As a study of poverty during childhood, Young Lives focuses on children and their experiences of poverty in order to extend understanding of this critical period of the life course. Children's well-being and life chances are, however, interdependent with those of their parents and carers and the communities in which they reside, so Young Lives also considers household and community circumstances as central to child well-being. Additionally, the impacts of poverty have to be assessed in terms of other forms of risk to children, such as environmental hazards or ill-health that are often a cause of, or exacerbated by, material lack.