The recent financial crises and economic downturns have raised an alarm on the
deepened socio-economic conditions of many already poor households discounting
children and the youth development to the bottom of the governments and households’
priority lists. Under economic constraints, governments are unable of rebalancing
priorities to provide necessary welfare services such as health, education and social
security which are the prerequisite for the wellbeing and development of children and
the youth. Poor households in the other hand, struggle to respond to their needs
especially those of children and the youth who become more vulnerable.
This paper understands cautiously the crucial role played by poor financial and
economic conditions (poverty) and the levels of poor socio-infrastructural service
delivery in creating despair in many households and therefore a huge crisis to many
children and the youth. However, financial and economic crises are not the sole cause
of despair and crisis in the lives of children and the youth. Variables from the social,
cultural, environmental and structural domains too contribute to the misery of children
and the youth. This paper substantiates its theory by reviewing the South African Index
of Multiple Deprivation to establish the extent to which poor economic conditions impact
on the misery of children and youth. Similarly, the paper reviews a child abuse database
concluding that the correlation between poverty and child and youth misery is not
strong, the paper proposes the use of the Integrated Modeled Theory that facilitates the
combination of different variables in understanding child and youth misery and at the
same time assists in broad policy and decision making and reviews for prevention,
preservation, intervention and management of child and youth misery with regard to
education, health, and access to financial assistance and social security grants, (leaning
on self-sufficiency rather than overreliance and dependency).