Success Stories: achievements in tackling childhood poverty
What combinations of policies have worked well to reduce childhood poverty and break poverty cycles? What social, economic, political and cultural conditions underpinned these successes? What lessons do they have for policy makers today? This research drew well-known and unsung successes to bring this experience together. Focusing mostly on largescale 'tried and tested' experiences in low-income countries, researchers also drew lessons from relevant middle and high income countries' experiences, and from small-scale successes with strong potential for scaling up. Overall findings are summarised in CHIP Briefing 8.
The research focused on:
1. Basic services. Work on this theme analysed policies to promote affordable, good quality, health, nutrition, education and water and sanitation, focusing both on sectorspecific policies and supportive 'enabling' policies and approaches.
Key findings:
- Investment in these sectoral areas has played a critical role in reducing childhood poverty.
- Committed states have achieved this by prioritising
carefully within and between sectors, giving social policy the same emphasis as economic policy and making strong efforts to reach excluded groups.
- Mechanisms for accountability to the public have also
played an important role.
See CHIP Reports 9 and 10 and Briefings 5 and 7.
2 Economic security. This research examined the kinds of
macro and sectoral policies which have proved most effective or have the greatest potential to tackle childhood poverty. It included an analysis of key economic policies, the role of cash transfers in securing child wellbeing and ways of promoting youth employment.
Key findings:
- Both growth-oriented and distributional measures are essential for reducing childhood poverty. Maximising the potential of growth-oriented policies for children in poverty requires substantial investment in social infrastructure, particularly universal basic education and comprehensive social protection - preferably before major liberalisation takes place.
- Promoting poor people's employment opportunities
(including those of young people) and asset redistribution is also vital for securing family livelihoods and thus preventing childhood poverty.
- One effective form of redistribution is cash transfers
for poor families - income supplements and minimum guaranteed incomes tend to have the greatest poverty reduction impacts. Programmes that integrate cash transfers with other key services are likely to have the strongest impacts on child wellbeing.
See CHIP Reports 4 and 7 and Briefings 2, 3 and 6.
3. Supportive policy for child wellbeing.
Research in this area examined the contribution of early childhood development programmes to tackling childhood poverty and the importance of children and young people's own action in securing gains for children and young people. It also examined the importance of population change, particularly reductions in family size, in improvements in child wellbeing.
Key findings:
- The relationship between poverty, population trends and childhood poverty is very context- and culture-specific. Overall, the poorer the country and the higher the fertility level, the more beneficial the effects of decreasing fertility rates for children's wellbeing. However, policies aimed at reducing population growth are not necessarily the most effective route to reducing childhood poverty; family planning programmes should be implemented alongside wider development programmes in order to achieve substantial improvements in childhood wellbeing.
- Children and young people's views have had substantially more influence in local decision-making that at higher levels. The greatest potential for children and young people to influence policy is through sustained involvement in ongoing democratic and planning processes rather than through the one-off events that many agencies have been inclined to support.
- Despite strong claims by many donors and advocates
about the poverty-reduction potential of early childhood development (ECD) programmes, the evidence for this is weak. However, ECD can make a substantial contribution to the quality of especially vulnerable children's lives and provide safe childcare for working parents. Substantially more resources are needed if ECD is to make a greater contribution to the wellbeing and development of poor children.
See CHIP Reports 5, 6 and 8 and Briefing 4.
Donor approaches to childhood poverty
- How do multilateral and bilateral donors view childhood poverty and how do they translate this into action?
- How far do these donors think there is a case for
investing in children, and why? How far do they expect children to benefit from wider development initiatives?
- What are the implications for child wellbeing of moves
towards better donor co-ordination, aligning donor support with Poverty Reduction Strategies, and in many countries, away from projects to financing Sector Wide Approaches and general budget support?
CHIP researchers undertook a series of interviews with donor agency, government and NGO representatives in Ghana, Tanzania, Mongolia and Kyrgyzstan and donors' head offices and analysed key donor policy and programme documents. They concluded that for aid to make a greater contribution to reducing childhood poverty:
- Donors need to take a more strategic approach to childhood issues, recognising the critical importance of action in childhood for long-term poverty reduction, and tackling both causes and 'symptoms' of childhood poverty.
- Donors should continue current moves to increase the
responsiveness of aid to national priorities and to
distribute it through national systems. In some cases there may be a need to earmark resources for particular sectors; donors may also need to promote the interests of very marginalised children and families, who are at risk of being forgotten. At times this may mean working with a range of partners, including diverse civil society organisations.
See CHIP Reports 12 and 13 and Briefing 9.
