According
to international standards, children are defined as “individuals below the age of
18” (CRC, Article1); this definition will be used throughout the paper.
However, it is important to note that only some of the documents included in
this literature review provide information dis aggregated to specify the 0-18
age group.2
In
most of the research examined children are defined by the age group 0-15, and
youth by the age group 16-24. Practical rather than theoretical reasons guide
this decision. First, usually data are dis aggregated according to the interest
of the researchers, rather than according to international standards or
conventions. As already mentioned, statistics on population and children are
usually collected for health purposes, such as the Demographic and Health
Surveys (DHS). In these surveys, data collected to estimate the fertility rate
– defined as the total number of live births per 1000 women aged 15 to 44 years
– establish a group of females’ age 0-15, identified on the basis of
non-fertility. Similar age dis aggregation occurs in statistical studies related
to economic activity of people, such as the Labor Force Surveys (LFS), because
the legal minimum age for entry into the workforce is often 14 and 15 years.
Finally, the identification of a cohort of 15 years can be used to divide all
the population into 15 year intervals (15, 30, 45, 60, 75, 90), which is more
common than identification of cohorts in multiples of 18. Due to these
practical constraints in available data the use of 18 as a consistent and
unique age for describing children in this review is limited, but should not be
perceived as critique of international standards.
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