UNICEF and the Bristol Poverty Institute (BPI) are delighted to formally announce the International Conference on Children and their families, using the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS). 

In 2004, the first international conference on MICS was organized by UNICEF, in collaboration with the Graduate Program on International Affairs at the New School. Twenty years later, UNICEF is collaborating with the Bristol Poverty Institute to organize a second International MICS conference, with a broader set of themes and a larger number of contributions from academia, government, NGOs, UN agencies and household survey experts. 

We invite you to join the conference in-person or online. There will be four parallel sessions over two days, including formal presentation sessions and plenaries. The Conference will celebrate the 30th year of MICS, UNICEF’s household survey programme. 

Background to the MICS Conference 

MICS was developed by UNICEF in the 1990s. Since then, six rounds have been completed, with the 7th round (2023-2026) ongoing. During this time, 121 countries have carried out over 360 surveys. Reports and microdata are available for the majority of surveys (see https://mics.unicef.org/surveys). 

MICS enables countries to produce statistically sound and internationally comparable estimates of a range of indicators in the areas of child survival and health, education and learning skills, gender equality, child protection, adolescent mental health, violence against women, water and sanitation, disability and early childhood development. For many countries, MICS surveys are among the most important sources of data used for situation analyses, to inform policy decisions, design programme interventions, and influence the public opinion on the situation of children, adolescents and their families. 

MICS has enabled the development of multidimensional child poverty measures, using age and gender appropriate indicators of deprivation in a large number of Low and Middle-Income countries. UNICEF and the BPI have pioneered multidimensional child poverty measurement, drawing on a theoretical framework compatible with human rights. 

With each round, MICS has evolved to respond to changing data needs, expanding from 28 to nearly 200 indicators, to modernize data processing and quality assurance systems, and to adopt a range of technological and methodological innovations including mainstreamed geocoding, following up MICS with longitudinal real-time phone surveys, integration with administrative data, real-time monitoring of implementation and web-based analysis tool for indicator tabulation, maps and graphs, powered by harmonized microdata. MICS7 offers the largest coverage of Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) indicators of any global household survey programme, generating information for 40 SDG indicators. 

The Conference will celebrate 30 years of MICS implementation around the world, with presentations based on analyses of MICS microdata in developing and developed country contexts, emergency situations and fragile states, and presentations on household survey methodology. 

Programme 

The Conference has a hybrid format, on both days (2nd and 3rd of September) with a limited number of plenaries and more than 15 presentation sessions, online and in-person. The final Conference programme will be released on the main conference webpage on 23 August, Friday.  

Some of the topics that will be covered in the presentations include the following: 

• Child labour, child discipline, violence against women and children, mental health, child marriage, birth registration, female genital cutting, water and sanitation, multidimensional poverty, small area estimation, geospatial analysis, early childhood development, social protection, disability, impact of natural disasters, living arrangements, infant and young child feeding, food security, anthropometry, childhood diseases, reproductive, maternal and newborn health, education, learning outcome, climate and environment and household survey methodology. 

Conference Fees 

Donations. In lieu of a registration fee, the Bristol Poverty Institute asks all attendees to please make a charitable donation to a poverty-relevant cause of your choosing. This could include, for example, local food banks and/or community-based initiatives, as well as national and international NGOs. We recognise that not everyone can afford to do this, however, so it is not a requirement. The recommended donation amounts are as follows: 

• £50 Standard ticket per day (i.e. £100 for both days) 

• £20 Student/Third sector ticket per day (i.e. £40 for both days) 

Data bursaries. Costs of attending a conference can be a barrier to attendance for some, particularly those with lived experience of the topics under discussion, so the BPI has made available some data bursaries to support online, international engagement. 

Please note that funds are limited, so please be respectful and only apply for these bursaries if you genuinely need them. For more information and to apply a data bursary, please read the guidance and complete the application form on the MICS conference bursaries webpage. 

The organisers regret that financial support will not be provided to presenters planning to travel to Bristol. However, coffee breaks and lunch will be provided on site. 

Registration 

For in person registration, please refer to the in-person attendance registration page. Note that in-person participation will be capped at 100 individuals, with priority given to presenters. 

Please refer to the Information Note on the main website for travel, accommodation and other logistical details.  

For online participation, please refer to the main conference webpage for the final programme of the event, where links will be provided for each session. 

Conference Venue 

Room 1.11, Merchant Venturer’s Building, 75 Woodland Road, Bristol, BS8 1UB 

Directions: Room 1.11 is in the Merchant Venturers Building at the University of Bristol. Enter through the main entrance on Woodland Road and continue to the large atrium. Take the stairs or lift to the ground floor. Turn right and head for the marked door on the left. Room 1.11 is to the left. 

Organisers 

The Bristol Poverty Institute (BPI) is a Research Institute at the University of Bristol in the UK. Founded in 2017 and building on the legacy and strengths of the University’s Townsend Centre for International Poverty Research, we are dedicated to multi-disciplinary research on the causes, effects and measurement of poverty around the world to inform effective policy and practice. The BPI works in partnership with a wide range of organisations across the globe, from local community groups to national governments, united by the common goal of SDG1: To reduce poverty in all its forms everywhere.  

The University of Bristol is one of the world’s leading universities, with a global reputation for impactful research. In its research strategy, it has outlined a number of key strategic pillars and cross-cutting themes, including sustainable and equitable health outcomes, climate change and social justice. The BPI’s work serves all of these pillars and themes, with considerations of social justice, in particular, embedded in everything that we do. 

UNICEF is the United Nations organization on children. The fundamental mission of UNICEF is to promote the rights of every child, everywhere, in everything the organization does — in programs, in advocacy, technical support and advice, and in operations. The equity strategy, emphasizing the most disadvantaged and excluded children and families, translates this commitment to children’s rights into action to the degree that any child has an unequal chance in life — in its social, political, economic, civic and cultural dimensions — her or his rights are violated. There is growing evidence that investing in the health, education and protection of a society’s most disadvantaged citizens — addressing inequity — not only will give all children the opportunity to fulfil their potential and realize their rights but also contributes to sustained development and stability of countries. 

The MICS programme was developed by UNICEF in the 1990s, to support governments in collecting key data on children’s well-being, specifically to generate data on the World Summit for Children goals. Since its inception in the mid-1990s, MICS has supported 121 countries to generate impact and outcome indicators relevant to children, becoming a major source of data for governments around the world. MICS is essentially a technical collaboration system between UNICEF’s global MICS team and implementing partners at country level. MICS is a reliable source of data freely available to policy makers, international organizations, researchers, civil society and private organizations. 

Contact 

If you have any queries, please contact mics@unicef.org or bpi-conference-2024@bristol.ac.uk.