Child Sensitive Social Protection

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Child Sensitive Social Protection

• Gaspar Fajth
• Chief, Social Policy and Economic Analysis,
• UNICEF Policy and Practice, New York
• gfajth_at_gmail.com
• Strategies for the extension of Social Protection
• Turin 5 October, 2009

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The themes of this presentation

• Introduction the SPF-I and children
• Why Social Protection needs to be child
  sensitive?
• What is so special about children?
• The relevance of social protection programmes for
  children
• Challenges, issues

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1. Introduction the Social Protection Floor and
children

• UN Crisis response (April 2009)
• Comprehensive Framework for Action (Food
  Taskforce)
• Joint Crisis Initiatives (6 Social Protection
  Floor)
• The Social Protection Floor
• Basic social services
• Income security
• Focus on poor and vulnerable populations
• Initiative and/or approach? The issue of national
  ownership
• Joint Statement on Child Sensitive Social
  Protection
• (August 2009)
• The aim of this session

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Poverty and absolute child deprivation global
evidence

• Chance of a woman dying from complications during
  pregnancy or delivery
• Ireland 1 48,000
• Niger 1 7
• Chance of a child dying during her/his first 5
  years of life
• Hungary 1 143
• Cameroon 1 7
• Risk that a child will never attend school
• Developing countries 1 7
• Risk that a young child will be malnourished
• Developing countries 1 3
• Risk that a child will live in absolute poverty
  (severe human deprivation)
• Developing countries 1 2
• Risk that the child will live in household with
  no access to social protection
• World 4 5

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2. Why Social Protection needs to be
child-sensitive?

• Many societies want to prioritize children/make
  progress on the MDGs
• Social protection can reduce future poverty
• through preventing risks, protecting from impact,
  promoting proactive responses and transforming
  the legal environment and/or societal values
• Childrens experiences of poverty and
  vulnerability are different from those of adults
• loss of family care is a significant risk for
  children in the contexts of malaria, HIV/AIDS,
  conflict, humanitarian crises, and juvenile
  justice and child protection practices
• childrens complex physical, psychological ,
  emotional and intellectual development create
  particular opportunities as well as
  vulnerabilities
• they can not and should not respond alone

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• Child poverty has been defined as
• deprivation of the material, spiritual and
  emotional resources needed to survive, develop
  and thrive, leaving children unable to enjoy
  their rights, achieve their full potential or
  participate as full and equal members of society
  (SOWC 2005)
• Child sensitive social protection therefore
  needs
• to have a multidimensional focus
• look at the options of child-centered as well as
  adult-centered programmes
• to be developed as an evidence-based approach
• consider the fiscal and political realities, but
  aim at maximizing opportunities and developmental
  outcomes for children within given constraints
• challenge those constraints taking advantage of
  evidence on progress elsewhere
• develop indicators and analyses, assessments
• raise awareness and build a coalition for making
  social protection child sensitive
• Questions?

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3. What is so special about children?

• Moral and legal commitments
• High returns to investment
• Short window opportunity
• Strong gains from combination of interventions
• High risks that investment will not happen

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Moral and legal commitments

• Private and public support
• Households
• intra- and inter-household distribution and use
  of resources
• coping strategies are not always sustainable/may
  have negative child impact
• Corporate sector responsibility
• business strategy
• workforce (HR) policy
• Public authorities
• laws, policies, programmes
• transparency, accountability, effectiveness and
  efficiency
• Questions
• What factors influence these?
• How can we measure and/or influence them?

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Moral and legal commitments (cont)

• 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child
• The rights of the individual child
• citizenship
• family
• health
• education
• protection from abuse
• access to social security
• maximum available resources
• international collaboration
• Legislative reform and implementation
• Questions
• What are the implications?
• How to operationalize/prioritize/make progress?

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Evidence on the high returns from investing in
children

• Micronutrients for children
• the most productive global investment (Copenhagen
  Consensus, 2008)
• providing essential vitamins and minerals would
  cost 60 million per year and hold annual
  benefits above 1 billion a 1500 per cent rate
  of return (Horton at al 2008)
• Early childhood development
• analysis of four early childhood and pre-school
  programmes indicates benefit-cost ratios range
  between 3.8-17.0 to one in the US (Schweinhart, L
  2004)
• Indonesia Early Childhood Development Project
  suggests a ratio of 6 to 1 (World Bank 2009)
• Infant and maternal nutrition intergenerational
  effects
• evidence in rural Guatemala suggests that that
  for every 100 gram increase in maternal birth
  weight, her infants birth weight increased by 29
  grams (Ramakrisnan at al 1999)
• Basic education
• the estimated rate of return to one additional
  year of schooling is 10 per cent on average
  globally even without counting the social
  benefits of better education (Psacharopoulos at
  al. (2004)
• Child protection
• Children from socio-economically deprived
  families had a chance 700 times the average for
  placement in substitute care in the UK
  (Bebbington and Miles, 1989)
• Question
• How evidence like these could be used in the
  policy process?

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Short window opportunity

• Permanently damaging effects of even temporarily
  lack of support

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Strong extra gains from combined interventions

• For example
• Nutrition
• calorie, protein, micronutrients intake as well
  as water and sanitation, disease control
• Stimulation
• cognitive learning and emotional support
• Best results come from a combination of nutrition
  support and stimulation for young children

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Good nutrition and psychosocial development help
each other
In a Jamaican study, stunted children aged 9-24
months were randomly assigned to nutrition only,
stimulation only, nutrition and stimulation, and
control group and IQ was monitored ? The
benefits from a combination of nutrition
supplements and stimulation were additive after
2 years of intervention the children receiving
both treatments caught up to the nonstunted
control group (top line)
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But remember! Stimulation works also the other
(negative) way

• Stigma and low expectations influence child
  behaviour
• The case of competition at a maze in India
  children's performance differed when their caste
  was made public! (WDR 2006 p76)
• Stress can permanently lower memory capacity in
  children
• new research finds causality between chronic
  stress associated with poverty and impaired brain
  development in children (Economist 04.04.09)
• These findings are particularly important
• in the context of gender, adolescent,
  HIV/AIDS-related, poverty alleviation and special
  needs (child disability) programmmes
• when making decisions on targeting of social
  programmes

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High risk that child-related commitments will not
be realized/investment will not happen

• Structural poverty and/or social exclusion
• poor maternal nutrition, health
• loss of parental upbringing
• low parental education and/or parenting skills
• low awareness on childrens needs and/or
  opportunities
• discrimination (e.g. gender, disability,
  ethnicity)
• poor access to assets and income
• Current poverty impacts
• Idiosyncratic shocks (catastrophic health
  expenses, loss of a family member, loss of jobs
  etc)
• Aggregate /covariate shocks (economic, social or
  environmental crises)
• Agency and governance issues
• Voicelessness
• Principal agent issue/relational nature of child
  well being (dependency on adults)

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Summary children should get priority in public
policy

• Moral and legal commitments
• Private and public support
• 1989 Convention on the Rights of the Child
• High returns to investment
• Childhood is the best opportunity to invest in
  human resources
• Broader social and economic gains returns tend
  to be particularly high among girls
• Short window opportunity
• Permanently damaging effects of even temporarily
  lack of support
• Strong positive feedback from combination of
  interventions
• Progress needed at all major dimensions of child
  well being
• High risks that investment will not happen, due
  to
• Structural poverty and/or social exclusion
• Current poverty impacts due to economic, social
  or environmental crises
• Governance and agency issues
• Strong evidence on the impact of poverty on
  children

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4. The relevance of social protection programmes
for children

• Social protection is part of broader development
  policy
• Social protection cuts across many sectors
• The principles of Child Sensitive Social
  Protection
• Social protection programmes relevant for
  children
• Are Conditional Cash Transfers magic bullets?
• How programmes could address the continuity of
  risk and vulnerability

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Social protection is part of broader development
policy
Source World Bank 2008
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Social protection cuts across many sectors
Nutrition
Social Policy
Health
Water and sanitation
Education
Child protection
Social Protection ?
Social welfare
Source UNICEF
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• Transfers could help removing barriers on the
  demand side
• However, action on the supply side of services is
  often also necessary
• Income/consumption poverty is a major barrier
• But poverty is multidimensional and factors other
  than income matter too!
• The structure of social expenditures shows
  different patterns by regions

Source World Bank 2008
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Social protection programmes relevant for children

• Social assistance (safety net) programmes
• Targeted child grants (unconditional)
• Conditional cash transfers (CCTs)
• School feeding and other nutrition programmes
• Fee waivers (health, education) and other in-kind
  transfers
• Emergency programmes (cash handouts, social
  funds, nutrition, education kits etc.)
• Workfare programmes, active labour market
  policies (including youth programmes)
• Means-tested unemployment benefit or other social
  assistance
• Social pensions
• Social insurance programmes (contributory)
• Cash family allowances (often hidden as tax
  benefits)
• Maternal and parental benefits
• Sick leaves
• Public health insurance
• Unemployment benefit
• Public pension schemes

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• Universal social protection programmes
• Birth grants (conditional to birth registration)
• Pre-school programmes (subsidized)
• Social care services (visiting nurses,
  counseling, shelter, respite care services etc.)
• Free health services (e.g. on maternal and child
  health)
• (Public health measures and free education is not
  considered as social protection, but these are
  very important for children)
• Universal child grants/allowances
• Price subsidies (staple and other food, fuel and
  energy, housing, water etc.)
• Social protection is also private

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Conditional Cash Transfers a magic bullet?

• What is a CCT?
• Social assistance programmes that provide cash
  transfers on evidence that households use health,
  education or other services (e.g. social work
  services in Chiles Solidario)
• Focus on addressing structural poverty through
  investment in childrens human capital
• Conditionalities - e.g. compliance with
  immunization plans, checkups for pregnant women,
  regular school attendance, participation in
  parents-teachers meetings etc.
• Key examples
• The Bolsa Familia in Brazil and the Oportunidades
  in Mexico, which cover respectively about 12 and
  5 million families with a budget less than 0.5
  of GDP
• Key features
• The practice of evaluation demonstrating
  results, helping political acceptance and
  improving design
• High concentration on the poor the share of
  beneficiaries in poorest income quintile fall
  between 32 (Education Support Project in
  Cambodia) and 74 (Bolsa Familia)
• Programme non-compliance could reach up a third
  or more of targeted beneficiaries
• Administrative costs hover between 4 and 20
• Gender considerations

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How programmes could be integrated to address the
continuity of risk and vulnerability

• Examples
• A type interventions countercyclical
  macroeconomic policy, free basic education,
  immunization
• B type interventions child/family allowances,
  preventative social work services
• C type interventions intensive/emergency
  social work services
• A - B types together Bolsa Familia CCT
  (Brazil)
• B - C types together Solidario CCT(Chile)

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Principles of child sensitive social protection

• Avoid adverse impacts on children, and reduce or
  mitigate social and economic risks that directly
  affect childrens lives
• Intervene as early as possible where children are
  at risk, in order to prevent irreversible
  impairment or harm to children
• Consider the age and gender specific risks and
  vulnerabilities of children throughout the
  life-cycle
• Mitigate the effects of shocks, exclusion and
  poverty on families, recognizing that families
  raising children need support to ensure equal
  opportunity
• Make special provision to reach children who are
  particularly vulnerable and excluded, including
  children without parental care, and who are
  marginalized within their families or communities
  due to their gender, disability, ethnicity,
  HIV/AIDS or other factors
• Consider the mechanisms and intra-household
  dynamics that may affect how children are
  reached, with particular attention paid to the
  balance of power between men and women within the
  household and broader community
• Include the voices and opinions of children,
  their caregivers and youth in the understanding
  and design of social protection systems and
  programmes.

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5. Challenges, issues

• Low and unequal access to SP
• Focus on structural versus transient poverty
• Affordability ( of GDP, of public spending)
• Political support and public attitudes
• The issue of targeting (means-tested,
  categorical)
• The issue of conditionality
• Trade-offs (within SP and over education or other
  public programmes)
• Negligible positive or negative effects (work and
  fertility effects, crowding out, stigma, worse
  child outcome etc.)
• Gaps in attention to social are services and
  women in the labour force
• The culture of evaluation (missing, narrow)
• Administrative feasibility (corruption, capacity,
  costs, transparency)
• Local ownership and exportability of key SP tools
  (local context)
• Low awareness and/or low priority

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Thank you!