Bristol Poverty Institute Presents

Children's Lives: International conference on children and their families using the Multiple Indicator Cluster Surveys (MICS)

 

UNICEF and the Bristol Poverty Institute (BPI) 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 with the Bristol Poverty Institute 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. 

The Conference will celebrate the 30th year of MICS, UNICEF’s household survey programme. 

The resources from the first day are available using this link Day 1 Resources

The resources from the first day are available using this link Day 2 Resources

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 new-born health, education, learning outcome, climate and environment and household survey methodology. 

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.