Young Lives is an international research project on childhood poverty that was established in 2000 and is coordinated by a team based at the University of Oxford's Department of International Development (Queen Elizabeth House), Great Britain.
Through interviews, group work and case studies with the children, their parents, teachers, community representatives and others, the project is collecting information not only about their material and social circumstances, but also their perspectives on their lives and aspirations for the futures, set against the environmental and social realities of their communities.
The research concentrates on four countries: Ethiopia, India (Andhra Pradesh), Peru, and Vietnam, chosen because they reflect a wide range of cultural, political, geographical and social contexts.
They face some of the common issues experienced by developing countries, such as high debt burden, post-conflict reconstruction, and adverse environmental conditions such as drought and flood.
The project is core-funded by the UK Department for International Development (DFID), with sub-studies funded by International Development Research Center (IDRC) (in Ethiopia), UNICEF (in India), Irish Aid (in Vietnam), and the Bernard van Leer Foundation (in India and Peru).