) devising 2 methods to categorise mother-child deprivation combinations and 3) using both child- and mother-reported data for child deprivation. The results reveal that child-reported child deprivation is more prevalent than mother-reported child deprivation, and that mothers protect their children, i.e., provide items for children while they themselves go without, only when they believe that the item is necessary and not necessarily when their children believe that it is necessary. Further analysis showed that mothers increased their ‘protecting’ behaviour as economic strain increased, in both child-reported and mother-reported data. However, using mother-reported data, it was also shown that mothers’ ‘exposing (i.e. not providing items for children, while they themselves have them) also increased as the economic strain increased. Finally, examining the relationship between children’s psychological well-being and mother-child deprivation combinations showed that the psychological well-being of ‘protected’ children did not differ that of congruous non-deprived (neither mother nor child deprived) children. Intra-household allocation Material deprivation Child-Centered approach Child poverty Japan 1. Introduction Many previous studies have pointed out that the assumption that resources are shared equally among household members is, at best, an overstatement and, in some cases, leads to an underestimation of poverty (Bennett et al., 2024; Cantillon, 2013; Klasen & Lahoti, 2021). A long tradition of gender economics has shown that compared with women and girls, men and boys often receive a greater share of resources within the same household (Pahl, 1983), and this is closely related to the inequality in bargaining power regarding prioritization and consumption decisions (Cantillon et al., 2016). However, the overwhelming majority of poverty research has used the household as the unit of analysis and has assumed that all members of a household have the same living standard (Cantillon et al., 2016). This is because disentangling household income or expenditure, which is the classical and most common poverty measurement tool used in research(Main, 2018), is difficult for individual members of a household. This problem can be overcome using another common measure, namely, material deprivation, which can be used to assess the living conditions of individuals within a household (Cantillon & Guio, 2024). However, most of the previous research that used deprivation indicators has employed household-level measurements. Ignoring intrahousehold inequality in the assessment of living standards can lead to inaccurate estimates of poverty, particularly child poverty (Bárcena-Martín et al., 2017). Many prior studies suggest that parents, particularly mothers, sacrifice their own living standards to maintain those of their children (Cantillon et al., 2016; Dunbar et al., 2013; Main & Bradshaw, 2016). In this case, child poverty would be overestimated, and parental poverty would be underestimated. Conversely, it is possible that the needs of income earners (i.e., adults) are prioritized over those of children in a household, in which case child poverty may be underestimated. Furthermore, to formulate a policy, it is important to know which children’s needs are protected and which adults are protecting children at the expense of their own living standards and vice versa. Past research has suggested that boys’ needs are prioritized over girls’ needs (Dunbar et al., 2013); thus, it is possible that the protecting behaviour of parents is more frequently applied to boys. It is also possible that the first born child is given greater priority than subsequent children, given the culture of primogeniture that is dominant in East Asia and elsewhere (Suzuki, 2012). It has been shown that, in some countries, the eldest child receives a larger share of the household’s resources (Brown et al., 2021). Another question is whether children actually benefit from parents’ protecting behaviours. Previous studies have suggested that children are “much more aware” (Main, 2024: 171) of the economic situation than adults assume. If so, they may realize that parents are sacrificing for their sake and become unable to gain the full benefit of whatever items that their parents sacrificed for. To address these questions, this study uses Japanese mother-child paired data on deprivation. Notably, this study uses child deprivation data that is reported by the children themselves, as well as those reported by their mothers. There are multiple reasons to advocate for the use of children’s self-assessment of their own poverty (Main, 2024), which will be discussed later. By doing so, the paper is expected to expand the understanding of the dynamics of mother‒child deprivation. 2. Measuring intrahousehold inequality The traditional approach to measuring intrahousehold inequality in the allocation of household resources is the use of consumption data. The challenge posed by this approach is determining which part of total household consumption is attributed to each household member. Some items, such as school supplies, can be readily assigned to a specific household member (in this case, a school-age child), whereas other items, such as food expenditure, are difficult to divide among household members unless a specific dietary diary has been kept. Other items, such as housing and electricity, are consumed collectively and are therefore also difficult to assign to individual household members. Thus, researchers have devised an innovative approach that involves the application of a sharing rule based on ‘assignable goods’, which are consumption items that can be attributed to a household member individually and benefit only that specific member (Woolley, 2024). This approach, which is termed ‘collective model estimation’, typically uses clothing expenditure, which can be reasonably ‘assigned’ to individuals within a household. A study using individual expenditure data from Bangladesh revealed that the model was fairly accurate in predicting actual intrahousehold resource allocation (Bargain et al., 2022). However, this approach undoubtedly relies on many assumptions, and its validity, particularly with respect to children, is questionable. A more direct approach to measuring the living standards of individuals within a household is the use of material deprivation indicators (Guio & Van den Bosch, 2020). The material deprivation index counts the number of items and activities that are inaccessible to a household for economic reasons. However, the same problem of not being able to observe intrahousehold inequality arises when material deprivation is measured at the household level, as is the case with much of the existing survey data. For example, even if a household owns a TV, it may be the case that only certain members of the household have the privilege of watching it. Thus, deprivation measured at the household level may underestimate deprivation at the individual level. However, the advantage of measuring deprivation is that unlike consumption, it can be easily observed at the individual level when data are collected individually. One such dataset is the European Union’s Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), which has been a vehicle leading deprivation research for decades. The EU-SILC includes both household- and individual-level deprivation items, both of which are used to measure individual deprivation (Guio et al., 2012). EU-SILC and similar data have enabled the analysis of deprivation inequality within households, particularly that between men and women in a couple, and have generally revealed that women are more deprived than men are (Cantillon, 2013; Cantillon et al., 2016; Cantillon & Nolan, 1998; Guio & Van den Bosch, 2020). The EU-SILC has also developed child-specific deprivation measures to measure child-specific deprivation in addition to household level deprivation (Guio et al., 2012; Karagiannaki & Burchardt, 2024). 3. Comparing the deprivation of children to that of adults However, research on intrahousehold inequality that uses deprivation indicators has focused mainly on the inequality between men and women (Lanau, 2023). Studies that examine inequality between children and adults (or parents) within a household via the deprivation approach are scarce. One study compared household-level deprivation with child-specific deprivation (Bárcena-Martín et al., 2017). This study revealed that household-level deprivation explains approximately 80% of the variation in child-specific deprivation; however, the overlap is not complete. Furthermore, the absence of certain items on the household deprivation list (e.g., being unable to afford unexpected expenses, going on holiday, and keeping the house warm) is associated with greater levels of child-specific deprivation. While this study was insightful, it did not compare deprivation in adult individuals with deprivation in individual children within the same households. Several studies have examined the differences in individual deprivation between adults and children (Adelman et al., 2000; Lanau, 2023; Lanau & Fifita, 2020; Lloyd, 2006; Main & Bradshaw, 2014; 2016). The groundbreaking work of Adelman et al. (2000) and Main and Bradshaw (2014) used a set of 5 items (clothes, shoes, food, hobbies and holidays) for both adults and children, drawing on the 2000 and 2012 UK Poverty and Social Exclusion surveys, respectively. They compared adult deprivation and child deprivation for each item on an individual basis and reported that adults lacked items much more frequently than children did. While these studies used the same set of deprivation items for both adults and children, Main and Bradshaw (2016), Lanau and Fifita (2020) and Lanau (2023) employ an approach of using different sets of deprivation items for adults and children. Main and Bradshaw (2016) used the 2012 Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey in the UK, )Lanau and Fifita (2020) used data on Tongan children, and Lanau (2023) used EU-SILC. These authors all devised deprivation scales for adults using items selected as adult necessities and for children using items selected as child necessities. The different number of items was selected for adults than for children. An adult deprivation scale and a child deprivation scale were constructed for each of the three studies, and by setting a threshold for each, they identified deprived adults and deprived children. Households were then categorized into 4 groups: ‘congruous nondeprived’ (neither adults nor children are deprived), ‘congruous deprived’ (both adults and children are deprived), ‘incongruous protected’ (the adult is deprived, but the child is not), and ‘incongruous exposed’ (the child is deprived, but the adult is not). Main & Bradshaw (2016) used two definitions of adults: ‘any’ adult in the household and ‘all’ adults in the household. Their results, which reveal the percentage of households that belong to each type, are presented in Table 1. All three studies confirm that the ‘congruous nondeprived’ group has the greatest share, followed by the ‘congruous deprived’ group. Our interest lies in the relative sizes of the ‘incongruous exposed’ and ‘incongruous protected’ groups. Main and Bradshaw (2016), using “all adults” as their definition of adults, and Lanau (2023) reported that the ‘incongruous exposed’ group was fairly small compared with the ‘incongruous protected’ group, from which the authors concluded that “households tend to prioritize children” (Lanau, 2023; 336). Main and Bradshaw (2016) using “any adult” as the definition of adults, and Lanau and Fifita (2020) reported closer percentages between the Exposed and the Protected groups. Regardless, the percentage of the ‘protected’ group was slightly greater than that of the ‘exposed’ group. Main and Bradshaw (2016) further reported that adults who are themselves poor while their children are not, tend to engage in economizing behaviours such as skimping on food and buying second-hand clothes. However, I would argue that these results do not conclusively prove that adults (most likely parents) are more likely to sacrifice themselves to protect their children rather than to expose them to deprivation. The fact that the adult deprivation rate is higher than the child deprivation rate is not sufficient to support this claim, as these two rates may not be comparable. The deprivation rates that were calculated for adults by Main and Bradshaw (2016) (all adults) and Lanau (2023) are higher than the deprivation rates for children, as shown in columns (c+d) and (b+d) in Table 1; thus, it is inevitable that there will be more ‘protected’ children than ‘exposed’ children. However, deprivation rates depend on the number and selection of items, as well as the cut-off threshold. Thus, the greater degree of deprivation among adults than that among children might be due to only the number and choice of deprivation items and the threshold, rather than the fact that adults sacrifice their own well-being to satisfy the needs of their children. 4. Difficulty of comparing the deprivation of children to that of adults This raises the fundamental question of how to compare deprivation among individuals with different characteristics and needs. As in the case of Cantillon et al. (2016), it is relatively easy to compare adult woman and adult men by devising a list of items and activities that are equally important for both. Cantillon et al. used five items, including ‘doing without a substantial meal in the last fortnight’ and ‘unable to afford a mobile telephone’, which can be argued are equally essential for both sexes. However, comparing the deprivation of children against the deprivation of adults is more difficult. The distinct needs of children differ from those of adults, and these needs must be recognized when measuring poverty (Cantillon & Guio, 2024; Main & Bradshaw, 2012). Using a set of items that are common to both adults and children, such as clothes, shoes, food, hobbies and holidays, as was done in the studies of Lloyd (2006) and Main and Bradshaw (2014), circumvents the distinct needs of children to focus on only what is common to all. However, devising items whose lack represents the same severity for children as it does for adults is difficult. For example, for ‘food’, Main and Bradshaw (2014) use ‘three meals a day’ for children and ‘two meals a day’ for adults. Arguably, children need more regular meals than adults do because of their developmental stage; therefore, the use of different definitions may be sensible. However, who is to say that ‘lacking three meals a day’ for children and ‘lacking two meals a day’ for adults represents the same severity of hardship? Another difficulty when comparing the deprivation experienced by children and adults is that child deprivation is often measured via parental responses. Therefore, the lack of a child item is categorized as deprivation only if parents want to provide that item but cannot afford to do so. If a parent does not consider an item to be necessary for their child, regardless of the child’s opinion, then it is not counted as deprivation. This approach may underestimate child deprivation from the child’s perspective (Main, 2018), and there is a strong argument for using the opinions of children themselves to measure their living standards (Abe, 2019; Cortés-Morales & Main, 2022; Main, 2018; Main & Bradshaw, 2012). This study adopts the same item-based approach as Lloyd (2006) and Main and Bradshaw (2014) and uses data from Japanese children and their mothers. It aims to improve the understanding of child‒parent deprivation dynamics within households by (1) using both mother- and child-reported data on child deprivation and (2) devising a composite index of items, thereby advancing the item-by-item approach. It is possible for a parent to protect the child regarding one item and simultaneously expose the child regarding another item. Thus, by using a composite scale, it may be possible to capture the overall picture of ‘protection’ and ‘exposure’ dynamics, which cannot be explored by examining individual items. This paper also aims to partially solve the comparability problem by applying a ‘desirability’ weight to each deprivation item. It can be argued that higher desirability indicates that lacking the item represents a greater hardship [1]. Furthermore, the study explores which child (e.g., sex, age), parent (e.g., working status, age, education) and household (e.g., household income, one or two parents, number of children) characteristics relate to the protecting and/or exposing behaviours of parents. In addition, the study examines whether ‘protecting’ or ‘exposing’ behaviours are related to the child’s psychological well-being and thus analyses whether a parent’s ‘protection’ behaviour actually protects their children. [1] It could be argued that the fact that an item is ‘desired’ by many does not necessarily mean that it is regarded as a ‘necessity’. For example, luxury goods may be ‘desired’ by most of the individuals within a society, yet it can hardly be argued that they are ‘necessary’. However, the paper uses a ‘desirability’ rate for two reasons. First, ‘desirability’ has been used in previous studies as a close substitute for ‘suitability’ (i.e., whether the item is a “socially perceived necessity” (Mack & Lansley, 1985) in the EU’s definition of adult and child deprivation scales (Guio et al., 2012). Second, the ideal solution would be using the percentage of the general public who regard the item as a ‘necessity’, but the available data in Japan was only collected from adult respondents (Abe, 2024a), and there is currently no data that uses children’s own assessments of ‘necessity’. 5. Data and analytic strategy The data used for this study are from the Children’s Possessions and Activities Survey, which was conducted by the Research Center for Child and Adolescent Poverty, Tokyo Metropolitan University, in January 2025. Three thousand children between the ages of 0 and 18 were selected using stratified sampling from the resident registerers of all municipalities in Japan. If the child was more than 10 years old, then the questionnaires were completed by both a parent (or guardian) and the child themselves. Since the responding parents were mostly mothers, and the needs and protecting behaviours of fathers and mothers are known to differ (Cantillon et al., 2016), the analysis uses only those observations where the respondent is a mother. The analytical sample comprised mother‒child paired observations in which the child’s age ranged from 10 to 18 years (n=1,156). 5.1. Ethical considerations Ethical approval for the survey was obtained from the Ethical Committee of Tokyo Metropolitan University (approval number H6-142). The questionnaire was completed anonymously and voluntarily so that the respondents cannot be identified. All the participants were informed of their rights, including the right to skip any questions that they did not want to answer and the right to withdraw from the survey at any point. Child responses were sealed so that parents could not see what the children had answered and vice versa. 5.2. Deprivation items Seven items (meals, protein, pocket money, shoes, clothes, a hobby and doctor’s visits), which were present in both the parent questionnaire and the child questionnaire, were used for the deprivation items. In the parent questionnaire, the deprivation question was asked about each of the above items for both the parent and the participating child. Thus, for each participating child, the deprivation data were independently collected from the children themselves and from their mother. The study followed the methodology of Guio et al. (2012), who devised a set of 4 tests to verify the applicability of the items for constructing a deprivation index: suitability, validity, reliability and additivity tests. For the suitability test, the study followed the methodology of Guio et al. (2012), deeming an item suitable if more than 70% of the respondents answered that they either had the item or did not have the item but wanted it. As we will see later, all the items had desirability rates (i.e., the percentage of respondents who answered “have” or “not have, but want”) of above 90%, indicating that they met the suitability criteria. For the validity test, the deprivation of each item was examined to determine whether that deprivation was related to household income, and it was found that all the items were significantly related at the 5% significance level. For the reliability test, the Cronbach’s alpha was computed and was found to be 0.67 for the child-reported child deprivation items, 0.77 for the mother-reported child deprivation items and 0.75 for the adult deprivation items. Finally, the additivity test was conducted for the 7 items across the 3 scales, and they all passed. 5.3. Analytic strategy As in previous studies, this paper classifies mother‒child pairs into four types: ‘congruous nondeprived’, ‘incongruous protected (protected)’, ‘incongruous exposed (exposed)’, and ‘congruous deprived’. This classification was done using 2 methods. In the first method, the number of items for which the mother is deprived but the child is not is counted, and we call it ‘protecting behaviour count (P)’. Conversely, the number of items for which the mother is not deprived but the child is deprived is counted, and we call this the ‘exposing behaviour count (E)’. The study subsequently classified mother‒child pairs as ‘incongruous nondeprived’ when P and E are both equal to zero, ‘protected’ when P is greater than E, ‘exposed’ when E is greater than P, and ‘congruous deprived’ when P equals E. In this way, the measure compares the deprivation status of the same item for mother and child while also capturing the overall ‘protecting’ or ‘exposing’ behaviour within the household. While this method enables us to see the overall protecting or exposing behaviours of mothers, it does not account for the difference in severity of the lack of items between mothers and children. Thus, in the second method, a weighted deprivation scale is constructed for both mothers and children using the desirability rate as the weight. A mother‒child pair is subsequently categorized as ‘congruous nondeprived’ when both scales are zero, ‘protected’ when the adult deprivation scale is higher than the child deprivation scale, and ‘exposed’ when it is lower. Please note that when this method is used, even if the mother and child are both deprived of the same item, for example, “2 pairs of fitting shoes”, if the desirability of the item is greater for the child than it is for the mother, then the mother‒child pair is categorized as ‘exposed’. Thus, the first method is focused on the protecting or exposing behaviours of mothers, and the second method is focused on the severity of the child’s deprivation as compared to that of the mother’s deprivation. Both methods involve a comparison of the mother’s deprivation against the child-reported child’s deprivation and that of the mother’s deprivation against the mother-reported child deprivation. The second section of the paper examines which child, mother and household characteristics are associated with each of the aforementioned types of mother–child deprivation. These relationships have not been thoroughly examined in previous studies. It is hypothesized that boys, younger children and firstborn children are prioritized and are more likely to be in the ‘protected’ category than girls, older children and subsequent children are. In terms of the characteristics of the mothers, it is hypothesized that mothers with full-time employment ‘protect’ their children more than those with part-time or no employment, as it has been demonstrated that the mother’s higher share of total household income is associated with greater resource allocation to children (Woolley, 2004). Finally, by examining differences across income strata, we determine whether low-income mothers protect or expose their children more when money is less available. The study uses quintiles of equivalized household income[2]. Differences in the distribution of the 4 types are examined via chi-square binominal analysis and multinominal logistic regression. The final section of the paper examines the relationship between mother–child deprivation types and children’s psychological well-being. The expectation is that when a mother ‘protects’ her child, the child is better off in terms of psychological well-being because they face less deprivation. However, if the child notices that their mother has made sacrifices for their sake, they may not obtain the full benefits of having obtained that item. This may be particularly true for older children. By comparing the psychological well-being of children in the 4 deprivation types, this study analyses whether such a “dampening effect” can be observed. A child’s psychological well-being is measured by their responses to 3 questions in the child questionnaire: “Do you enjoy your everyday life?” (answered on a scale from 0=Not at all to 10=Yes, very much), “Do you think that your family thinks you are important?” (scaled from 1=Yes, very much to 4=Not at all), and “Do you think you are a valuable person?” (scaled from 1=Yes, very much to 4=Not at all). The latter two scales were reversed so that a higher response would indicate higher well-being in all three scales. All calculations were conducted using STATA 17. [2] Income was reported in the parent questionnaire in 1,000,000 yen interval categories. The midpoint of each type was equivalized with the square root of the household size to obtain equivalized household income. 6. Mother‒child deprivation types and household and individual characteristics 6.1. Itemwise comparison of deprivation rates Table 2 reports the deprivation and desirability rates for mothers and children in regard to each item. For children, the desirability rates exceed 95% for all the items aside from one, namely, “Hobby and leisure activities.” This item has a desirability rate of 69.1% when reported by mothers and 98.0% when reported by children, indicating that there is a significant discrepancy regarding its necessity between the opinions of mothers and those of children. For the other items, the desirability rates of mothers and children are similarly high. The deprivation rates reported by mothers are higher than those reported by children, and the difference is quite large for some items. The only exception is “At least 3 (2 for parents) meals a day”, which may be because the criteria are 3 meals for children but only 2 for parents. These results are consistent with the results of previous studies that found that mothers (or adults) are more likely to be deprived than children are. However, when we compare child-reported with mother-reported deprivation, two noteworthy observations emerge. First, there is a gap between mothers’ perceptions of child deprivation and that of children. For instance, 12.4% of the children reported that they were deprived of “Money to spend for yourself”, whereas only 3.8% of the mothers reported that their children were deprived of that item. Thus, there are some discrepancies in the perception of fulfilment (or deprivation) regarding child items between those of mothers and those of children. Items with greater differences in “desirability” seem to have greater discrepancies in their deprivation perceptions, which suggests that the discrepancy is partially derived from the differences in opinion between mothers and children regarding the necessity and desirability of child items. However, such differences in the perception of “needs” do not fully explain the observed discrepancy in deprivation rates. Next, according to children, 5 out of the 7 items were associated with a higher child deprivation rate than the associated deprivation rate for mothers. These items are “At least 3 (2 for parents) meals a day”, “Proteins (fish, meat, tofu, etc.) at least once every 2 days”, “Money to spend for yourself”, “At least 2 pairs of fitting shoes”, and “New clothes (not second hand) every year”. All five items were deemed “desirable” by most mothers and children (more than 90% of mothers and children believe that these items are desirable for children). These results call into question the results of prior studies. When viewed from the child’s perspective, such studies may not tell the whole story. 6.2. Mother‒child deprivation categories Table 3 shows the percentages of the 4 mother‒child deprivation types, which were determined using 2 methods and 2 definitions of child deprivation. As in prior studies, the largest share of mother‒child pairs falls into the ‘congruous nondeprived’ category: 67% and 62% for child-reported child deprivation, and 81% and 77% for parent-reported child deprivation. The ‘congruous deprived’ category is small, with 2% for the child-reported and 1% for parent reported method. When using method (2), no mother‒child pairs were categorized into this type because there was no pairing that showed exactly the same weighted deprivation score for the mother and the child. Looking at the relative sizes of the ‘exposed’ and ‘protected’ categories, the ‘exposed’ category has a larger share than the ‘protected’ category when child-reported child deprivation is used, but when mother-reported child deprivation is used, the reverse holds true, and the ‘exposed’ type is much smaller than the ‘protected’ type. Thus, the results of using mother-reported data are consistent with those of previous studies such as Main and Bradshaw (2016) and Lanau and Fifita (2020), whereas the results of using child-reported data are not. 6.3. Deprivation types and household and individual characteristics Table 4 shows the bivariate statistics for the relationships between mother–child deprivation types and household, child and mother characteristics. Table 4(A) shows the results when child-reported child deprivation is used, while Table 4(B) shows the results when mother-reported child deprivation is used. Both (A) and (B) apply Method (1) and use the protecting and exposing behaviour counts. The results when using Method (2) are similar and can be found in the supplemental tables 3(A) and 3(B). With respect to child characteristics, there was no statistically significant differences using either child-reported or mother-reported deprivation types depending on the child’s age, sex, or first born status. Thus, at least according to these data, there was no evidence of preferential treatment, such as greater protecting behaviours, that depended on the child’s age, sex or birth order. Also, no statistically significant differences were found depending on mothers’ working status. However, there were differences in regard to the mother’s age and level of education. With respect to household characteristics, statistically significant differences were found according to household type (two-parent vs. one-parent), number of children, and household income. Those categories with significant differences were the same for both child-reported and mother-reported deprivation. The most notable difference was in the size of the ‘congruous nondeprived’ type. This can be clearly seen in the case of household income. The percentage of the ‘congruous nondeprived’ was 79% in the fifth quintile, while it was 44% in the first quintile in Table 4(A), and 96% and 50% in Table 4(B). This suggests that economic strain is the main driver behind the size of the ‘congruous no-deprived’ group, and a similar trend can be seen in regard to family type, number of children, mother’s education attainment, and mother’s age, as these characteristics are known to be related to the poverty rate (Abe, 2024b). The main focus of this paper is the relative sizes of the ‘exposed’ and ‘protected’ categories. As shown in both tables, as the proportion of ‘congruous nondeprived’ mother-child pairs decreases, the proportion of ‘protected’ mother-child pairs increases. For instance, Table 4(A), using child-reported deprivation data, shows that the percentage of the ‘protected’ group was 3% in the fifth quintile, while it was 36% in the first quintile, whereas the percentage of the ‘exposed’ group remained relatively stable at 18% and 15%. Similar trends can also be found for other characteristics, such as family type, number of children, mother’s age and mother’s education. However, when mother-reported data were used in Table 4(B), the size of the ‘exposed’ group also increased in low-income strata and low mother’s education attainment. This implies that as economic strain became more severe, mothers’ ‘exposing’ behaviour increased, albeit not by as much as their ‘protecting’ behaviour. This trend was not detected when using child-reported data. Table 5 shows the results of a multinomial logistic regression was conducted to confirm the findings of the binominal analysis. The dependent variable was the mother–child deprivation type, where the base type was the‘ congruous nondeprived’ type. The independent variables included all the household, mother and child characteristics discussed in Table 4. Model (A) uses child-reported child deprivation, and model (B) uses mother-reported child deprivation. The results show that the coefficients for household income and mothers’ educational attainment were significant for both model (A) and model (B). Children in the first and second quintiles and have mothers with low educational attainment were more likely to be in the ‘protected’ group than those in the third quintile and those with mothers with middle educational attainment were. However, for the ‘exposed’ type, different results were found for Models (A) and (B). For Model (A), the coefficients for the first and second quintiles were not statistically significant, but for Model (B), the first quintile was significant. A similar trend can be seen for mothers’ educational attainment. Thus, as shown in Table 4, when child-reported deprivation was used, children tended to fall into the ‘protected’ type as economic strain became more severe, but when mothers reported deprivation, children tended to fall into both the ‘protected’ and ‘exposed’ groups, which can also be verified via multinominal regression. 6.4. Deprivation types and children’s psychological well-being Finally, Table 6 shows the results of the Tobit regressions for the three indicators of child psychological well-being. When child-reported child deprivation was used (Table 6(A)), the coefficient for the ‘exposed’ group was negative and statistically significant for all three indicators. However, these coefficients were not as large as the coefficients for the ‘congruously deprived’ group, which are also negative and statistically significant. These results indicate that being in the ‘exposed’ group is associated with lower psychological well-being in children, yet the association is not as strong as that of being in the ‘congruously deprived’ group. Interestingly, the coefficient for the ‘protected’ group is not significant in any of the three regression models. Thus, this analysis revealed no evidence that the psychological well-being of ‘protected’ children differs from that of ‘congruously nondeprived’ children. The hypothesis that ‘protected’ children might not benefit fully from having an item that their mother sacrificed for does not hold. To determine whether this hypothesis could be proven for older children, the same regression models were examined, but the results remained unchanged (see Supplemental Table 4). The results of using mother-reported deprivation (Table 6(B)) show that the coefficient for the ‘exposed’ group is negative and statistically significant for “Enjoy life” and “My family thinks I am important”, whereas the coefficient for the ‘congruous deprived’ group is not significant. This may be because there are only a small number of observations of this type, but it is possible that being in the ‘exposed’ group is more detrimental than being in the ‘congruous deprived’ group. The results for the ‘protected’ group are similar to those for the models in (A), and being in the ‘protected’ group is not associated with lower psychological well-being than being in the ‘congruous nondeprived’ group is. 7. Discussions Using data obtained from Japanese mother‒child pairs, the intricate relationship between a mother’s material deprivation and her child’s material deprivation within a household were examined in this study. This work advances literature on this topic in three ways. First, the strategy of using data on the same set of 7 items (meals, protein, money for own use, shoes, clothes, hobbies and visiting doctors) for both mothers and children was used to increase the comparability of mothers’ and children’s deprivation, whereas previous studies used either a different set of items for mothers than for children or only conducted an item-by-item comparison. Second, 2 methods were devised to categorize mother‒child deprivation patterns. One method counted mothers’ ‘protecting’ behaviours against mothers’ ‘exposing’ behaviours and identified mother‒child pairs where the ‘protecting’ behaviour was stronger than the ‘exposing’ behaviour, and vice versa. In the other method, a weighted deprivation index was applied in which the weights were set as the ‘desirability’ rate for each item, and mother‒child pairs were identified in which the mother’s deprivation index was higher (‘protected’) than the child’s deprivation, and vice versa (‘exposed’). Third, with respect to child deprivation, this study uses both child- and mother-reported data and examines whether child-reported deprivation leads to different findings regarding intrahousehold deprivation inequality than mother-reported data does. Which household, mother and child characteristics were associated with these mother–child deprivation types was then examined, which has not been fully investigated in previous studies because of data constraints. Furthermore, whether there is an association between child psychological well-being and mother‒child deprivation is examined in this study. Item-by-item comparisons of mothers’ and children’s deprivation rates reveal that only considering mother-reported data results in findings of higher levels of mothers’ deprivation than of children’s deprivation. However, when data is derived from the accounts of children, 5 out of the 7 items show a higher deprivation rate for children than for mothers. Thus, there are some discrepancies in the perception of child deprivation between the reports of mothers and those of children This appears to be driven mainly by differences in opinion regarding what children need. While it is easy to dismiss this discrepancy by arguing that “the mother knows best”, there are several reasons for a concern. This is because material deprivation is a concept in which the respondent’s preferences are considered. Mack and Lansley’s (1985) approach of distinguishing between lack by preference and enforced lack ensures that if the respondent does not “want” an item, then its lack is not regarded as deprivation, and this study follows their approach. However, if a mother answers on behalf of her children, it is her preference, rather than the child’s, is accounted for. This runs counter to the principle of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states “the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child” (Article 12). Furthermore, empirical evidence suggests that the child-reported deprivation index performs better than poverty indices that are derived from parent-reported data do. Main and Bradshaw’s ( 2012 ) seminal work on the child deprivation index revealed that the child-derived deprivation index is more closely related to child well-being than household income does. Abe ( 2019 ) reported that the child-reported deprivation index is better at explaining being a victim of bullying, depression, and low self-esteem. Thus, child-reported child deprivation cannot be ignored in the understanding of child well-being. Next, the classification of mother‒child pairs into 4 types (‘congruently nondeprived’, ‘exposed’, ‘protected’ and ‘congruously deprived’) using each of the 2 methods mentioned above reveals a substantial difference in the relative size of the ‘protected’ group compared with that of the ‘exposed’ group between mother-reported and child-reported data. The use of mother-reported data produced a result in line with those of previous studies that used parent-reported data, and it showed that the percentage of children in the ‘exposed group is fairly small, consisting of 2 to 3 percent of the sample. However, the results of using child-reported data show that there are more children in the ‘exposed’ group than in the ‘protected’ group when either method is used. Thus, we can conclude that mothers protect their children, i.e., provide items for children while they themselves go without, only when they believe that the item is necessary and not necessarily when their children believe that it is necessary. The only other study to produce similar results is a study on Tongan children by Lanau and Fifita ( 2020 ), where there were closer percentages of children in the ‘protected’ and ‘exposed’ groups. Citing this study, Main ( 2024 ) speculated that “needs typically considered more ‘fundamental’ by adults – such as nutrition – tend to be prioritized over resources more relevant to children’s own social worlds.” (Main, 2024 ; p. 169) This study further supports this insight, as more than 90% of mothers did considered all of the items used in this study, aside from “Hobby and leisure activities”, to be ‘desirable’ for children. Thus, items that are ‘desirable’ but not ‘fundamental’ are less likely to prompt mothers’ ‘protecting’ behaviour. Although the relative sizes of the ‘Protected’ and ‘Exposed’ groups substantially differed between those using mother-reported and those using child-reported data, the patterns of their associations with household, mother and child characteristics are surprisingly similar. When using both the mother- and child-reported data, lower household income was related to a higher probability of being in the ‘Protected’ group, indicating that mothers increase their ‘protecting’ behaviour as economic strain increases. However, when mother-reported data are used, the probability of falling into the ‘Exposed’ group also increases in the lowest income strata and among mothers with low educational attainment. Thus, according to these findings, even though the ‘Exposed’ group constitutes a fairly small proportion among the four types, mothers not only ‘protect’ their children but also ‘expose’ their children. This result was not found when using child-reported data. Finally, the analysis of the relationship between children’s psychological well-being and the types of mother‒child deprivation revealed no evidence that the psychological well-being of ‘Protected’ children is worse than that of ‘congruous nondeprived’ children when using either child- or mother-reported data. Therefore, it can be concluded that a mother’s ‘protecting’ behaviour does indeed protect her children. On the other hand, being in the ‘Exposed’ group was associated with lower levels of psychological well-being. However, the analysis revealed conflicting results regarding the extent of the detrimental effect of being in the ‘Exposed’ group vis-à-vis being in the ‘congruously deprived’ group. Thus, we cannot conclude that being exposed in addition to being deprived is associated with further negative outcomes. 7.1. Limitations Although these findings shed new light on the differences in deprivation between mothers and children, this study has several limitations. First, there are data limitations, as data are only available on one child per household; thus, the question of prioritizing boys over girls, younger over older, or first-born over subsequent children could not be fully investigated while accounting for the fixed effects of household characteristics. Second, when the results of the association of mother–child deprivation types with child psychological well-being are interpreted, unobserved differences in living conditions among the four types are possible even after we control for household income and mother’s education attainment. While it is reasonable to assume that the ‘congruous nondeprived’ group has the highest living standard compared to the other three categories, it is not possible to determine the “order” of the living standards among the other three categories. Thus, compared with the ‘protected’ group, the ‘exposed’ ’ group might face more severe economic constraints, which could influence the outcomes for child well-being. Third, and most importantly, the study did not consider the different degrees of ‘protecting’ and ‘exposing’ behaviours. Consequently, mother‒child pairs with only one ‘protected’ or ‘exposed’ item are put into the same group as those with a greater number of such items. This approach was taken in this study since the number of samples with more than 1 ‘protecting’ or ‘exposing’ behaviour was small (see Supplemental Table 2). The use of more items in the analysis would provide a more nuanced understanding of ‘protecting’ and ‘exposing’ behaviours. Declarations Author Contribution The author is responsible for collection, analysis, and writing of the paper. Data Availability All data used for this research is available upon request to the author. Supplementary information The online version contains supplemental tables. References Abe, A. (2019). Oya kara mita hakudatsu to ko kara mita hakudatsu: Oya ha nanio kirame, ko ha naniga hoshiinoka (deprivation as seen from parents and from children: What do parents give up and what do children want). Hinkon Kenkyu (Poverty Studies) , 22 , 94–105. (in Japanese). Abe, A. (2024a). Are we getting closer to consensus? An analysis of changes in socially perceived necessities over time in Japan. Social Indicators Research , 175 (1), 247–268. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-024-03418-4 Abe, A. (2024b). Sotaiteki hinkonritu no doko (2022 nen appudeito) (trends in relative poverty rates: 2022 update) . Retrieved August 14, 2025, from https://www.hinkonstat.net/ (in Japanese). Adelman, L., Middleton, S., & Ashworth, K. (2000). Intra-household distribution of poverty and social exclusion: Evidence from the 1999 PSE survey of Britain, working paper No.23, Bristol university . Retrieved August 16, 2024, from https://www.bristol.ac.uk/poverty/pse/99PSE-WP23.pdf Bárcena-Martín, E., Blázquez, M., Budría, S., & Moro-Egido, A. I. (2017). Child and household deprivation: A relationship beyond household socio-demographic characteristics. Social Indicators Research , 132 (3), 1079–1098. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-016-1331-4 Bargain, O., Lacroix, G., & Tiberti, L. (2022). Intrahousehold resource allocation and individual poverty: Assessing collective model predictions using direct evidence on sharing. The Economic Journal , 132 (643), 865–905. https://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueab085 Bennett, F., Avram, S., & Austen, S. (2024). A research agenda for financial resources within the household . Edward Elgar. Brown, C., Calvi, R., & Penglase, J. (2021). Sharing the pie: An analysis of undernutrition and individual consumption in Bangladesh. Journal of Public Economics , 200 , 104460. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104460 Cantillon, S. (2013). Measuring differences in living standards within households. Journal of Marriage and Family , 75 (3), 598–610. https://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12023 Cantillon, S., & Guio, A. C. (2024). Data about money within the household: Exploring the challenges and gaps. In F. Bennett, S. Avram, & S. Austen (Eds.), A research agenda for financial resources within the household (pp. 63–78). Edward Elgar Publishing. Cantillon, S., Maître, B., & Watson, D. (2016). Family financial management and individual deprivation. Journal of Family and Economic Issues , 37 (3), 461–473. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-015-9466-z Cantillon, S., & Nolan, B. (1998). Are married women more deprived than their husbands? Journal of Social Policy , 27 , 151–171. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279498005261 Cortés-Morales, S., & Main, G. (2022). Needs or wants? Children and parents understanding and negotiating needs and necessities. Childhood Vulnerability Journal , 4 (1), 13–36. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41255-021-00020-5 Dunbar, G. R., Lewbel, A., & Pendakur, K. (2013). Children's resources in collective households: Identification, estimation, and an application to child poverty in Malawi. American Economic Review , 103 (1), 438–471. https://doi.org/10.1257/aer.103.1.438 Guio, A. C., Gordon, D., & Marlier, E. (2012). Measuring material deprivation in the EU: Indicators for the whole population and child-specific indicators. Eurostat methodologies and working papers . Publications Office of the European Union. Guio, A. C., & Van den Bosch, K. (2020). Deprivation of women and men living in a couple: Sharing or unequal division? Review of Income and Wealth , 66 (4), 958–984. https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12449 Karagiannaki, E., & Burchardt, T. (2024). Living arrangements, intra-household inequality and children’s deprivation: Evidence from EU-SILC. Child Indicators Research , 17 (5), 2319–2359. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-024-10149-y Klasen, S., & Lahoti, R. (2021). How serious is the neglect of intra-household inequality in multidimensional poverty and inequality analyses? Evidence from India. Review of Income and Wealth , 67 (3), 705–731. https://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12491 Lanau, A. (2023). First the children, then the employed: Deprivation and intra-household inequality in Europe. Journal of Poverty , 27 (4), 331–349. https://doi.org/10.1080/10875549.2022.2065561 Lanau, A., & Fifita, V. (2020). Do households prioritise children? Intra-household deprivation a case study of the South Pacific. Child Indicators Research , 13 (6), 1953–1973. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-020-09729-5 Lloyd, E. (2006). Children, poverty and social exclusion. In C. Pantazis, D. Gordon, & R. Levitas (Eds.), Poverty and social exclusion in Britain (pp. 315–346). Policy. Mack, J., & Lansley, S. (1985). Poor britain . George Allen & Unwin. Main, G. (2018). Fair shares and families: A child-focused model of intra-household sharing. Childhood Vulnerability Journal , 1 (1), 31–49. https://doi.org/10.1007/s41255-019-00001-9 Main, G. (2024). Who counts in intra-household sharing? Children as active agents in the household economy. In F. Bennett, S. Avram, & S. Austen (Eds.), A research agenda for financial resources within the household (pp. 161–176). Edward Elgar Publishing. Main, G., & Bradshaw, J. (2012). A child material deprivation index. Child Indicators Research , 5 (3), 503–521. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-012-9145-7 Main, G., & Bradshaw, J. (2014). Children's necessities: Trends over time in perceptions and ownership. Journal of Poverty and Social Justice , 22 (3), 193–208. https://doi.org/10.1332/175982714X14120854997529 Main, G., & Bradshaw, J. (2016). Child poverty in the UK: Measures, prevalence and intra-household sharing. Critical Social Policy , 36 (1), 38–61. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261018315602627 Pahl, J. (1983). The allocation of money and the structuring of inequality within marriage. The Sociological Review , 31 (2), 237–262. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1983.tb00389.x Suzuki, T. (2012). Europe no shoushika: Sono doko, youin, seisaku taiou wo megutte (low fertility of Japan-East Asia-Europe: Investigating its trend, cause and policy). Journal of Population Problems 68 – 3 , 14–31. Woolley, F. (2004). Why pay child benefits to mothers? Canadian Public Policy/Analyse de Politiques , 30 (1), 47–69. Woolley, F. (2024). How much, and why? A critical introduction to the theory and quantitative analysis of intra-household resource distribution. In F. Bennett, S. Avram, & S. Austen (Eds.), A research agenda for financial resources within the household (pp. 17–32). Edward Elgar Publishing. Tables Tables 1 to 6 are available in the Supplementary Files section Additional Declarations No competing interests reported. Supplementary Files SupplTables.docx Tables.docx Cite Share Download PDF Status: Posted Version 1 posted You are reading this latest preprint version Research Square lets you share your work early, gain feedback from the community, and start making changes to your manuscript prior to peer review in a journal. As a division of Research Square Company, we’re committed to making research communication faster, fairer, and more useful. We do this by developing innovative software and high quality services for the global research community. Our growing team is made up of researchers and industry professionals working together to solve the most critical problems facing scientific publishing. Also discoverable on Platform About Our Team In Review Editorial Policies Advisory Board Help Center Resources Author Services Accessibility API Access RSS feed Manage Cookie Preferences © Research Square 2026 | ISSN 2693-5015 (online) Privacy Policy Terms of Service Do Not Sell My Personal Information {"props":{"pageProps":{"initialData":{"identity":"rs-8114476","acceptedTermsAndConditions":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"archivedVersions":[],"articleType":"Research Article","associatedPublications":[],"authors":[{"id":560668411,"identity":"be64442b-b3a9-4c11-8234-e7b8e7bdaffd","order_by":0,"name":"Aya Abe","email":"data:image/png;base64,iVBORw0KGgoAAAANSUhEUgAAAZAAAAAyAQMAAABI0h/eAAAABlBMVEX///8AAABVwtN+AAAACXBIWXMAAA7EAAAOxAGVKw4bAAAAwElEQVRIiWNgGAWjYJACZgYGGxibjWgtaRIkazksQVgZDPDPSH74uaDifJ3ujATGDz8Y+PIIapG4kWYsPePMbQmzGwnMkj0MbMWErbmRYCDN2wbWwiAN9EtiAyEd8jfSP//m/XcObMtvorQY3Mgxk+ZtOADSwkacLYZn3pRZzziWLLntzMM2yx4DIvwidzx98+2CGjt+s+PJh2/8qDhGOMQYBBJgLEagkwyOJeBUCQf8B1C4NURoGQWjYBSMgpEGABT7OurC/ZPSAAAAAElFTkSuQmCC","orcid":"","institution":"Tokyo Metropolitan University","correspondingAuthor":true,"prefix":"","firstName":"Aya","middleName":"","lastName":"Abe","suffix":""}],"badges":[],"createdAt":"2025-11-14 12:54:05","currentVersionCode":1,"declarations":"","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8114476/v1","doiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8114476/v1","draftVersion":[],"editorialEvents":[],"editorialNote":"","failedWorkflow":false,"files":[{"id":98450332,"identity":"8cc2fa2f-4f62-4f92-ad76-d606f061a31e","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-17 17:30:20","extension":"docx","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":140397,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"ManuscriptTitleAbstractManuscriptTables.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8114476/v1/581fa34ac2e156033a3b050c.docx"},{"id":98450453,"identity":"32276bdd-f3ac-4d19-a202-039cbc5f9b28","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-17 17:30:24","extension":"json","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":3676,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"a30cb1d535e047beb402472fe1e7bc8e.json","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8114476/v1/3c45abca7358ab9b977cb32a.json"},{"id":98450314,"identity":"bd0c0262-991e-4de4-b7fe-e793cde8e8ed","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-17 17:30:19","extension":"docx","order_by":2,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":60461,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"SupplTables.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8114476/v1/c8ea782f6c4ea3e64a7adfbd.docx"},{"id":98450305,"identity":"8d493388-06c3-41b3-be63-c28f6c8fcf0f","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-17 17:30:18","extension":"xml","order_by":3,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":166890,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"a30cb1d535e047beb402472fe1e7bc8e1enriched.xml","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8114476/v1/22d7a438b2f1e074f77fb3ff.xml"},{"id":98450248,"identity":"2e1d183a-1a3f-44e2-bee6-4f7e88f2a7af","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-17 17:30:15","extension":"emf","order_by":4,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":52836,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage1.emf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8114476/v1/252383cfcc2d4894a561cf61.emf"},{"id":98450334,"identity":"3e312236-b2b4-42b3-80ba-aaa6fc3ef05b","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-17 17:30:20","extension":"emf","order_by":5,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":55124,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"floatimage2.emf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8114476/v1/65e43348318df24a9839cd77.emf"},{"id":98622548,"identity":"79dac64c-af5d-4c73-970f-77797fe6802f","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-19 16:57:39","extension":"png","order_by":6,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":35771,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage1.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8114476/v1/5e01447b26d2f8f4517b716f.png"},{"id":98450253,"identity":"5297ca99-3849-450a-86a4-a47b6562e6ce","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-17 17:30:16","extension":"png","order_by":7,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":35037,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Onlinefloatimage2.png","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8114476/v1/e2f54c586cdb9852d2ad47f6.png"},{"id":98623653,"identity":"21fb8e7d-a629-442b-8fce-7c13ec6a695e","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-19 17:07:11","extension":"xml","order_by":8,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":166014,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"a30cb1d535e047beb402472fe1e7bc8e1structuring.xml","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8114476/v1/5b53c8356c85fe3d5c2af0b9.xml"},{"id":98450517,"identity":"338df6d8-d360-425d-b251-827602ff047c","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-17 17:30:27","extension":"html","order_by":9,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"acdc-reference","size":173962,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"earlyproof.html","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8114476/v1/e2127214331edfd29fe3bad1.html"},{"id":98631394,"identity":"61a97e2b-52d4-4039-81d4-41b2ea8ffd80","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-19 17:19:59","extension":"pdf","order_by":0,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"manuscript-pdf","size":601845,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"manuscript.pdf","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8114476/v1/8bacae6c-f71f-485f-b9a4-7fe473b61a18.pdf"},{"id":98450211,"identity":"c1b258f4-8495-4691-9c5e-f0daf61733e1","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-17 17:30:15","extension":"docx","order_by":1,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":60461,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"SupplTables.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8114476/v1/7e2d626e5262a98eb2c4c8b9.docx"},{"id":98450491,"identity":"39d8e17d-bd4d-4139-8f66-5b94efc9c611","added_by":"auto","created_at":"2025-12-17 17:30:25","extension":"docx","order_by":2,"title":"","display":"","copyAsset":false,"role":"supplement","size":96859,"visible":true,"origin":"","legend":"","description":"","filename":"Tables.docx","url":"https://assets-eu.researchsquare.com/files/rs-8114476/v1/0fbe4b979d114da7f59bfe39.docx"}],"financialInterests":"No competing interests reported.","formattedTitle":"Do Mothers protect children from deprivation? Comparison of Mother and Child material deprivation within a household","fulltext":[{"header":"1. Introduction","content":"\u003cp\u003eMany previous studies have pointed out that the assumption that resources are shared equally among household members is, at best, an overstatement and, in some cases, leads to an underestimation of poverty (Bennett et al., 2024; Cantillon, 2013; Klasen \u0026amp; Lahoti, 2021). A long tradition of gender economics has shown that compared with women and girls, men and boys often receive a greater share of resources within the same household (Pahl, 1983), and this is closely related to the inequality in bargaining power regarding prioritization and consumption decisions (Cantillon et al., 2016). However, the overwhelming majority of poverty research has used the household as the unit of analysis and has assumed that all members of a household have the same living standard (Cantillon et al., 2016). This is because disentangling household income or expenditure, which is the classical and most common poverty measurement tool used in research(Main, 2018), is difficult for individual members of a household. This problem can be overcome using another common measure, namely, material deprivation, which can be used to assess the living conditions of individuals within a household (Cantillon \u0026amp; Guio, 2024). However, most of the previous research that used deprivation indicators has employed household-level measurements.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eIgnoring intrahousehold inequality in the assessment of living standards can lead to inaccurate estimates of poverty, particularly child poverty (Bárcena-Martín et al., 2017). Many prior studies suggest that parents, particularly mothers, sacrifice their own living standards to maintain those of their children (Cantillon et al., 2016; Dunbar et al., 2013; Main \u0026amp; Bradshaw, 2016). In this case, child poverty would be overestimated, and parental poverty would be underestimated. Conversely, it is possible that the needs of income earners (i.e., adults) are prioritized over those of children in a household, in which case child poverty may be underestimated. Furthermore, to formulate a policy, it is important to know which children’s needs are protected and which adults are protecting children at the expense of their own living standards and vice versa. Past research has suggested that boys’ needs are prioritized over girls’ needs (Dunbar et al., 2013); thus, it is possible that the protecting behaviour of parents is more frequently applied to boys. It is also possible that the first born child is given greater priority than subsequent children, given the culture of primogeniture that is dominant in East Asia and elsewhere (Suzuki, 2012). It has been shown that, in some countries, the eldest child receives a larger share of the household’s resources (Brown et al., 2021). Another question is whether children actually benefit from parents’ protecting behaviours. Previous studies have suggested that children are “much more aware” (Main, 2024: 171) of the economic situation than adults assume. If so, they may realize that parents are sacrificing for their sake and become unable to gain the full benefit of whatever items that their parents sacrificed for.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTo address these questions, this study uses Japanese mother-child paired data on deprivation. Notably, this study uses child deprivation data that is reported by the children themselves, as well as those reported by their mothers. There are multiple reasons to advocate for the use of children’s self-assessment of their own poverty (Main, 2024), which will be discussed later. By doing so, the paper is expected to expand the understanding of the dynamics of mother‒child deprivation.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"2. Measuring intrahousehold inequality","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe traditional approach to measuring intrahousehold inequality in the allocation of household resources is the use of consumption data. The challenge posed by this approach is determining which part of total household consumption is attributed to each household member. Some items, such as school supplies, can be readily assigned to a specific household member (in this case, a school-age child), whereas other items, such as food expenditure, are difficult to divide among household members unless a specific dietary diary has been kept. Other items, such as housing and electricity, are consumed collectively and are therefore also difficult to assign to individual household members. Thus, researchers have devised an innovative approach that involves the application of a sharing rule based on ‘assignable goods’, which are consumption items that can be attributed to a household member individually and benefit only that specific member (Woolley, 2024). This approach, which is termed ‘collective model estimation’, typically uses clothing expenditure, which can be reasonably ‘assigned’ to individuals within a household. A study using individual expenditure data from Bangladesh revealed that the model was fairly accurate in predicting actual intrahousehold resource allocation (Bargain et al., 2022). However, this approach undoubtedly relies on many assumptions, and its validity, particularly with respect to children, is questionable.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eA more direct approach to measuring the living standards of individuals within a household is the use of material deprivation indicators (Guio \u0026amp; Van den Bosch, 2020). The material deprivation index counts the number of items and activities that are inaccessible to a household for economic reasons. However, the same problem of not being able to observe intrahousehold inequality arises when material deprivation is measured at the household level, as is the case with much of the existing survey data. For example, even if a household owns a TV, it may be the case that only certain members of the household have the privilege of watching it. Thus, deprivation measured at the household level may underestimate deprivation at the individual level. However, the advantage of measuring deprivation is that unlike consumption, it can be easily observed at the individual level when data are collected individually. One such dataset is the European Union’s Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC), which has been a vehicle leading deprivation research for decades. The EU-SILC includes both household- and individual-level deprivation items, both of which are used to measure individual deprivation (Guio et al., 2012). EU-SILC and similar data have enabled the analysis of deprivation inequality within households, particularly that between men and women in a couple, and have generally revealed that women are more deprived than men are (Cantillon, 2013; Cantillon et al., 2016; Cantillon \u0026amp; Nolan, 1998; Guio \u0026amp; Van den Bosch, 2020). The EU-SILC has also developed child-specific deprivation measures to measure child-specific deprivation in addition to household level deprivation (Guio et al., 2012; Karagiannaki \u0026amp; Burchardt, 2024).\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"3. Comparing the deprivation of children to that of adults","content":"\u003cp\u003eHowever, research on intrahousehold inequality that uses deprivation indicators has focused mainly on the inequality between men and women (Lanau, 2023). Studies that examine inequality between children and adults (or parents) within a household via the deprivation approach are scarce. One study compared household-level deprivation with child-specific deprivation (B\u0026aacute;rcena-Mart\u0026iacute;n et al., 2017). This study revealed that household-level deprivation explains approximately 80% of the variation in child-specific deprivation; however, the overlap is not complete. Furthermore, the absence of certain items on the household deprivation list (e.g., being unable to afford unexpected expenses, going on holiday, and keeping the house warm) is associated with greater levels of child-specific deprivation. While this study was insightful, it did not compare deprivation in adult individuals with deprivation \u0026nbsp;in individual children within the same households.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeveral studies have examined the differences in individual deprivation between adults and children (Adelman et al., 2000; Lanau, 2023; Lanau \u0026amp; Fifita, 2020; Lloyd, 2006; Main \u0026amp; Bradshaw, 2014; 2016). The groundbreaking work of Adelman et al. (2000) and Main and Bradshaw (2014) used a set of 5 items (clothes, shoes, food, hobbies and holidays) for both adults and children, drawing on the 2000 and 2012 UK Poverty and Social Exclusion surveys, respectively. They compared adult deprivation and child deprivation for each item on an individual basis and reported that adults lacked items much more frequently than children did.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eWhile these studies used the same set of deprivation items for both adults and children, Main and Bradshaw (2016), Lanau and Fifita (2020) and Lanau (2023) employ an approach of using different sets of deprivation items for adults and children. Main and Bradshaw (2016) used the 2012 Poverty and Social Exclusion Survey in the UK, )Lanau and Fifita (2020) used data on Tongan children, and Lanau (2023) used EU-SILC. These authors all devised deprivation scales for adults using items selected as adult necessities and for children using items selected as child necessities. The different number of items was selected for adults than for children.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAn adult deprivation scale and a child deprivation scale were constructed for each of the three studies, and by setting a threshold for each, they identified deprived adults and deprived children. \u0026nbsp; Households were then categorized into 4 groups: \u0026lsquo;congruous nondeprived\u0026rsquo; (neither adults nor children are deprived), \u0026lsquo;congruous deprived\u0026rsquo; (both adults and children are deprived), \u0026lsquo;incongruous protected\u0026rsquo; (the adult is deprived, but the child is not), and \u0026lsquo;incongruous exposed\u0026rsquo; (the child is deprived, but the adult is not). Main \u0026amp; Bradshaw (2016) used two definitions of adults: \u0026lsquo;any\u0026rsquo; adult in the household and \u0026lsquo;all\u0026rsquo; adults in the household. Their results, which reveal the percentage of households that belong to each type, are presented in Table 1. All three studies confirm that the \u0026lsquo;congruous nondeprived\u0026rsquo; group has the greatest share, followed by the \u0026lsquo;congruous deprived\u0026rsquo; group. Our interest lies in the relative sizes of the \u0026lsquo;incongruous exposed\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;incongruous protected\u0026rsquo; groups. Main and Bradshaw (2016), using \u0026ldquo;all adults\u0026rdquo; as their definition of adults, and Lanau (2023) reported that the \u0026lsquo;incongruous exposed\u0026rsquo; group was fairly small compared with the \u0026lsquo;incongruous protected\u0026rsquo; group, from which the authors concluded that \u0026ldquo;households tend to prioritize children\u0026rdquo; (Lanau, 2023; 336). Main and Bradshaw (2016) using \u0026ldquo;any adult\u0026rdquo; as the definition of adults, and Lanau and Fifita (2020) reported closer percentages between the Exposed and the Protected groups. Regardless, the percentage of the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; group was slightly greater than that of the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; group. Main and Bradshaw (2016) further reported that adults who are themselves poor while their children are not, tend to engage in economizing behaviours such as skimping on food and buying second-hand clothes.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, I would argue that these results do not conclusively prove that adults (most likely parents) are more likely to sacrifice themselves to protect their children rather than to expose them to deprivation. The fact that the adult deprivation rate is higher than the child deprivation rate is not sufficient to support this claim, as these two rates may not be comparable. The deprivation rates that were calculated for adults by Main and Bradshaw (2016) (all adults) and Lanau (2023) are higher than the deprivation rates for children, as shown in columns (c+d) and (b+d) in Table 1; thus, it is inevitable that there will be more \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; children than \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; children. However, deprivation rates depend on the number and selection of items, as well as the cut-off threshold. Thus, the greater degree of deprivation among adults than that among children might be due to only the number and choice of deprivation items and the threshold, rather than the fact that adults sacrifice their own well-being to satisfy the needs of their children.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"4. Difficulty of comparing the deprivation of children to that of adults","content":"\u003cp\u003eThis raises the fundamental question of how to compare deprivation among individuals with different characteristics and needs. As in the case of Cantillon et al. (2016), it is relatively easy to compare adult woman and adult men by devising a list of items and activities that are equally important for both. Cantillon et al. used five items, including \u0026lsquo;doing without a substantial meal in the last fortnight\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;unable to afford a mobile telephone\u0026rsquo;, which can be argued are equally essential for both sexes. However, comparing the deprivation of children against the deprivation of adults is more difficult. The distinct needs of children differ from those of adults, and these needs must be recognized when measuring poverty (Cantillon \u0026amp; Guio, 2024; Main \u0026amp; Bradshaw, 2012). Using a set of items that are common to both adults and children, such as clothes, shoes, food, hobbies and holidays, as was done in the studies of Lloyd (2006) and Main and Bradshaw (2014), circumvents the distinct needs of children to focus on only what is common to all. However, devising items whose lack represents the same severity for children as it does for adults is difficult. For example, for \u0026lsquo;food\u0026rsquo;, Main and Bradshaw (2014) use \u0026lsquo;three meals a day\u0026rsquo; for children and \u0026lsquo;two meals a day\u0026rsquo; for adults. Arguably, children need more regular meals than adults do because of their developmental stage; therefore, the use of different definitions may be sensible. However, who is to say that \u0026lsquo;lacking three meals a day\u0026rsquo; for children and \u0026lsquo;lacking two meals a day\u0026rsquo; for adults represents the same severity of hardship?\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAnother difficulty when comparing the deprivation experienced by children and adults is that child deprivation is often measured via parental responses. Therefore, the lack of a child item is categorized as deprivation only if \u003cem\u003eparents want to\u003c/em\u003e provide that item but cannot afford to do so. If a parent does not consider an item to be necessary for their child, regardless of the child\u0026rsquo;s opinion, then it is not counted as deprivation. \u0026nbsp;This approach may underestimate child deprivation from the child\u0026rsquo;s perspective (Main, 2018), and there is a strong argument for using the opinions of children themselves to measure their living standards (Abe, 2019; Cort\u0026eacute;s-Morales \u0026amp; Main, 2022; Main, 2018; Main \u0026amp; Bradshaw, 2012).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThis study adopts the same item-based approach as Lloyd (2006) and Main and Bradshaw (2014) and uses data from Japanese children and their mothers. It aims to improve the understanding of child‒parent deprivation dynamics within households by (1) using both mother- and child-reported data on child deprivation and (2) devising a composite index of items, thereby advancing the item-by-item approach. It is possible for a parent to protect the child regarding one item and simultaneously expose the child regarding another item. Thus, by using a composite scale, it may be possible to capture the overall picture of \u0026lsquo;protection\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;exposure\u0026rsquo; dynamics, which cannot be explored by examining individual items. This paper also aims to partially solve the comparability problem by applying a \u0026lsquo;desirability\u0026rsquo; weight to each deprivation item. It can be argued that higher desirability indicates that lacking the item represents a greater hardship [1].\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFurthermore, the study explores which child (e.g., sex, age), parent (e.g., working status, age, education) and household (e.g., household income, one or two parents, number of children) characteristics relate to the protecting and/or exposing behaviours of parents. In addition, the study examines whether \u0026nbsp;\u0026lsquo;protecting\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;exposing\u0026rsquo; behaviours are related to the child\u0026rsquo;s psychological well-being and thus analyses whether a parent\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;protection\u0026rsquo; behaviour actually protects their children.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[1] It could be argued that the fact that an item is \u0026lsquo;desired\u0026rsquo; by many does not necessarily mean that it is regarded as a \u0026lsquo;necessity\u0026rsquo;. \u0026nbsp;For example, luxury goods may be \u0026lsquo;desired\u0026rsquo; by \u0026nbsp;most of the individuals within a society, yet it can hardly be argued that they are \u0026lsquo;necessary\u0026rsquo;. \u0026nbsp;However, the paper uses a \u0026lsquo;desirability\u0026rsquo; rate for two reasons. \u0026nbsp;First, \u0026lsquo;desirability\u0026rsquo; has been used in previous studies as a close substitute for \u0026lsquo;suitability\u0026rsquo; (i.e., whether the item is a \u0026ldquo;socially perceived necessity\u0026rdquo; (Mack \u0026amp; Lansley, 1985) in the EU\u0026rsquo;s definition of adult and child deprivation scales (Guio et al., 2012). Second, the ideal solution would be using the percentage of the general public who regard the item as a \u0026lsquo;necessity\u0026rsquo;, but the available data in Japan was only collected from adult respondents (Abe, 2024a), and there is currently no data that uses children\u0026rsquo;s own assessments of \u0026lsquo;necessity\u0026rsquo;.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"5. Data and analytic strategy","content":"\u003cp\u003eThe data used for this study are from the Children\u0026rsquo;s Possessions and Activities Survey, which was conducted by the Research Center for Child and Adolescent Poverty, Tokyo Metropolitan University, in January 2025. Three thousand children between the ages of 0 and 18 were selected using stratified sampling from the resident registerers of all municipalities in Japan. If the child was more than 10 years old, then the questionnaires were completed by both a parent (or guardian) and the child themselves. Since the responding parents were mostly mothers, and the needs and protecting behaviours of fathers and mothers are known to differ (Cantillon et al., 2016), the analysis uses only those observations where the respondent is a mother. The analytical sample comprised mother‒child paired observations in which the child\u0026rsquo;s age ranged from 10 to 18 years (n=1,156).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e5.1. Ethical considerations\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eEthical approval for the survey was obtained from the Ethical Committee of Tokyo Metropolitan University (approval number H6-142). The questionnaire was completed anonymously and voluntarily so that the respondents cannot be identified. All the participants were informed of their rights, including the right to skip any questions that they did not want to answer and the right to withdraw from the survey at any point. Child responses were sealed so that parents could not see what the children had answered and vice versa.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e5.2. Deprivation items\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eSeven items (meals, protein, pocket money, shoes, clothes, a hobby and doctor\u0026rsquo;s visits), which were present in both the parent questionnaire and the child questionnaire, were used for the deprivation items. In the parent questionnaire, the deprivation question was asked about each of the above items for both the parent and the participating child. Thus, for each participating child, the deprivation data were independently collected from the children themselves and from their mother. The study followed the methodology of Guio et al. (2012), who devised a set of 4 tests to verify the applicability of the items for constructing a deprivation index: suitability, validity, reliability and additivity tests. For the suitability test, the study followed the methodology of Guio et al. (2012), deeming an item suitable if more than 70% of the respondents answered that they either had the item or did not have the item but wanted it. As we will see later, all the items had desirability rates (i.e., the percentage of respondents who answered \u0026ldquo;have\u0026rdquo; or \u0026ldquo;not have, but want\u0026rdquo;) of above 90%, indicating that they met the suitability criteria. For the validity test, the deprivation of each item was examined to determine whether that deprivation was related to household income, and it was found that all the items were significantly related at the 5% significance level. For the reliability test, the Cronbach\u0026rsquo;s alpha was computed and was found to be 0.67 for the child-reported child deprivation items, 0.77 for the mother-reported child deprivation items and 0.75 for the adult deprivation items. Finally, the additivity test was conducted for the 7 items across the 3 scales, and they all passed.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e5.3. Analytic strategy\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eAs in previous studies, this paper classifies mother‒child pairs into four types: \u0026lsquo;congruous nondeprived\u0026rsquo;, \u0026lsquo;incongruous protected (protected)\u0026rsquo;, \u0026lsquo;incongruous exposed (exposed)\u0026rsquo;, and \u0026lsquo;congruous deprived\u0026rsquo;. This classification was done using 2 methods. In the first method, the number of items for which the mother is deprived but the child is not is counted, and we call it \u0026lsquo;protecting behaviour count (P)\u0026rsquo;. Conversely, the number of items for which the mother is not deprived but the child is deprived is counted, and we call this the \u0026lsquo;exposing behaviour count (E)\u0026rsquo;. The study subsequently classified mother‒child pairs as \u0026lsquo;incongruous nondeprived\u0026rsquo; when P and E are both equal to zero, \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; when P is greater than E, \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; when E is greater than P, and \u0026lsquo;congruous deprived\u0026rsquo; when P equals E. In this way, the measure compares the deprivation status of the same item for mother and child while also capturing the overall \u0026lsquo;protecting\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;exposing\u0026rsquo; behaviour within the household. While this method enables us to see the overall protecting or exposing behaviours of mothers, it does not account for the difference in severity of the lack of items between mothers and children. Thus, in the second method, a weighted deprivation scale is constructed for both mothers and children using the desirability rate as the weight. A mother‒child pair is subsequently categorized as \u0026lsquo;congruous nondeprived\u0026rsquo; when both scales are zero, \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; when the adult deprivation scale is higher than the child deprivation scale, and \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; when it is lower. Please note that when this method is used, even if the mother and child are both deprived of the same item, for example, \u0026ldquo;2 pairs of fitting shoes\u0026rdquo;, if the desirability of the item is greater for the child than it is for the mother, then the mother‒child pair is categorized as \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo;. Thus, the first method is focused on the protecting or exposing behaviours of mothers, and the second method is focused on the severity of the child\u0026rsquo;s deprivation as compared to that of the mother\u0026rsquo;s deprivation. Both methods involve a comparison of the mother\u0026rsquo;s deprivation against the child-reported child\u0026rsquo;s deprivation and that of the mother\u0026rsquo;s deprivation against the mother-reported child deprivation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe second section of the paper examines which child, mother and household characteristics are associated with each of the aforementioned types of mother\u0026ndash;child deprivation. These relationships have not been thoroughly examined in previous studies. It is hypothesized that boys, younger children and firstborn children are prioritized and are more likely to be in the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; category than girls, older children and subsequent children are. In terms of the characteristics of the mothers, it is hypothesized that mothers with full-time employment \u0026lsquo;protect\u0026rsquo; their children more than those with part-time or no employment, as it has been demonstrated that the mother\u0026rsquo;s higher share of total household income is associated with greater resource allocation to children (Woolley, 2004). Finally, by examining differences across income strata, we determine whether low-income mothers protect or expose their children more when money is less available. The study uses quintiles of equivalized household income[2]. Differences in the distribution of the 4 types are examined via chi-square binominal analysis and multinominal logistic regression.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe final section of the paper examines the relationship between mother\u0026ndash;child deprivation types and children\u0026rsquo;s psychological well-being. The expectation is that when a mother \u0026lsquo;protects\u0026rsquo; her child, the child is better off in terms of psychological well-being because they face less deprivation. However, if the child notices that their mother has made sacrifices for their sake, they may not obtain the full benefits of having obtained that item. This may be particularly true for older children. By comparing the psychological well-being of children in the 4 deprivation types, this study analyses whether such a \u0026ldquo;dampening effect\u0026rdquo; can be observed. A child\u0026rsquo;s psychological well-being is measured by their responses to 3 questions in the child questionnaire: \u0026ldquo;Do you enjoy your everyday life?\u0026rdquo; (answered on a scale from 0=Not at all to 10=Yes, very much), \u0026ldquo;Do you think that your family thinks you are important?\u0026rdquo; (scaled from 1=Yes, very much to 4=Not at all), and \u0026ldquo;Do you think you are a valuable person?\u0026rdquo; (scaled from 1=Yes, very much to 4=Not at all). The latter two scales were reversed so that a higher response would indicate higher well-being in all three scales. All calculations were conducted using STATA 17.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e[2] Income was reported in the parent questionnaire in 1,000,000 yen interval categories. \u0026nbsp;The midpoint of each type was equivalized with the square root of the household size to obtain equivalized household income.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"6. Mother‒child deprivation types and household and individual characteristics","content":"\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e6.1. Itemwise comparison of deprivation rates\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTable 2 reports the deprivation and desirability rates for mothers and children in regard to each item. For children, the desirability rates exceed 95% for all the items aside from one, namely, \u0026ldquo;Hobby and leisure activities.\u0026rdquo; This item has a desirability rate of 69.1% when reported by mothers and 98.0% when reported by children, indicating that there is a significant discrepancy regarding its necessity between the opinions of mothers and those of children. For the other items, the desirability rates of mothers and children are similarly high.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe deprivation rates reported by mothers are higher than those reported by children, and the difference is quite large for some items. The only exception is \u0026ldquo;At least 3 (2 for parents) meals a day\u0026rdquo;, which may be because the criteria are 3 meals for children but only 2 for parents. These results are consistent with the results of previous studies that found that mothers (or adults) are more likely to be deprived than children are.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eHowever, when we compare child-reported with mother-reported deprivation, two noteworthy observations emerge. First, there is a gap between mothers\u0026rsquo; perceptions of child deprivation and that of children. For instance, 12.4% of the children reported that they were deprived of \u0026ldquo;Money to spend for yourself\u0026rdquo;, whereas only 3.8% of the mothers reported that their children were deprived of that item. Thus, there are some discrepancies in the \u003cu\u003eperception of fulfilment (or deprivation)\u003c/u\u003e regarding child items between those of mothers and those of children. Items with greater differences in \u0026ldquo;desirability\u0026rdquo; seem to have greater discrepancies in their deprivation perceptions, which suggests that the discrepancy is partially derived from the differences in opinion between mothers and children regarding the necessity and desirability of child items. However, such differences in the perception of \u0026ldquo;needs\u0026rdquo; do not fully explain the observed discrepancy in deprivation rates.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eNext, according to children, 5 out of the 7 items were associated with a higher child deprivation rate than the associated deprivation rate for mothers. These items are \u0026ldquo;At least 3 (2 for parents) meals a day\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Proteins (fish, meat, tofu, etc.) at least once every 2 days\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;Money to spend for yourself\u0026rdquo;, \u0026ldquo;At least 2 pairs of fitting shoes\u0026rdquo;, and \u0026ldquo;New clothes (not second hand) every year\u0026rdquo;. All five items were deemed \u0026ldquo;desirable\u0026rdquo; by most mothers and children (more than 90% of mothers and children believe that these items are desirable for children). These results call into question the results of prior studies. When viewed from the child\u0026rsquo;s perspective, such studies may not tell the whole story.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e6.2. Mother‒child deprivation categories\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTable 3 shows the percentages of the 4 mother‒child deprivation types, which were determined using 2 methods and 2 definitions of child deprivation. As in prior studies, the largest share of mother‒child pairs falls into the \u0026lsquo;congruous nondeprived\u0026rsquo; category: 67% and 62% for child-reported child deprivation, and 81% and 77% \u0026nbsp;for parent-reported child deprivation. The \u0026lsquo;congruous deprived\u0026rsquo; category is small, with 2% for the child-reported and 1% for parent reported method. \u0026nbsp;When using method (2), no mother‒child pairs were categorized into this type because there was no pairing that showed exactly the same weighted deprivation score for the mother and the child. Looking at the relative sizes of the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; categories, the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; category has a larger share than the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; category when child-reported child deprivation is used, but when mother-reported child deprivation is used, the reverse holds true, and the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; type is much smaller than the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; type. Thus, the results of using mother-reported data are consistent with those of previous studies such as Main and Bradshaw (2016) and Lanau and Fifita (2020), whereas the results of using child-reported data are not.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e6.3. Deprivation types and household and individual characteristics\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTable 4 shows the bivariate statistics for the relationships between mother\u0026ndash;child deprivation types and household, child and mother characteristics. Table 4(A) shows the results when child-reported child deprivation is used, while Table 4(B) shows the results when mother-reported child deprivation is used. Both (A) and (B) apply Method (1) and use the protecting and exposing behaviour counts. The results when using Method (2) are similar and can be found in the supplemental tables 3(A) and 3(B). With respect to child characteristics, there was no statistically significant differences using either child-reported or mother-reported deprivation types depending on the child\u0026rsquo;s age, sex, or first born status. Thus, at least according to these data, there was no evidence of preferential treatment, such as greater protecting behaviours, that depended on the child\u0026rsquo;s age, sex or birth order. \u0026nbsp;Also, no statistically significant differences were found depending on mothers\u0026rsquo; working status. However, there were differences in regard to the mother\u0026rsquo;s age and level of education. With respect to household characteristics, statistically significant differences were found according to household type (two-parent vs. one-parent), number of children, and household income. Those categories with significant differences were the same for both child-reported and mother-reported deprivation.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe most notable difference was in the size of the \u0026lsquo;congruous nondeprived\u0026rsquo; type. This can be clearly seen in the case of household income. The percentage of the \u0026lsquo;congruous nondeprived\u0026rsquo; was 79% in the fifth quintile, while it was 44% in the first quintile in Table 4(A), and 96% and 50% in Table 4(B). This suggests that economic strain is the main driver behind the size of the \u0026lsquo;congruous no-deprived\u0026rsquo; group, and a similar trend can be seen in regard to family type, number of children, mother\u0026rsquo;s education attainment, and mother\u0026rsquo;s age, as these characteristics are known to be related to the poverty rate (Abe, 2024b).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe main focus of this paper is the relative sizes of the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; categories. As shown in both tables, as the proportion of \u0026lsquo;congruous nondeprived\u0026rsquo; mother-child pairs decreases, the proportion of \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; mother-child pairs increases. For instance, Table 4(A), using child-reported deprivation data, shows that the percentage of the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; group was 3% in the fifth quintile, while it was 36% in the first quintile, whereas the percentage of the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; group remained relatively stable at 18% and 15%. Similar trends can also be found for other characteristics, such as family type, number of children, mother\u0026rsquo;s age and mother\u0026rsquo;s education. However, when mother-reported data were used in Table 4(B), the size of the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; group also increased in low-income strata and low mother\u0026rsquo;s education attainment. This implies that as economic strain became more severe, mothers\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;exposing\u0026rsquo; behaviour increased, albeit not by as much as their \u0026lsquo;protecting\u0026rsquo; behaviour. This trend was not detected when using child-reported data.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eTable 5 shows the results of a multinomial logistic regression was conducted to confirm the findings of the binominal analysis. The dependent variable was the mother\u0026ndash;child deprivation type, where the base type was the\u0026lsquo; congruous nondeprived\u0026rsquo; type. The independent variables included all the household, mother and child characteristics discussed in Table 4. Model (A) uses child-reported child deprivation, and model (B) uses mother-reported child deprivation. The results show that the coefficients for household income and mothers\u0026rsquo; educational attainment were significant for both model (A) and model (B). Children in the first and second quintiles and have mothers with low educational attainment were more likely to be in the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; group than those in the third quintile and those with mothers with middle educational attainment were. However, for the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; type, different results were found for Models (A) and (B). For Model (A), the coefficients for the first and second quintiles were not statistically significant, but for Model (B), the first quintile was significant. A similar trend can be seen for mothers\u0026rsquo; educational attainment. Thus, as shown in Table 4, when child-reported deprivation was used, children tended to fall into the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; type as economic strain became more severe, but when mothers reported deprivation, children tended to fall into both the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; groups, which can also be verified via multinominal regression.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003e\u003cem\u003e6.4. Deprivation types and children\u0026rsquo;s psychological well-being\u003c/em\u003e\u003c/strong\u003e\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eFinally, Table 6 shows the results of the Tobit regressions for the three indicators of child psychological well-being. When child-reported child deprivation was used (Table 6(A)), the coefficient for the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; group was negative and statistically significant for all three indicators. However, these coefficients were not as large as the coefficients for the \u0026lsquo;congruously deprived\u0026rsquo; group, which are also negative and statistically significant. These results indicate that being in the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; group is associated with lower psychological well-being in children, yet the association is not as strong as that of being in the \u0026lsquo;congruously deprived\u0026rsquo; group. Interestingly, the coefficient for the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; group is not significant in any of the three regression models. Thus, this analysis revealed no evidence that the psychological well-being of \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; children differs from that of \u0026lsquo;congruously nondeprived\u0026rsquo; children. The hypothesis that \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; children might not benefit fully from having an item that their mother sacrificed for does not hold. To determine whether this hypothesis could be proven for older children, the same regression models were examined, but the results remained unchanged (see Supplemental Table 4).\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003eThe results of using mother-reported deprivation (Table 6(B)) show that the coefficient for the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; group is negative and statistically significant for \u0026ldquo;Enjoy life\u0026rdquo; and \u0026ldquo;My family thinks I am important\u0026rdquo;, whereas the coefficient for the \u0026lsquo;congruous deprived\u0026rsquo; group is not significant. This may be because there are only a small number of observations of this type, but it is possible that being in the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; group is more detrimental than being in the \u0026lsquo;congruous deprived\u0026rsquo; group. \u0026nbsp;The results for the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; group are similar to those for the models in (A), and being in the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; group is not associated with lower psychological well-being than being in the \u0026lsquo;congruous nondeprived\u0026rsquo; group is.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"7. Discussions","content":"\u003cp\u003eUsing data obtained from Japanese mother‒child pairs, the intricate relationship between a mother\u0026rsquo;s material deprivation and her child\u0026rsquo;s material deprivation within a household were examined in this study. This work advances literature on this topic in three ways. First, the strategy of using data on the same set of 7 items (meals, protein, money for own use, shoes, clothes, hobbies and visiting doctors) for both mothers and children was used to increase the comparability of mothers\u0026rsquo; and children\u0026rsquo;s deprivation, whereas previous studies used either a different set of items for mothers than for children or only conducted an item-by-item comparison. Second, 2 methods were devised to categorize mother‒child deprivation patterns. One method counted mothers\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;protecting\u0026rsquo; behaviours against mothers\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;exposing\u0026rsquo; behaviours and identified mother‒child pairs where the \u0026lsquo;protecting\u0026rsquo; behaviour was stronger than the \u0026lsquo;exposing\u0026rsquo; behaviour, and vice versa. In the other method, a weighted deprivation index was applied in which the weights were set as the \u0026lsquo;desirability\u0026rsquo; rate for each item, and mother‒child pairs were identified in which the mother\u0026rsquo;s deprivation index was higher (\u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo;) than the child\u0026rsquo;s deprivation, and vice versa (\u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo;). Third, with respect to child deprivation, this study uses both child- and mother-reported data and examines whether child-reported deprivation leads to different findings regarding intrahousehold deprivation inequality than mother-reported data does. Which household, mother and child characteristics were associated with these mother\u0026ndash;child deprivation types was then examined, which has not been fully investigated in previous studies because of data constraints. Furthermore, whether there is an association between child psychological well-being and mother‒child deprivation is examined in this study.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eItem-by-item comparisons of mothers\u0026rsquo; and children\u0026rsquo;s deprivation rates reveal that only considering mother-reported data results in findings of higher levels of mothers\u0026rsquo; deprivation than of children\u0026rsquo;s deprivation. However, when data is derived from the accounts of children, 5 out of the 7 items show a higher deprivation rate for children than for mothers. Thus, there are some discrepancies in the \u003cspan type=\"Underline\" class=\"Underline\" name=\"Emphasis\"\u003eperception of child deprivation\u003c/span\u003e between the reports of mothers and those of children This appears to be driven mainly by differences in opinion regarding what children need. While it is easy to dismiss this discrepancy by arguing that \u0026ldquo;the mother knows best\u0026rdquo;, there are several reasons for a concern. This is because material deprivation is a concept in which the respondent\u0026rsquo;s preferences are considered. Mack and Lansley\u0026rsquo;s (1985) approach of distinguishing between lack by preference and enforced lack ensures that if the respondent does not \u0026ldquo;want\u0026rdquo; an item, then its lack is not regarded as deprivation, and this study follows their approach. However, if a mother answers on behalf of her children, it is her preference, rather than the child\u0026rsquo;s, is accounted for. This runs counter to the principle of the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, which states \u0026ldquo;the views of the child being given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child\u0026rdquo; (Article 12). Furthermore, empirical evidence suggests that the child-reported deprivation index performs better than poverty indices that are derived from parent-reported data do. Main and Bradshaw\u0026rsquo;s (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR25\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2012\u003c/span\u003e) seminal work on the child deprivation index revealed that the child-derived deprivation index is more closely related to child well-being than household income does. Abe (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR1\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2019\u003c/span\u003e) reported that the child-reported deprivation index is better at explaining being a victim of bullying, depression, and low self-esteem. Thus, child-reported child deprivation cannot be ignored in the understanding of child well-being.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eNext, the classification of mother‒child pairs into 4 types (\u0026lsquo;congruently nondeprived\u0026rsquo;, \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo;, \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;congruously deprived\u0026rsquo;) using each of the 2 methods mentioned above reveals a substantial difference in the relative size of the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; group compared with that of the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; group between mother-reported and child-reported data. The use of mother-reported data produced a result in line with those of previous studies that used parent-reported data, and it showed that the percentage of children in the \u0026lsquo;exposed group is fairly small, consisting of 2 to 3 percent of the sample. However, the results of using child-reported data show that there are more children in the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; group than in the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; group when either method is used. Thus, we can conclude that mothers protect their children, i.e., provide items for children while they themselves go without, only when \u003cspan type=\"Underline\" class=\"Underline\" name=\"Emphasis\"\u003ethey\u003c/span\u003e believe that the item is necessary and not necessarily when their children believe that it is necessary. The only other study to produce similar results is a study on Tongan children by Lanau and Fifita (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR20\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2020\u003c/span\u003e), where there were closer percentages of children in the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; groups. Citing this study, Main (\u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e) speculated that \u0026ldquo;needs typically considered more \u0026lsquo;fundamental\u0026rsquo; by adults \u0026ndash; such as nutrition \u0026ndash; tend to be prioritized over resources more relevant to children\u0026rsquo;s own social worlds.\u0026rdquo; (Main, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR24\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2024\u003c/span\u003e; p. 169) This study further supports this insight, as more than 90% of mothers did considered all of the items used in this study, aside from \u0026ldquo;Hobby and leisure activities\u0026rdquo;, to be \u0026lsquo;desirable\u0026rsquo; for children. Thus, items that are \u0026lsquo;desirable\u0026rsquo; but not \u0026lsquo;fundamental\u0026rsquo; are less likely to prompt mothers\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;protecting\u0026rsquo; behaviour.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eAlthough the relative sizes of the \u0026lsquo;Protected\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;Exposed\u0026rsquo; groups substantially differed between those using mother-reported and those using child-reported data, the patterns of their associations with household, mother and child characteristics are surprisingly similar. When using both the mother- and child-reported data, lower household income was related to a higher probability of being in the \u0026lsquo;Protected\u0026rsquo; group, indicating that mothers increase their \u0026lsquo;protecting\u0026rsquo; behaviour as economic strain increases. However, when mother-reported data are used, the probability of falling into the \u0026lsquo;Exposed\u0026rsquo; group also increases in the lowest income strata and among mothers with low educational attainment. Thus, according to these findings, even though the \u0026lsquo;Exposed\u0026rsquo; group constitutes a fairly small proportion among the four types, mothers not only \u0026lsquo;protect\u0026rsquo; their children but also \u0026lsquo;expose\u0026rsquo; their children. This result was not found when using child-reported data.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cp\u003eFinally, the analysis of the relationship between children\u0026rsquo;s psychological well-being and the types of mother‒child deprivation revealed no evidence that the psychological well-being of \u0026lsquo;Protected\u0026rsquo; children is worse than that of \u0026lsquo;congruous nondeprived\u0026rsquo; children when using either child- or mother-reported data. Therefore, it can be concluded that a mother\u0026rsquo;s \u0026lsquo;protecting\u0026rsquo; behaviour does indeed protect her children. On the other hand, being in the \u0026lsquo;Exposed\u0026rsquo; group was associated with lower levels of psychological well-being. However, the analysis revealed conflicting results regarding the extent of the detrimental effect of being in the \u0026lsquo;Exposed\u0026rsquo; group vis-\u0026agrave;-vis being in the \u0026lsquo;congruously deprived\u0026rsquo; group. Thus, we cannot conclude that being exposed in addition to being deprived is associated with further negative outcomes.\u003c/p\u003e \u003cdiv id=\"Sec15\" class=\"Section2\"\u003e \u003ch2\u003e7.1. Limitations\u003c/h2\u003e \u003cp\u003eAlthough these findings shed new light on the differences in deprivation between mothers and children, this study has several limitations. First, there are data limitations, as data are only available on one child per household; thus, the question of prioritizing boys over girls, younger over older, or first-born over subsequent children could not be fully investigated while accounting for the fixed effects of household characteristics. Second, when the results of the association of mother\u0026ndash;child deprivation types with child psychological well-being are interpreted, unobserved differences in living conditions among the four types are possible even after we control for household income and mother\u0026rsquo;s education attainment. While it is reasonable to assume that the \u0026lsquo;congruous nondeprived\u0026rsquo; group has the highest living standard compared to the other three categories, it is not possible to determine the \u0026ldquo;order\u0026rdquo; of the living standards among the other three categories. Thus, compared with the \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; group, the \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; \u0026rsquo; group might face more severe economic constraints, which could influence the outcomes for child well-being. Third, and most importantly, the study did not consider the different degrees of \u0026lsquo;protecting\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;exposing\u0026rsquo; behaviours. Consequently, mother‒child pairs with only one \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;exposed\u0026rsquo; item are put into the same group as those with a greater number of such items. This approach was taken in this study since the number of samples with more than 1 \u0026lsquo;protecting\u0026rsquo; or \u0026lsquo;exposing\u0026rsquo; behaviour was small (see Supplemental Table\u0026nbsp;2). The use of more items in the analysis would provide a more nuanced understanding of \u0026lsquo;protecting\u0026rsquo; and \u0026lsquo;exposing\u0026rsquo; behaviours.\u003c/p\u003e \u003c/div\u003e"},{"header":"Declarations","content":"\u003ch2\u003eAuthor Contribution\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe author is responsible for collection, analysis, and writing of the paper.\u003c/p\u003e\u003ch2\u003eData Availability\u003c/h2\u003e\u003cp\u003eAll data used for this research is available upon request to the author.\u003c/p\u003e\n\u003cp\u003e\u003cstrong\u003eSupplementary information\u003c/strong\u003e The online version contains supplemental tables.\u003c/p\u003e"},{"header":"References","content":"\u003col\u003e\u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAbe, A. (2019). Oya kara mita hakudatsu to ko kara mita hakudatsu: Oya ha nanio kirame, ko ha naniga hoshiinoka (deprivation as seen from parents and from children: What do parents give up and what do children want). \u003cem\u003eHinkon Kenkyu (Poverty Studies)\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e22\u003c/em\u003e, 94\u0026ndash;105. (in Japanese).\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAbe, A. (2024a). Are we getting closer to consensus? An analysis of changes in socially perceived necessities over time in Japan. \u003cem\u003eSocial Indicators Research\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e175\u003c/em\u003e(1), 247\u0026ndash;268. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-024-03418-4\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1007/s11205-024-03418-4\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAbe, A. (2024b). \u003cem\u003eSotaiteki hinkonritu no doko (2022 nen appudeito) (trends in relative poverty rates: 2022 update)\u003c/em\u003e. Retrieved August 14, 2025, from \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://www.hinkonstat.net/\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"https://www.hinkonstat.net/\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e (in Japanese).\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eAdelman, L., Middleton, S., \u0026amp; Ashworth, K. (2000). \u003cem\u003eIntra-household distribution of poverty and social exclusion: Evidence from the 1999 PSE survey of Britain, working paper No.23, Bristol university\u003c/em\u003e. Retrieved August 16, 2024, from \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://www.bristol.ac.uk/poverty/pse/99PSE-WP23.pdf\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"https://www.bristol.ac.uk/poverty/pse/99PSE-WP23.pdf\" targettype=\"URL\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eB\u0026aacute;rcena-Mart\u0026iacute;n, E., Bl\u0026aacute;zquez, M., Budr\u0026iacute;a, S., \u0026amp; Moro-Egido, A. I. (2017). Child and household deprivation: A relationship beyond household socio-demographic characteristics. \u003cem\u003eSocial Indicators Research\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e132\u003c/em\u003e(3), 1079\u0026ndash;1098. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-016-1331-4\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1007/s11205-016-1331-4\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBargain, O., Lacroix, G., \u0026amp; Tiberti, L. (2022). Intrahousehold resource allocation and individual poverty: Assessing collective model predictions using direct evidence on sharing. \u003cem\u003eThe Economic Journal\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e132\u003c/em\u003e(643), 865\u0026ndash;905. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1093/ej/ueab085\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1093/ej/ueab085\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBennett, F., Avram, S., \u0026amp; Austen, S. (2024). \u003cem\u003eA research agenda for financial resources within the household\u003c/em\u003e. Edward Elgar.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eBrown, C., Calvi, R., \u0026amp; Penglase, J. (2021). Sharing the pie: An analysis of undernutrition and individual consumption in Bangladesh. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Public Economics\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e200\u003c/em\u003e, 104460. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104460\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1016/j.jpubeco.2021.104460\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eCantillon, S. (2013). Measuring differences in living standards within households. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Marriage and Family\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e75\u003c/em\u003e(3), 598\u0026ndash;610. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1111/jomf.12023\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1111/jomf.12023\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eCantillon, S., \u0026amp; Guio, A. C. (2024). Data about money within the household: Exploring the challenges and gaps. In F. Bennett, S. Avram, \u0026amp; S. Austen (Eds.), \u003cem\u003eA research agenda for financial resources within the household\u003c/em\u003e (pp. 63\u0026ndash;78). Edward Elgar Publishing.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eCantillon, S., Ma\u0026icirc;tre, B., \u0026amp; Watson, D. (2016). Family financial management and individual deprivation. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Family and Economic Issues\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e37\u003c/em\u003e(3), 461\u0026ndash;473. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1007/s10834-015-9466-z\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1007/s10834-015-9466-z\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eCantillon, S., \u0026amp; Nolan, B. (1998). Are married women more deprived than their husbands? \u003cem\u003eJournal of Social Policy\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e27\u003c/em\u003e, 151\u0026ndash;171. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1017/S0047279498005261\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1017/S0047279498005261\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eCort\u0026eacute;s-Morales, S., \u0026amp; Main, G. (2022). Needs or wants? Children and parents understanding and negotiating needs and necessities. \u003cem\u003eChildhood Vulnerability Journal\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e4\u003c/em\u003e(1), 13\u0026ndash;36. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1007/s41255-021-00020-5\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1007/s41255-021-00020-5\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eDunbar, G. R., Lewbel, A., \u0026amp; Pendakur, K. (2013). Children's resources in collective households: Identification, estimation, and an application to child poverty in Malawi. \u003cem\u003eAmerican Economic Review\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e103\u003c/em\u003e(1), 438\u0026ndash;471. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1257/aer.103.1.438\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1257/aer.103.1.438\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eGuio, A. C., Gordon, D., \u0026amp; Marlier, E. (2012). \u003cem\u003eMeasuring material deprivation in the EU: Indicators for the whole population and child-specific indicators. Eurostat methodologies and working papers\u003c/em\u003e. Publications Office of the European Union.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eGuio, A. C., \u0026amp; Van den Bosch, K. (2020). Deprivation of women and men living in a couple: Sharing or unequal division? \u003cem\u003eReview of Income and Wealth\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e66\u003c/em\u003e(4), 958\u0026ndash;984. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12449\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1111/roiw.12449\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eKaragiannaki, E., \u0026amp; Burchardt, T. (2024). Living arrangements, intra-household inequality and children\u0026rsquo;s deprivation: Evidence from EU-SILC. \u003cem\u003eChild Indicators Research\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e17\u003c/em\u003e(5), 2319\u0026ndash;2359. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-024-10149-y\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1007/s12187-024-10149-y\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eKlasen, S., \u0026amp; Lahoti, R. (2021). How serious is the neglect of intra-household inequality in multidimensional poverty and inequality analyses? Evidence from India. \u003cem\u003eReview of Income and Wealth\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e67\u003c/em\u003e(3), 705\u0026ndash;731. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1111/roiw.12491\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1111/roiw.12491\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLanau, A. (2023). First the children, then the employed: Deprivation and intra-household inequality in Europe. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Poverty\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e27\u003c/em\u003e(4), 331\u0026ndash;349. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1080/10875549.2022.2065561\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1080/10875549.2022.2065561\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLanau, A., \u0026amp; Fifita, V. (2020). Do households prioritise children? Intra-household deprivation a case study of the South Pacific. \u003cem\u003eChild Indicators Research\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e13\u003c/em\u003e(6), 1953\u0026ndash;1973. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-020-09729-5\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1007/s12187-020-09729-5\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eLloyd, E. (2006). Children, poverty and social exclusion. In C. Pantazis, D. Gordon, \u0026amp; R. Levitas (Eds.), \u003cem\u003ePoverty and social exclusion in Britain\u003c/em\u003e (pp. 315\u0026ndash;346). Policy.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMack, J., \u0026amp; Lansley, S. (1985). \u003cem\u003ePoor britain\u003c/em\u003e. George Allen \u0026amp; Unwin.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMain, G. (2018). Fair shares and families: A child-focused model of intra-household sharing. \u003cem\u003eChildhood Vulnerability Journal\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e1\u003c/em\u003e(1), 31\u0026ndash;49. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1007/s41255-019-00001-9\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1007/s41255-019-00001-9\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMain, G. (2024). Who counts in intra-household sharing? Children as active agents in the household economy. In F. Bennett, S. Avram, \u0026amp; S. Austen (Eds.), \u003cem\u003eA research agenda for financial resources within the household\u003c/em\u003e (pp. 161\u0026ndash;176). Edward Elgar Publishing.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMain, G., \u0026amp; Bradshaw, J. (2012). A child material deprivation index. \u003cem\u003eChild Indicators Research\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e5\u003c/em\u003e(3), 503\u0026ndash;521. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1007/s12187-012-9145-7\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1007/s12187-012-9145-7\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMain, G., \u0026amp; Bradshaw, J. (2014). Children's necessities: Trends over time in perceptions and ownership. \u003cem\u003eJournal of Poverty and Social Justice\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e22\u003c/em\u003e(3), 193\u0026ndash;208. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1332/175982714X14120854997529\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1332/175982714X14120854997529\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eMain, G., \u0026amp; Bradshaw, J. (2016). Child poverty in the UK: Measures, prevalence and intra-household sharing. \u003cem\u003eCritical Social Policy\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e36\u003c/em\u003e(1), 38\u0026ndash;61. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1177/0261018315602627\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1177/0261018315602627\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003ePahl, J. (1983). The allocation of money and the structuring of inequality within marriage. \u003cem\u003eThe Sociological Review\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e31\u003c/em\u003e(2), 237\u0026ndash;262. \u003cspan class=\"ExternalRef\"\u003e\u003cspan class=\"RefSource\"\u003ehttps://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-954X.1983.tb00389.x\u003c/span\u003e\u003cspan address=\"10.1111/j.1467-954X.1983.tb00389.x\" targettype=\"DOI\" class=\"RefTarget\"\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eSuzuki, T. (2012). Europe no shoushika: Sono doko, youin, seisaku taiou wo megutte (low fertility of Japan-East Asia-Europe: Investigating its trend, cause and policy). \u003cem\u003eJournal of Population Problems 68\u0026thinsp;\u0026ndash;\u0026thinsp;3\u003c/em\u003e, 14\u0026ndash;31.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWoolley, F. (2004). Why pay child benefits to mothers? \u003cem\u003eCanadian Public Policy/Analyse de Politiques\u003c/em\u003e, \u003cem\u003e30\u003c/em\u003e(1), 47\u0026ndash;69.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e \u003cli\u003e\u003cspan\u003eWoolley, F. (2024). How much, and why? A critical introduction to the theory and quantitative analysis of intra-household resource distribution. In F. Bennett, S. Avram, \u0026amp; S. Austen (Eds.), \u003cem\u003eA research agenda for financial resources within the household\u003c/em\u003e (pp. 17\u0026ndash;32). Edward Elgar Publishing.\u003c/span\u003e\u003c/li\u003e\u003c/ol\u003e"},{"header":"Tables","content":"\u003cp\u003eTables 1 to 6 are available in the Supplementary Files section\u003c/p\u003e"}],"fulltextSource":"","fullText":"","funders":[],"hasAdminPriorityOnWorkflow":false,"hasManuscriptDocX":true,"hasOptedInToPreprint":true,"hasPassedJournalQc":"","hasAnyPriority":false,"hideJournal":true,"highlight":"","institution":"","isAcceptedByJournal":true,"isAuthorSuppliedPdf":false,"isDeskRejected":"","isHiddenFromSearch":false,"isInQc":false,"isInWorkflow":false,"isPdf":false,"isPdfUpToDate":true,"isWithdrawnOrRetracted":false,"journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true},"keywords":"Intra-household allocation, Material deprivation, Child-Centered approach, Child poverty, Japan","lastPublishedDoi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8114476/v1","lastPublishedDoiUrl":"https://doi.org/10.21203/rs.3.rs-8114476/v1","license":{"name":"CC BY 4.0","url":"https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/"},"manuscriptAbstract":"\u003cp\u003eMany prior studies suggest that parents, particularly mothers, sacrifice their own living standards to protect their children from suffering deprivation (Cantillon et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR11\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e; Dunbar et al., \u003cspan citationid=\"CR14\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2013\u003c/span\u003e; Main \u0026amp; Bradshaw, \u003cspan citationid=\"CR27\" class=\"CitationRef\"\u003e2016\u003c/span\u003e). This can result in an inaccurate estimation of child poverty. However, empirical evidence that the mothers engage in these \u0026lsquo;protecting\u0026rsquo; behaviours is limited, mainly due to the difficulty of measuring the living standards of children and mothers individually. This study, using mother-child paired data of individual deprivations, advances prior literature by 1) improving the comparability of mother deprivation against child deprivation, 2) devising 2 methods to categorise mother-child deprivation combinations and 3) using both child- and mother-reported data for child deprivation. The results reveal that child-reported child deprivation is more prevalent than mother-reported child deprivation, and that mothers protect their children, i.e., provide items for children while they themselves go without, only when they believe that the item is necessary and not necessarily when their children believe that it is necessary. Further analysis showed that mothers increased their \u0026lsquo;protecting\u0026rsquo; behaviour as economic strain increased, in both child-reported and mother-reported data. However, using mother-reported data, it was also shown that mothers\u0026rsquo; \u0026lsquo;exposing (i.e. not providing items for children, while they themselves have them) also increased as the economic strain increased. Finally, examining the relationship between children\u0026rsquo;s psychological well-being and mother-child deprivation combinations showed that the psychological well-being of \u0026lsquo;protected\u0026rsquo; children did not differ that of congruous non-deprived (neither mother nor child deprived) children.\u003c/p\u003e","manuscriptTitle":"Do Mothers protect children from deprivation? Comparison of Mother and Child material deprivation within a household","msid":"","msnumber":"","nonDraftVersions":[{"code":1,"date":"2025-12-17 17:07:08","doi":"10.21203/rs.3.rs-8114476/v1","editorialEvents":[{"type":"communityComments","content":0}],"status":"published","journal":{"display":true,"email":"[email protected]","identity":"researchsquare","isNatureJournal":false,"hasQc":true,"allowDirectSubmit":true,"externalIdentity":"","sideBox":"","snPcode":"","submissionUrl":"/submission","title":"Research Square","twitterHandle":"researchsquare","acdcEnabled":true,"dfaEnabled":false,"editorialSystem":"","reportingPortfolio":"","inReviewEnabled":false,"inReviewRevisionsEnabled":true}}],"origin":"","ownerIdentity":"4cb50efd-10b9-4541-8726-9300ff94b582","owner":[],"postedDate":"December 17th, 2025","published":true,"recentEditorialEvents":[],"rejectedJournal":[],"revision":"","amendment":"","status":"posted","subjectAreas":[],"tags":[],"updatedAt":"2026-04-28T09:40:54+00:00","versionOfRecord":[],"versionCreatedAt":"2025-12-17 17:07:08","video":"","vorDoi":"","vorDoiUrl":"","workflowStages":[]},"version":"v1","identity":"rs-8114476","journalConfig":"researchsquare"},"__N_SSP":true},"page":"/article/[identity]/[[...version]]","query":{"redirect":"/article/rs-8114476","identity":"rs-8114476","version":["v1"]},"buildId":"8U1c8b4HqxoKbykW_rLl7","isFallback":false,"isExperimentalCompile":false,"dynamicIds":[84888],"gssp":true,"scriptLoader":[]}