A Bibliometric Analysis of Material Deprivation: Mapping the Literature and the Emergence of Child Deprivation as a Sub-Field
CHILD INDICATORS RESEARCH, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1007/s12187-026-10441-z
- Dergi Adı: CHILD INDICATORS RESEARCH
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, IBZ Online, Agricultural & Environmental Science Database, Psycinfo, Social Science Premium Collection (ProQuest), Education Collection (ProQuest)
- Bursa Uludağ Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
This study examines the development of the concept of material deprivation (MD) in the academic literature and the phenomenon of child material deprivation as a distinct sub-field, using bibliometric methods. The dataset, covering approximately the last 30 years, includes 805 academic studies from the Web of Science and Scopus databases, showing that academic production has increased since 2010, with the child specific sub-corpus growing at 6.82% annually. The results show that the most productive countries in this field are predominantly European countries and the United States, while the leading academic journals are those focusing on social policy and child welfare, such as the Social Indicators Research and the Child Indicators Research. Co-occurrence network analyses have identified two main focal points in the literature: poverty is concentrated on the axes of social exclusion and employment, while material deprivation focuses on multidimensional measurement methodologies. According to the study's findings, child deprivation, addressed under the heading of child poverty in 2008, has also been examined as child specific material deprivation since 2021. This shows that the concept of child deprivation has evolved from an income-focused approach to a multidimensional approach. A complementary sub-corpus analysis using child-specific keywords reveals that 69.6% of publications on child deprivation can be found only through these terms. A preliminary content analysis of influential articles from four periods reveals a conceptual change from static measurements in the 1990's to crisis-sensitive, dynamic frameworks. The findings also show that MD research is largely absent from mainstream economics and finance journals.