Evidence for Action Blog

As highlighted in the recent UN Secretary General's report, Protecting children from bullying, rates of bullying among children are high across the world. The social costs of bullying are also high: bullied children face a greater risk of poor health, internalized stress, and suicidal thoughts. Negative outcomes of bullying have been reported not only in high-income countries, where the majority of research is conducted. Findings in the UNICEF Innocenti Discussion Paper Experiences of peer bullying among adolescents and associated effects on young adult outcomes, show that among adolescents in four low- and middle-income countries, being bullied by peers at age 15 tended to be associated with negative effects on self-esteem, self-efficacy, parent and peer-relations at age 19. Altogether, these findings strengthen the view that bullying is a serious global problem, negatively affecting the lives of children throughout the world. The wide diffusion of bullying and the seriousness of its consequences on victims were the main catalysts for our research on the factors that increase the risk of bullying among children of special vulnerable groups. The recent European immigration crisis - in particular the situation in Italy and Greece - called our attention to the problem of bullying among migrant and refugee children attending Italian schools. Bullying of migrant and refugee children, similar to victimization of children of a particular ethnic group, is a form of bias-based bullying, that is, of a peer because they belong to a specific social or ethnic group. While some forms of bias-based bullying have been better analysed, studies on victimization of migrant and refugee children are still few in number. Starting from this background, we conducted a survey of 771 children attending Italian primary and secondary schools. The survey sample consisted of 598 children, including 173 from a migrant or refugee background. To obtain an objective estimation of the rates of involvement in bullying of children, we used peer-report measures and asked children for anonymous nomination of classmates who were victims, bullies, defenders of the victims, outsiders, assistants or reinforcers of the bully. Classmates reported that 17.9 per cent of migrant and refugee children compared to 11.4 per cent of other children had been victimized, providing evidence that migrant and refugee children face a higher risk of bullying. Furthermore, we found that the risk increased if classmates of the bullied child self-justified bullying of migrant and refugee children (e.g. thinking that such children deserved to be bullied) in order to avoid guilt feelings. Indeed, in classrooms where migrant and refugee children were bullied, support or reinforcement of perpetrator actions among classmates was associated with higher levels of these self-justification, or prejudicial, thoughts. In a second study, 692 students in Italian secondary schools, including 142 migrant or refugee children, filled in questionnaires on their bullying experiences and on prejudices. Thirty-five pupils (19 from migrant or refugee background) were also interviewed. We found that prejudicial beliefs against migrants and refugees were associated with the likelihood of migrant and refugee children being victimized by bullying. Gambian boys who have recently migrated to Italy play with a football in Pozzallo, Sicily.Therefore, the existence of anti-immigrant prejudice was found to play an important role in driving bullying. Adolescent interviews revealed that the phenomenon was often explained as caused by prejudicial beliefs toward migrants and refugees. Findings from these surveys are among the first to shed light on this phenomenon. They further indicate that additional factors such as negative perceptions and prejudice toward migrants and refugees at the society level need to be addressed in efforts to design interventions to tackle bias-based bullying against migrant and refugee children. Finally, we still do not know enough about the social and psychological drivers of bullying against migrants and refugees. Indeed, in the scarce literature on this topic a higher risk of migrant and refugee children being victimized was not consistently observed. This could be due to several factors: 1. differences among host country contexts, 2. differences among groups of migrants and refugees, in terms of their ethnicity and origin, 3. whether children are recent migrants or refugees or born in the host nation. The dramatic influx of migrant and refugee arrivals in Europe, with the related increase in social tension this has caused, suggests that we need to continue to monitor the phenomenon of bias-, or prejudice-based bullying involving these groups. We need to better understand how it is developing and how we can address this problem effectively. The rise in global migration, likely a long term phenomenon not limited to one region or corridor, could well drive an increase in bias- or prejudice-based bullying of children and adolescents in numerous countries. Simona C. S. Caravita, Ph.D., is an Associate Professor of Developmental Psychology with the Department of Psychology (CRIdee) of Catholic University of the Sacred Heart in Milan. She has contributed to work on violence affecting children at UNICEF Innocenti. Sign up the for UNICEF Innocenti e-newsletters on any page of unicef-irc.org. Follow Innocenti on twitter @UNICEFInnocenti.

With world leaders gathering at the United Nations for high level deliberations on the global migration crisis, the need for solid evidence to develop better policies on child migration has never been greater. As a response, UNICEF has  released  a new report, "Uprooted: The Growing Crisis for Migrant and Refugee Children," which  includes comprehensive data on child migrants and refugees around the world. In addition UNICEF  Innocenti has devoted the latest edition of Research Watch to the theme: Children on the Move. Rayyan Sabet-Parry, Consultant at UNICEF Innocenti, spoke to Bina D'Costa, a contributor to the new Research Watch portal and soon to join  UNICEF Innocenti as a migration specialist. Rayyan Sabet-Parry: What are the main drivers pushing children to migrate, and why do we need to understand them better? Bina D'Costa: Children cross borders - within and outside states - for different reasons and in varying circumstances, both voluntary and involuntary. In a broad sense, economic, socio-political and environmental motivations influence children to migrate. Poverty has traditionally been one of the main drivers of migration of children, particularly from rural to urban locations. However, there is now a recognition that the poorest cannot so easily migrate to another country. Children are also trafficked to provide labour, forced to move because of political violence and environmental disasters. Although internal/domestic migration of children occurs persistently, it is perceived, albeit incorrectly, as ordinary, everyday migration. On the other hand, international migration of children is now more evident and because of conflict induced migration, understood as distinct, dangerous and traumatic. The mobility pathway deeply impacts on a child's development and the future of our world. We need to understand the migration patterns, because it matters. RSP: We see a lot of coverage of unaccompanied children in migration. Are more children migrating on their own? Bina D'Costa, scholar and researcher focusing on human rights, human security and migration issues.BD: This multifaceted and global humanitarian phenomenon involves children who are either sent by their families for protection, or are compelled to move following a loss of family in a crisis. Unaccompanied and separated children have long been a feature of migration flows. However, historically, in the context of official resettlement programs in developed countries, they have not been associated with refugee status. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, scores of children, including unaccompanied and separated children, started to arrive in Europe. Catastrophic events in different parts of the world have prompted many children to leave their homes alone. In part due to a lack of understanding of how serious this phenomenon is and in part due to the absence of any coordinated formal responses from the states and the international organizations, the horrific ordeals of unaccompanied and separated children have been largely overlooked. Recent research and advocacy has turned its attention to the experiences of children travelling alone. Because of sympathetic media coverage, and increasing interest from regulatory bodies, we now know that the numbers of unaccompanied children to developed countries, particularly the United States and Europe, has escalated dramatically due to poor economic conditions and protracted conflicts. Children are also crossing international borders at much younger ages.   The number of unaccompanied girls has also been increasing at an alarming rate. RSP: Why is research on children migrants so important right now? BD: Child-sensitive and child-responsive research is incredibly important and could explain the dynamics of migration not captured by more general research on migration. Although vast data now exists chronicling the lives of migrants, we have less understanding of the movement of young people.   Historically, receiving and origin societies have been more supportive of the migration of children and youth for a range of reasons. At one end of the spectrum, societies often have an exploitative interest in child migrants, who are valued for their labour, and at the other end, there exists genuine compassion and recognition that the international community must commit together to support child migrants. RSP: How can better evidence improve the situation for children in migration? BD: Children should be given the opportunity to become productive and valued members of the society through careful adaptation and integration which respects their cultural diversity and be sensitive to the profound trauma that these children have suffered. We have limited literature that includes perspectives of child migrants. Evidence based research can also help us distinguish between the needs and protection strategies for the hyper-visible and vulnerable child migrants from the independent and invisible child migrants. RSP: What are the main challenges for legal systems in terms of protecting the rights of children in migration? BD: The failure of legislative measures to address the specific circumstances and vulnerabilities of children, the lack of sincere commitment of parties, particularly those caught up in conflicts and a failure to form strong and unified regulatory regimes capable of dealing with child migrant rights are among some of the major challenges in protecting children. Legal systems focus on protection from the most egrarious violations of children's rights and fall short in providing for children's wellbeing and development.  The reach of laws is often poor due to a lack of awareness, lack of respect and lack of enforcement and because children are uniquely susceptible to exploitation.  Children are often harmed by those who should be protecting them.   Child migrant agencies are frequently ignored or manipulated in the interest of state parties. RSP: How do you end the detention of children seeking refugee status? What are the alternatives? BD: States must ensure humane and appropriate legislative, administrative, social and educational measures to protect children seeking sanctuary. We need to recognize that one of the most inhumane ways of assessing a child's refugee status is housing children in detention facilities. Advocacy and evidence based research reveals the harmful consequences of detention on children. The outputs of such research need to be communicated effectively to state parties. There are alternatives to prolonged and mandatory detention.   Children could be provided with community care following appropriate assessments of risks and benefits. Usually community care is far easier and cheaper, and involves fewer risks to the mental health and wellbeing of children. RSP: How can we protect child refugees and migrants from exploitation and violence? BD: Approximately half of the 19 million registered refugees globally are children and youth. Advocating for protection becomes a much more complex process for children who are forced to flee their homes and have their citizenship stripped. Almost without any exception all child refugees experience severe stress and anxiety. Many children, who are forced to flee are taken by armed groups and can be used to perpetrate violence against others. Four specific advocacy approaches are critical in ensuring the protection of child refugees: publicly naming those who target children; establishing children's 'peace zones'; lobbying for a more rigorous normative framework of protection; and establishing international alerts to ensure that states and non-state actors comply with existing humanitarian and human rights norms. RSP: Finally, is there a role for research in making societies more welcoming and receptive to child migrants? BD: We need systematic analyses to understand the dynamics of child migration. There also has to be close collaboration between researchers, policymakers and activists allowing us to express the nuances of child-sensitive and child-responsive migratory processes. Research, in particular evidence-based research, can persuade international, regional and state actors that the migration of children is a humanitarian issue not just a political issue.   Research can dispel myths and anxieties surrounding migration, and could help design strategies that are effective in resettling children. Good research can also explain to advocates for child migrants how and why certain political decisions are taken, and support the explicit integration of children's rights and protection in the migration agenda. ------------- Bina D'Costa will soon take up her duties as research and evaluation specialist (migration) at UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti. Before that she was the Director of Teaching in the Department of International Relations for the Australian National University in Canberra. Rayyan Sabet-Parry is a consultant with UNICEF Innocenti. The Office of Research - Innocenti is UNICEF's dedicated research centre undertaking research on emerging and current priorities to shape policy and practice for children. Subscribe to UNICEF Innocenti emails  here. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter  here. Access the complete Innocenti research catalogue:  unicef-irc.org/publications  

During a recent trip to Ghana, we presented the baseline findings from an impact evaluation of the "LEAP 1000" cash transfer programme to UNICEF colleagues, government and development partners. LEAP 1000, an extension of Ghana's Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty programme, targets households with young children. It is designed to improve the nutritional status of children in  the first 1000 days of life. Implementers are up for a tough challenge, as most of the evidence to date does not show consistent positive impacts of cash transfers on child nutrition. Why is this the case? Cash transfers have become an increasingly popular development intervention. An estimated 89 programmes are currently operating in Africa alone, most of them launched in the last 5 years. Cash has become a popular policy tool because rigorous studies have shown that they can have consistent impacts on the well-being of beneficiaries. For example, findings from the Transfer Project in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) demonstrate a broad range of impacts on household consumption, food security, human capital and productive activity. But what about impacts on child nutrition? During the latest Transfer Project workshop in Addis Ababa, participants debated the question of why relatively few impacts on child nutrition emerge from evaluations across the African continent while in Latin America cash programmes have shown strong effects on nutrition. But is this actually the case? In reality, the impacts of the Latin American programmes on nutrition are not as widespread as one might think. A meta-analysis by Manley, Gitter and Slavchevska identified 79 impact estimates from 8 countries on the height-for-age z-score of children, an indicator of chronic malnutrition. It turns out that only 12 of these estimates were statistically significant, and these impacts came from Mexico (5), Colombia (5), Ecuador (1) and Nicaragua (1). The vast majority of programmes did not significantly improve child nutrition. These  conclusions are consistent with other evidence reviews conducted in recent years. But what explains such limited impacts on nutrition? In a recent paper, we use a conceptual model which shows the pathways that lead to better nutrition and we present evidence on how cash transfers could impact on these pathways. In this framework, household income is an underlying determinant of nutrition, and can only have an effect through one of the three pathways at the household level: 1) improved food security, 2) improved care for mothers and children, or 3) improved health environment. These three pathways lead to improvements in dietary intake and health of the child, which together determine the nutritional status. So, for a cash payment to have an impact on nutrition, there need to be changes at the household level, which should lead to improved nutritional status. One can see that this process can be quite complex and a lot of the impact can be 'lost along the way'. Of course, there have been some cash transfer programmes showing positive effects on nutrition. What can we learn from them? The impacts observed in Mexico and Colombia are often attributed to the size of the cash grant, which is relatively large, about 25-30 er cent of the household's pre-programme expenditures. Also in the Philippines, where the Pantawid Pamilya programme reduced severe stunting by 10 per cent, the grant constituted about 23 per cent of beneficiaries' income. However, a later report, using a different methodology and looking at a longer time horizon did not find any impacts. Nevertheless, it makes sense that more cash in the hands of households may have a stronger effect on the pathways laid out in the framework, as well as potential to affect multiple pathways at the same time. Furthermore, supply-side interventions like health infrastructure and providing market access to diverse types of food help recipients to make the most of their cash. For example, the Child Grant in Zambia had an impact on stunting, but only for households with a protected source of water in the home. For the research community, it is important to pay attention to the mechanisms through which cash transfers affect pathways to better nutrition, instead of looking at the direct impacts. By understanding the way programmes can affect the underlying determinants of nutrition, we can disentangle the relationship between getting cash on the one hand, and improving nutrition of children on the other. Moreover, the lack of consistent impacts on nutrition has motivated programme designers to implement nutritional interventions on top of their programmes, such as nutrition information sessions, communication efforts or health insurance. This is a smart move, as cash transfers can offer an effective entry point to deliver complementary health and nutrition services. Fortunately, Ghana LEAP 1000 is among the programmes using this cash plus approach, with linkages to the national health insurance scheme, providing free health insurance to all beneficiaries. We are excited to follow this and other programmes to evaluate their impact, along with the added effect of the "plus" components in addressing malnutrition. Richard de Groot holds a Master's degree in International Economics Studies and is currently a PhD fellow at the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance. He has experience implementing evaluations and quantitative research in collaboration with Plan International, the World Bank and UNICEF. The Office of Research - Innocenti is UNICEF's dedicated research centre undertaking research on emerging and current priorities to shape policy and practice for children. Subscribe to UNICEF Innocenti emails here. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter here.

When the scope of a research project on child internet use spans  multiple countries with vast cultural, economic and social variation, navigating the differences presents formidable challenges. For the Global Kids Online network, a research initiative led by the UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti in partnership with the London School of Economics, tackling these challenges is crucial. Our goal is to develop a survey that will enable researchers anywhere on earth to explore how internet use enhances or undermines children's well-being. Recently we managed to complete the pilot phase of this survey in Argentina, Philippines, Serbia and South Africa. Four different continents, countries, cultures and research teams, all using the same tools to generate comparable data. As the project coordinator I've had the challenging but enjoyable task of supporting this effort. My previous research experience,  mostly in the global North, limited my understanding of rural communities. A big question for me was how can we make the most out of working in relatively unfamiliar contexts? The answer I found was to listen, participate and learn from local knowledge. I recently travelled to the Eastern Cape in South Africa to support the implementation of our Global Kids Online survey, courtesy of UNICEF South Africa and our research partners, the Centre for Justice and Crime Prevention (CJCP).  CJCP works exclusively with local enumerators who are familiar with the communities where the research is conducted - a model that ought to be non-negotiable. Since we carry papers Whenever our team arrived at a field site our enumerators would visit every single house, starting with the ones closest to where we parked, even though there were no children to interview. I asked why we did this, as we were there specifically to interview children. One of the enumerators explained that going to each house serves two purposes: first, we show everyone respect by visiting their home, giving us credibility and trust in the community. Once we gain people's trust, they will be more inclined to help us find out where children from the community live and perhaps even facilitate some interviews. Second, if we only visit certain houses people might get suspicious, in particular since we carry papers, which could indicate that we are there on official government business. This could make it more difficult for us to talk to children and parents in the community. Through their awareness of the local way of life, the enumerators both improved our success with recruiting respondents and also helped us to avoid unintentionally offending community members. These insights have some interesting implications for popular sampling methods such as "random walk" procedures, where enumerators only visit certain households based on numbering or other criteria. Such methods might have less success with recruitment because they do not align well with local customs, and could also damage the reputation of the organization conducting the work. Asking if they play games on an X-Box Our local research team informed us they had issues with some of our survey questions. Since the field site was located in a lower socio-economic area, they pointed out that it reflected badly on them when they asked children questions that everyone should know are not applicable. They emphasized "when we ask children here, in very poor communities, if they often play games on an X-box, it makes us look stupid and the child becomes uncomfortable..." A field research site on child internet use outside Mdantsane in Eastern Cape province, South Africa.We had anticipated that some questions would have low response rates in some areas. But we did not foresee that asking those questions might negatively impact the relationship between interviewer and child. If the interviewers had not been from the community, they may not have picked up on this subtle but important point and we would have failed to make our instrument more appropriate. By being upfront about my lack of familiarity with the local context and making clear that I was there to learn - not to oversee and control - I managed to open up an honest dialogue with the team. It is not always easy to gather direct feedback if you are participating from a coordinator position. But recognizing and admitting my  own lack of understanding and expressing a willingness to learn seemed like a good starting point. I explicitly invited criticism of our assumptions. When conducting research across multiple contexts it is rarely possible to have a good understanding of every country, but working together with the community, listening and making good use of local wisdom and skills has been crucial. My work on the Global Kids Online project has been an eye-opening experience that has taught me many new things about the world, but it has also shown me that there is some truth to the saying, "The more I know, the more I realize I don't know." Special Note: South Africa Kids Online, the first major Global Kids Online pilot study, was recently launched in  Johannesburg. The full report is available here. Daniel Kardefelt-Winther supports Innocenti's research on children's internet use, online safety and child rights. He coordinates the Global Kids Online project, developing methodological tools to support global research on the risks and opportunities of children's internet use. The Office of Research - Innocenti is UNICEF's dedicated research centre undertaking research on emerging and current priorities to shape policy and practice for children. Subscribe to UNICEF Innocenti emails on any web page. Follow UNICEF Innocenti on Twitter @UNICEFInnocenti. Access our research catalogue here.

Each year, UNICEF staff who work in evidence functions come together at the Data, Research, Evaluation, Analytics and Monitoring global network meeting - affectionately referred to as the DREAM meeting. This convening started out many years ago with a strong focus on monitoring and evaluation, giving M&E officers from around the world an opportunity to discuss indicators and reporting systems. Over time it has grown to include data and analytics, and eventually completed the "package" of UNICEF's evidence-generation functions by also incorporating research. The three evidence functions - research, monitoring & evaluation, and data & analytics - are gaining prominence on UNICEF's strategic agenda. Together they comprise an increasingly important area of technical support sought by governments who are gradually taking over the service delivery role traditionally supported by UNICEF and need evidence on how and where to make the most effective investments for children. The reasons for this are numerous and often linked to economic growth, with evidence activities and upstream policy work accounting for a large proportion of UNICEF's work in middle-income countries in the CEE-CIS and LAC regions and parts of East Asia. The 2014-2017 Strategic Plan recognized this new emphasis by including 'evidence generation, policy dialogue and advocacy' along with 'results-based management' as pivotal areas of its focus. This emphasis is likely to increase even more in light of the universal SDG agenda, where data, research and evaluation will be key to tracking and improving the lives of women and children globally. The delegates came from all regions and many work streams - including headquarters staff, sector specialists (including Health, Social Inclusion, Gender, WASH, and Child Protection), all regional offices, and over 25 country offices. This resulted in a good mix of skills, experiences, and disciplinary and cultural perspectives being brought to the table. A district health team in Lao PDR updates a mother baby health record book.Responding to the global call for evidence posed by the Sustainable Development Goals, it also offered an integrated agenda, where the three evidence functions came together more than ever before to explore synergies, opportunities to capitalize on the wealth of knowledge and skills already present at UNICEF, and ideas for accelerating support and demand for quality evidence to improve the lives of children. After four days of intensive learning and discussion of our priorities and comparative advantages, the final sessions focused on solutions. I took part in a working group tasked with responding to one of the challenges outlined in the meeting agenda to "think more about taking our evidence work to scale across the organization, including support to policies, processes and infrastructure." In the midst of a stimulating discussion on how to bring about a change in our organizational culture to focus more on learning and working together to answer cross-cutting and cross-contextual problems affecting children, Regional Adviser, Social Policy & Economic Analysis from EAPRO, Gaspar Fajth, coined the concept of "big idea trains" that are needed to travel through countries and regions and galvanize support around key research questions, data gaps and evaluation objectives. Staying with the metaphor, these trains - which need to have clearly articulated questions and appealing narratives of how solving the problem will improve the lives of children  -   would travel through different countries, inspiring regional directors and country representatives to "jump on board" to jointly address something that can be a real "game changer" for children in the SDG era. Several such trains have travelled the UNICEF landscape in the past, investing in an area of evidence generation that brought about large-scale changes for children across countries and for many years into the future. The Transfer Project and TransMonEE initiative are just two examples from social policy which brought about sustainable government commitments and/or long-term changes for children across countries. We need more trains like this, asking the right questions, collecting the right data at the right time (not necessarily more data), providing compelling evidence on what works, and enhancing government support to implement sustainable solutions that improve the lives of children in the long term. With the issues of migration, urbanization and climate change emerging as central to UNICEF's work, there certainly are many tracks for the big idea trains to travel on. But they will need smart engineers to set clear priorities and plot the best route to get to the station. The trains will only work when supported by strong leadership, and met with an open mind to question current practices, learn from failure and use new evidence to design better programmes and policies. And like everything UNICEF does, the trains can only be successful if partners are on board and the voices of children steer their course. Nikola Balvin is a Knowledge Management Specialist at the Office of Research - Innocenti. Prior to that she was a Research Officer on UNICEF's flagship publication 'The State of the World's Children' at the New York headquarters. The Office of Research - Innocenti is UNICEF's dedicated research centre investigating  emerging and current priorities to shape policy and practice for children. Access the UNICEF Innocenti research catalogue at: unicef-irc.org/publications. Follow UNICEF Inocenti on Twitter @UNICEFInnocenti Subscribe to UNICEF Innocenti emails here.  

UNICEF works on social protection programs in over 100 countries, and many are expanding rapidly. In discussions with stakeholders, there are two gender assumptions we hear repeatedly: giving benefits to women (rather than men) will result in better outcomes – particularly for children transfers will increase women’s empowerment. In other words, paying attention to gender is important not only to deliver better programme results, but also as its own objective. But are these assumptions based on evidence? While the claims are promising, we actually know less about them than we should. The primary reason for uncertainty is that gender dynamics are highly contextual and their effect on outcomes varies according to underlying cultural norms. As a consequence, it has been hard to land on a global consensus on both topics. A woman has just received her first LEAP 1000 payment Village of Gundaa, Northern Region Let’s consider the first assumption:  Men and women will invest cash transfers in different ways. Of course. However, assuming this will result in significantly better programme outcomes is less clear. Research showing women spend in more ‘family-friendly’ ways is primarily based on household consumption and spending studies – rather than studies which actually evaluated the recipients of transfers in a rigorous way (e.g. through randomization of benefits). Recently, a review attempted to answer questions regarding economic transfers (including cash transfers), screening nearly 6,000 abstracts to find those which compared men and women recipients within the same program. Only 15 studies included a thorough comparison, with the overall conclusion that there was no pattern showing household benefits were greater depending on who in the household received them. What about the second assumption: Cash transfers empower women beneficiaries. While some literature examines this question, a review of quantitative and qualitative evidence on an array of economic interventions shows that only in the case of conditional cash transfers is there strong support of the claim. Evidence from all quantitative studies and qualitative evidence on unconditional cash transfers is mixed. In fact, some critiques suggest conditional transfers could actually reinforce traditional gender roles and increase women’s work burden related to conditions. Assessing this evidence is complicated by a myriad of indicators used to measure ‘empowerment’: indicators range from women’s intra-household decision making to social networks to land or asset ownership, making it difficult to draw conclusions. In addition, programmes may have very different impacts depending on design. Finally, the bulk of evidence comes from Latin America, where programs are largely conditional and where programs have been operating the longest (thus with opportunities to show medium or long(er) term impact). Consider evidence from the multi-country Transfer Project, a sub-Saharan African initiative supporting rigorous mixed-method evaluations of largely unconditional government-run cash transfers. In these programs, the majority of beneficiaries are women or reach female headed households. For example, in Zambia’s Child Grant Program, 99% of beneficiaries are women, as the unconditional cash transfer (equivalent to US$12/month) is given to primary caregivers in households with children age 0-5. In two recent working papers, we examine how the Zambian cash transfer programme could have affected women’s empowerment. In the first paper, we examine women’s intra-household decision making using quantitative impact evaluation data from a 4-year randomized control trial, paired with a qualitative study to examine narratives and definitions of empowerment among women and men in study communities. Quantitatively, we find significant increases in the total number decisions women participated in. However, in practical terms, these increases were so small (one third of a decision over nine domains) they seem inconsequential. This lack of meaningful improvements were echoed in qualitative work, showing entrenched gender norms: “Even in the laws of Zambia, a woman is like a steering wheel, and us (the men) are the ones to drive them in everything” ~Male, age 53 (beneficiary household) Yet, women’s narratives implied a more subtle change: In nearly all cases, when women and men were asked to talk about what empowerment means, they equated it to financial standing, rather than on relationships or social standing. In this realm, women saw a change brought about by the grant: “I have also been empowered because of the child grant. I never used to have my own money, but now even as I suggest something to my husband, I don’t feel worthless because I have money in my hands. It is my first time to experience such; I am really empowered.” ~Female, married age 24 (beneficiary) In a second paper we look directly at women’s financial standing (specifically savings and household non-farm enterprises). We find evidence that the cash transfer increased the probability that women were saving (by 100%), and the amount they saved. Secondly, transfers led to increase in small businesses operated by women – beneficiaries used savings to invest in income- generating activities to smooth consumption and provide additional economic security for their households. Therefore, we see that although decision making is a useful concept, it is difficult to measure and interpret quantitatively, and in this context, actual economic indicators themselves are more insightful. In the words of women themselves, and as mirrored by their financial status, the Zambia transfer programme increased women’s wellbeing, and we hypothesize was made possible because transfers were paid directly to women themselves. Ultimately, gender dynamics within any programme will vary with cultural context and it’s important to consider how gender may affect programs from the start. If not ‘one size fits all,’ what general conclusions can we draw from this example? While transfers target women due to the gender inequalities they can help reduce, cash delivered directly to women (versus men) may not necessarily result in better outcomes for children. We should not assume that giving cash to women will lead to a change in household decision making as this depends on relationships with men and power dynamics within households. Alternative outcome measures could include specific targets – for example women’s savings, labor force participation, education, mental health or subjective welfare. To reduce poverty and gender inequalities, we should be prepared to make design modifications to increase the chance that women can and will take full advantage of the opportunities the program offers. Rigorous evaluation should accompany these innovations to see if they make a difference and at what cost. At the Transfer Project we are busy producing more evidence around gendered outcomes for adults and youth within government-run social protection plans. Follow us at @Transferproject or sign up for our newsletter to get the latest news delivered to your inbox! Amber Peterman is a Social Policy Specialist at UNICEF Office of Research—Innocenti working on gender and safe transitions to adulthood in the Transfer Project. Jennifer Yablonski is a Social Protection Specialist in Social Inclusion and Policy at UNICEF Headquarters supporting UNICEF social protection programme design globally. Luisa Natali is a Consultant with the Social and Economic Policy Division at the UNICEF Office of Research—Innocenti working on cash transfer programmes in Zambia.    

Research on inequality often loses sight of where children stand in relation to one another. The new Innocenti Report Card Fairness for Children: A league table of inequality in child well-being in rich countries looks at differences between children at the bottom of the inequality ladder, and their peers in the middle, across 41 advanced economies. The report ranks countries according to how far they allow their most disadvantaged children to fall behind in income, educational achievement, self-reported health and life satisfaction. Denmark does best in the overall ranking, with consistently low inequality in four different domains, while Israel and Turkey come out as the most unequal. Inequality tends to evolve over time. Report Card 13 places countries into separate groups based on the pathways behind these changes. For example, the study measures income inequality as the gap between the incomes of the 10th percentile and the median as a percentage of the median. Thus, bottom-end income inequality can increase for two different reasons: The median grows faster than the 10th percentile  OR The 10th percentile shrinks faster than the median   Out of 37 rich countries for which trend data are available, 13 countries saw a substantial increase in the relative income gap among children under 18 between 2008 and 2013. In five of these countries, the median increased faster than the 10th percentile, which may have remained the same or even decreased – Canada, France, Israel, Slovakia and Sweden. The other eight countries experienced an increase in income inequality because both the median and the 10th percentile decreased, but the bottom of the distribution shrank faster. This group includes five southern European countries (Cyprus, Greece, Italy, Spain and Portugal) and three eastern European countries (Estonia, Hungary and Slovenia). Only four countries managed to lift incomes of households with children both at the bottom and the middle of the distribution, with a greater relative increase in the 10th percentile: the Czech Republic, Finland, the Republic of Korea and Switzerland. Over the last decade, inequality in adolescent self-reported health also widened in the vast majority of the 34 countries for which comparable data are available. In most of these countries, inequality increased because children at the bottom of the distribution lost out more than those in the middle. Not a single country saw a narrowing in inequality, while a few saw no notable change at all. Yet there is a brighter side to the health story. Inequality in the frequency of physical activity and in abstaining from unhealthy eating (i.e. excess consumption of sugar in food and beverages) narrowed in the majority of the countries. Inequality in life satisfaction remained broadly stable. Trends in educational inequality are also encouraging. Gaps in reading achievement among 15-year-olds who took part in PISA tests decreased substantially in 21 countries out of the 38 between 2006 and 2012. The 10th percentile increased more than the median in all of these countries except Canada. Only three countries saw a widening in the reading achievement gap: Bulgaria (because the 10th percentile increased less than the median) and Finland and Sweden (because the 10th percentile decreased more than the median). We need to remind ourselves continuously that children are not responsible for the circumstances of their birth and upbringing. Lagging far behind their peers can scar children’s current lives and future prospects. With the release of Report Card 13, UNICEF Office of Research encourages rich countries to improve the living conditions, education, health and subjective well-being of all children, with extra help for those left furthest behind. Yekaterina Chzhen is a Social and Economic Policy Specialist with UNICEF Research – Innocenti Follow UNICEF Innocenti on twitter: @UNICEFInnocenti    

Social cash transfers are an increasingly popular tool in African national governments’ social protection strategies, but a question that often comes up about their use is will such programmes – targeted to families with young children – encourage parents to have larger families in a region with stubbornly high fertility rates? Researchers at UNICEF’s Office of Research-Innocenti conducted rigorous analysis using data from the Transfer Project to find out. Social transfer programmes have protective impacts on a range of well-being, economic and protection outcomes among children and their family members. However, implementing the programmes hits a major barrier in some countries due to a belief that transfers aimed at households with young children will encourage families to have more children to obtain or maintain eligibility. In sub-Saharan Africa, fertility declines have occurred more slowly than in other regions and the total fertility rate still stands at 5.1 (the highest of any region globally). Thus, unintended consequences like fertility incentives are understandably a concern for policymakers designing social policy. Community Welfare Assistance Committee members talk to Lightson Ngonga, his wife Loveness Mwenya and children in Kabwe village in Zambia's Northern Province. The family benefits from the social cash transfer program for an under-5 child.Evidence from around the world, including in Latin American and Africa, largely suggests that cash transfer programs targeting poor households (usually with children) do not, in fact, increase fertility. Specifically, in Africa, research from Kenya, Malawi, South Africa, and now Zambia, demonstrates no increases in fertility as a result of national government cash transfer programs. In fact, in South Africa’s Child Support Grant, a national, fully-scaled up program targeting poor households with children – the most likely place we would see unintended fertility consequences – fertility did not increase, but in fact women receiving the benefits for their first child were more likely to delay a second birth than similarly poor women who did not receive the grant, suggesting that the grant empowers women to reduce unplanned pregnancy. Impacts of a large cash transfer programme on fertility in three districts of Zambia are examined in a working paper released by UNICEF Innocenti. The Child Grant Programme, which universally targeted households with children aged zero to five years, was implemented through a cluster randomized control design, in which control households were to be enrolled three years after implementation. This enabled researchers to rigorously evaluate impacts of the programme on a range of outcomes, including food security, housing conditions, child health, and productive activities. Further analysis of this evaluation data found that the programme had no impact on fertility over a four-year period. This was true among women directly receiving the transfers as well as other (and younger) women in the households. This new evidence from Zambia supports growing evidence from around the world that fears of unintended consequences, particularly encouraging fertility, of government cash transfer programmes are not supported by rigorous impact evaluations.   Tia Palermo is Social Policy Specialist in the Social & Economic Policy Section at UNICEF’s Office of Research – Innocenti, where she conducts research with the Transfer Project.   The Transfer Project is working to provide rigorous evidence on programme impacts in an effort to inform future programme design and scale-up. For more information on the Transfer Project’s research on cash transfers, we invite you to read our research briefs here or follow us on Twitter @TransferProjct.      

As a UNICEF communicator I’d bet that the widespread acceptance of corporal punishment – spanking, slapping, hitting, etc., a practice that seems to cross all boundaries – is one of the toughest challenges we face. Indeed, despite near universal ratification of the Convention on the Rights of the Child, only 8% of the world’s children are fully protected from being physically abused by adults. Why is corporal punishment unquestioned by so many? Answers may be in short supply, but a new discussion paper from the UNICEF Office of Research, Corporal Punishment in Schools: Longitudinal evidence from Ethiopia, India, Peru and Vietnam sheds important new light on the terrible damage this practice inflicts on children in the course of their education. Produced by the Young Lives Longitudinal Study on Child Poverty as part of the Office of Research multi-country study on violence affecting children, the paper gives a rare look at how teacher punishment in school affects children over time. The evidence is quite clear, with negative impacts observed at age 12, especially in decreased math scores, among many of the children who had experienced corporal punishment at age 8, compared with those who had not experienced it. These findings have been extensively controlled for community factors and previous school performance. The study also presents data which underlines how widespread corporal punishment can be. Among the 12,000 children studied from half to ninety percent, depending on the country, reported seeing a teacher beating a student in the last week. Whether in schools or elsewhere, the practice of adults beating children still sparks heated debate. In 2014 one of the top professional football players in the US was arrested for severely whipping his four-year-old child with a tree branch. The player claimed he was practicing a form of discipline that had been common in his family for generations. The incident dominated the US news media for weeks. It also sparked spirited discussion about corporal punishment across the internet. Soon a widely admired sports commentator defended the practice of whipping as a culturally accepted practice in certain regions of the country. I decided to take to Twitter. I started posting about the need to use this national discussion on adults beating children to eliminate the terrible practice from all parts of society. To my surprise, this was one of the few times my humble twitter following came alive with a number of voices strongly in support of beating children in order to discipline them. I recalled similar discussions in various cultural contexts around the world. When planning UNICEF’s violence against children programme in a large Asian country, our partners thought it best not to make corporal punishment the lead focus. They argued the campaign would not get off the ground if that were the dominant theme because most parents regarded physical punishment as a non-negotiable part of good child rearing. The new discussion paper produced by the Young Lives team is a powerful tool in the hands of anyone eager to eliminate corporal punishment of children. The authors report the negative impact of corporal punishment on academic performance is equal to the deficit seen when a child’s mother has 3 to 6 fewer years formal education. Corporal Punishment in Schools highlights the power of longitudinal data to help connect the dots on children’s experiences. If the trauma imposed on children by teachers resorting to corporal punishment is not enough to banish the practice, perhaps its negative impact on test scores will be. Sadly it may be necessary to amass a lot more evidence on how corporal punishment diminishes children’s life chances before it is more widely challenged as an acceptable practice. Dale Rutstein is Chief of Communication at the UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti      

Cash transfer programs have become an increasingly popular component of social protection strategies across sub-Saharan Africa. These programs provide monthly payments to poor and vulnerable households and can lead to multiple demonstrated benefits, such as the improvement of health and education among young people, and impacting the local economy. Recently, the Government of Ghana expanded the Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) Program, which assists extremely poor households (defined by those that live on less than $1.10 USD per day) that contain orphans and vulnerable children, the elderly and those with disabilities. The expansion, known as LEAP 1000, now includes extremely poor households with pregnant women and infants and focuses on children in the first 1000 days of life. Through the cash transfer payment, LEAP 1000 is expected to improve children’s nutritional status and reduce stunting, both common problems in Ghana. Social cash transfers have been implemented widely across Africa. To gain a better understanding of how the program in Ghana is implemented, I observed several payments over the first week of LEAP 1000 in rural villages in Northern Ghana. Through a translator, I also had the chance to speak with many of the program beneficiaries before and after their actual payment. Each of the cash payment stations had a slightly different atmosphere and took place in locations familiar to the recipients: a classroom, under a tree, or a pavilion used for village gatherings. The process for payment was quick and efficient: the women were called five at a time; they provided identification, made their thumbprints and then were given a payment for a two-month period. A team that included the District Welfare Officer, a postmaster and a LEAP 1000 focal point all took part in handing out and verifying payments. A police officer was also present at all times to ensure the security of the transactions and stood off to the side at the pay points. LEAP 1000 beneficiary provides thumbprint at payment Payments were a somewhat public affair; all the women arrived with their babies and often older children while a few men stood at a distance. What struck me instantly was that every payment was conducted in a very quiet, orderly fashion, even with all the babies in tow! Because of this, the women and potentially some other community members could hear the amount of the payments going to each household. My western mentality automatically questioned the privacy and safety of the process, but no one seemed to mind. I was also told by the payment team that there were no reported cases of theft during or after payments of the existing LEAP Program. As the women received their payments, some lingered to talk with others, but many left straightaway. The police officer was there “just in case”, and after watching a few payments, I could not imagine that he would be needed. The women I observed did not have to walk very far to the payment point. For those who were sick or injured, a designated family or community member could receive their payment on their behalf. In one particular case, the village chief collected money for a woman who could not come. While this may raise some suspicion, I recognized that the openness and transparency that initially gave me concern about the process also creates a level of peer pressure for everyone to be quite truthful. Neighbours would not allow for dishonesty, and in all likelihood, any attempts to defraud the system would quickly be revealed to the team. The operational procedure did not come without its challenges. While the actual delivery of the payment is fast, some women I spoke with waited for several hours before the team arrived, taking them away from their children and their daily tasks. To avoid time costs and inconvenience to women, program managers are working to improve scheduling for future payments. Another obstacle was that many of the women did not know the exact amount they were going to receive ahead of the payday, so some of them did not have specific plans on how they would use or budget the transfer. However, an explanation just ahead of the payment was given, so it was clear what each household was receiving and why. Overall, the women said that the improvement of the well-being of their children was their ultimate goal. Even without knowing the cash transfer amounts, they said they wanted to start businesses to increase their income, or buy, rear and sell livestock, and purchase household staples at the local market, which would in turn benefit their families. Currently, a mixed-method, long-tem  impact evaluation is being conducted by the Transfer Project. The evaluation, which will be carried out over the next 2 years, will give us more insight into whether and how the program is improving children’s nutritional status and household. In the meantime, a sense of opportunity and hope could clearly be observed among the LEAP 1000 recipients in Northern Ghana.   Michelle Mills is at the UNICEF Office of Research in Florence.

What do snakes, flat batteries, limited privacy, and identifying a suitable cut-off point have in common? As I recently observed, they are some of the many challenges that can occur when conducting an impact evaluation in a remote village. On a recent trip to Ghana, we observed baseline data collection for an evaluation of the Ghana Livelihood Empowerment Against Poverty (LEAP) 1000 cash transfer programme. The programme is administered by the Government of Ghana with technical support from UNICEF and targets households with women who are pregnant or have children under the age of 12 months. The impact evaluation is taking place in five programme districts and has a target sample size of 2,500 households: half from the treatment group and half from the comparison group. Because it wasn’t possible to randomly assign participants to a control group and carry out a Randomized Controlled Trial (RCT), the evaluation uses another rigorous approach called Regression Discontinuity Design (RDD; see page 7 of Brief 8 for a description). The results will inform the Ghanaian government of changes in families’ lives caused by cash transfers and inform future delivery of similar programmes. There’s a demand within UNICEF, but also in the broader international development community, to share good research practices and lessons learned. This is why the Office of Research-Innocenti is developing a new series of methodological briefs, Impact Evaluation in the Field. The series will go beyond textbook advice to document practical challenges and innovative solutions from the Transfer Project and other UNICEF-supported impact evaluations, providing examples of both challenges and innovative solutions in an often under-resourced development context. My observations of the work in the Upper East Region of Ghana highlighted that despite some difficulties, technological innovations certainly made the work much easier and more efficient. Using wireless tablets during the targeting phase (when women were informed of the programme and registered to determine eligibility) and laptops during the evaluation interviews meant that data could be uploaded and communicated to analysts almost instantly. This allowed for ongoing quality control of the data and monitoring of how much more needed to be collected. The communities where the interviews took place were in remote areas and households were often inaccessible by vehicles. The enumerators relied on locals to show them around and take them to the right household. To increase the likelihood of finding the same participants when they come back to do endline interviews, the enumerators used a GPS device to note the dwelling’s location coordinates. Mobile technology was also extremely important for keeping data collection teams connected to each other during the long days among the maize fields. The LEAP 1000 cash transfer programme is administered by the Government of Ghana and targets households with women who are pregnant or have children under the age of 12 months. The challenges were many and varied. Some – like the electronic scales not reading participants’ weight correctly because of the uneven ground and dirt surfaces, laptop batteries going flat, and the occasional snake dropping from a tree – were relatively easy to deal with. But others were much more complex and required an informed consideration of the context, review of international standards and updating of study protocols. The value of working with local institutions was very clear and I was impressed with the enumerators’ professionalism as they administered the survey questions and protocols, ensuring participants’ privacy and skipping sensitive topics when a private space was interrupted by a visiting neighbour or a curious relative. They were fluent in several of the local dialects and able to translate the survey questions on the spot or secure alternative translators in the community when needed. They also understood the culture well, allowing them to read the social dynamics and ask questions in a way that made sense in the local context – sometimes accompanied by vivid examples and body language. Another challenge revolved around managing delays – during targeting, baseline data collection and even the first payment – and ensuring that the time needed for one stage did not take away from another. Targeting needed to be fully completed before the government confirmed the cut-off score/threshold which identifies the eligible beneficiaries and it was only after this decision that the treatment and comparison groups for the impact evaluation could be formed and the research could begin. This meant that baseline data collection was squeezed between the government’s targeting of eligible households and registration for the first payment, and the enumerators had to be trained, ready to go, and work quickly and efficiently to complete this phase. Perhaps the most valuable lesson learned from my visit was shared by the Chief of Social Policy, Sarah Hague, who stressed the importance of working closely with the government and providing technical support. It is through this close relationship, built over many years, that social protection work supported by UNICEF Ghana is making a positive impact on the lives of Ghanaian women and children, while also providing important global lessons learned. After only a few days in the field, I found so much to think about and share. Imagine the richness and value of UNICEF colleagues and partners sharing their knowledge and experience gained over many years in the Impact Evaluation in the Field methodological series. The first briefs in this new series are expected to come out at the end of 2015. Nikola Balvin is a Knowledge Management Specialist in the UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti. The author would like to thank Tia Palermo, Richard de Groot, Sarah Hague, Jonathan Nasonaa Zakaria, Daisy Demirag, Maxwell Yiryele Kuunyem, and the enumerators from ISSER for the helpful discussions that contributed to the writing of this blog.

The Office of Research – Innocenti has just released the third edition of its annual publication Best of UNICEF Research 2015. With each edition we learn more about a key element in a global development organization’s effort to gather evidence. Over the course of its existence Best of UNICEF Research has grown in terms of the quality of research represented, the range and complexity of research questions addressed and in the programmatic and geographic scope of the submissions. Research is an essential part of UNICEF’s effort to improve the situation of the world’s children. Quality data gathering, appraisal and analysis can fuel informed decision making and planning, assess intervention impact, question practices and improve policy discourse. High quality research is carried out across the full breadth of UNICEF offices and locations. But often, especially in country offices, it is undertaken with a sharp focus on how it can support programmes for children in particular contexts. Best of UNICEF Research is now a vital tool for increasing organization-wide learning and sharing about quality research.   Read the report here. Best of UNICEF Research is also an important exercise in recognizing excellence. Through it we are also identifying many useful lessons about how a decentralized global development organization generates and uses evidence. Everyone engaged in delivering results for children can gain valuable lessons on methods, models and good practices for research. And the timing couldn’t be better. With development cooperation moving upstream we are increasingly asked to assist in the generation of evidence to improve policies and programmes funded and administered by local authorities. We highly recommend a full read of the Best of UNICEF Research 2015. It provides short synopses of the 12 research projects that emerged from this year’s rigorous selection process. These projects cover traditional and emerging programme areas. They range in geographic focus from global to regional to country level and cover a wide array of research questions, topics and approaches. In order to whet your appetite here is a quick overview of the Best of UNICEF research 2015: Reducing Newborn Deaths is a systematic assessment of bottlenecks to scaling up essential maternal and newborn healthcare in eight of the countries with the highest number of neonatal deaths. Sanitation in Mali documents the use of a randomized control trial to assess the impact of the well-known “Community Led Total Sanitation” approach to reducing open defecation. Early Childhood Development in East Asia and the Pacific is a multi-year evaluation effort across six countries to test the validity of a region-wide early childhood development scale which measures progress in seven development domains. Emergency Preparedness conducts a rigorous return on investment analysis of emergency preparedness measures in Chad, Madagascar and Pakistan. Child Poverty in South Africa analyzes a wide range of data sources to determine the extent to which children have been caught in poverty traps and recommends interventions to escape the cycle. Food and Nutrition Policy presents a theory-based rapid assessment model for assessing a national government’s commitment to food and nutrition security. Teacher Incentives in Namibia evaluates a scheme to attract qualified teachers to work in rural communities through the provision of financial incentives. Violence in Serbian Schools is one of the largest school surveys ever conducted in that country and gathered data on context-relevant indicators of school violence. Child Grants Lesotho evaluates unconditional cash transfers presenting evidence on a range of positive impacts and making specific policy recommendations. Water and Health Worldwide is a global review to assess the validity of one of the most important indicators for safe drinking water evaluating data from 319 studies representing almost 100,000 water sources. Education in Romania provides an in-depth analysis of the level of public expenditure in education and provides a useful example of how research can support policies on quality and equity in schooling. Violence Against Children in ASEAN Countries assesses the level of compliance of national legislation on violence against children in ten member countries in this sub-region. We hope you find these examples of new UNICEF research inspiring – whether for the relevance of the findings to your work, or as illuminating examples of how good research, carefully designed to address relevant and timely questions, can accelerate efforts to shape a better future for children everywhere. Follow me on Twitter @dalerutstein