June 2005, id21 insights #56

Make childhood poverty history

About 600 million children worldwide are growing up in absolute poverty. Over ten million children under five years of age die every year. Nearly one billion children will be growing up with impaired mental development by 2020.
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Hanush Abraha is 14 years old and is in the 3rd grade at school in Ethiopia. Young Lives research found that many Ethiopian boys in their early teens are taken out of school to enter a job because they are paid more than girls. (Photo by: Feleke Deneke/Young Lives)

Other articles in this issue:

Economic policy must recognise children

Macroeconomic policies have powerful effects on children. They shape public spending on basic services such as education and health and influence how households respond to changing economic conditions, often in ways that are not good for children. Yet policy making on the whole does not recognise child well-being as an objective or an outcome. Pro-child interventions relating to economic growth, trade and macroeconomic policy are critical to overcoming poverty.

Educating women = healthier children?

What is the best way to improve the health of a nation's children? Community healthcare facilities, water supplies and sewerage systems are traditional targets for public investment. Peru's experience suggests that improving women's education is just as important.

Children's issues ignored in Ethiopia's PRSP process

Donors, governments and other groups acknowledge that addressing childhood poverty and labour is an important part of broader poverty reduction efforts. Yet, policies with a more comprehensive approach to tackling the multi-dimensionality of child poverty are rarely included in national poverty strategies.

Cash transfers can reduce childhood poverty

Forty percent of children in developing countries struggle to survive on less than one US dollar a day, according to the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF). Childhood poverty often leads to long term vulnerability. It is associated with lower educational attainment and schooling which affects future earning potential and well-being. Cash transfers can protect people's well-being as well enable them to invest in their future.

Monitoring budgets for child rights

The Bill of Rights in South Africa's constitution gives special consideration to child rights such as basic nutrition and education, health care and social services. Is it possible to ensure that these rights are realised?

Dynamics of child poverty in the Kyrgyz Republic

The Kyrgyz Republic is one of the smallest and least developed of the newly created independent states of the former Soviet Union. It ranks 110 out of the 177 countries on the Human Development Index (HDI). In the late 1990s, 88 percent of the population were living on less than US$ 4 per day. Children make up nearly two-fifths of its population but child poverty has received little attention.

Does child labour always undermine education?

Children are often forced to work due to chronic poverty. Globally, work is the main occupation of almost 20 percent of all children aged under 15. This is considered a major obstacle to achieving the Millennium Development Goal (MDG) of universal primary education by 2015.

‘High achievers’ prioritise social policy

Costa Rica, Cuba, Barbados, Sri Lanka, South Korea, Malaysia, Mauritius, Botswana, Zimbabwe and Kerala (India) have succeeded in improving child welfare to a much higher level than might be expected given their national wealth. They are 'high-achievers' in social policy: in 50 years they have made advances in health and education that took 200 years in the industrialised world.

Useful web links

Further web resources.

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