Evidence for Action Blog

How do we know if a programme made a difference? The answer to this question is not as straightforward as it seems, because we never know what would have happened without the programme. This concept is referred to as the ‘missing counterfactual’ (or simply 'the counterfactual' since, by definition, a counterfactual is missing). Impact evaluation is the science of estimating the missing counterfactual; getting it right is the necessary first step in any evidence-based approach to policy design. The science of impact evaluation was the subject of a two-week technical training workshop organized jointly by the Transfer Project and the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC) in Nairobi, Kenya from June 24 to July 4 2019. The training attracted 24 participants (15 women) from 22 African countries who were selected by the AERC from over 350 applicants. Participants were primarily university lecturers working in the fields of applied and agricultural economics. The workshop is part of a larger collaboration between the Transfer Project and AERC focused on promoting evidence-informed decision-making in sub-Saharan Africa funded by the Hewlett Foundation. The workshop content was structured around this core question (“How do we know if a programme made a difference?”) and the related fact that unless we can invent a machine to take us back in time, we can never observe the outcomes both with and without the programme. The job of the evaluator is to estimate the “missing counterfactual” using the tools of research design and statistics. 'Greatest Hits' During the first week of training, participants were taught the ‘greatest hits’ of estimating a counterfactual, beginning with randomized designs and followed by non-randomized designs, such as propensity score matching, discontinuity design, instrumental variables, and natural experiments. They also learned how to add ‘design elements’ to strengthen their studies - for example through baselines or repeated follow-up observations - and to estimate sample sizes in both simple and complex sampling scenarios. Theoretical lectures were complemented with hands-on computer-based demonstrations and case studies from Transfer Project impact evaluations in Ghana, Malawi and Zambia. In the second week, participants were given a hypothetical “Request for Proposals” for an impact evaluation and worked in groups to develop a response using the tools they had learned throughout the course. Final presentations included proposal designs for a new impact evaluation of the Ghanaian LEAP cash transfer, an evaluation of the Kenya NICHE programme, and an evaluation of the Government of China/UNICEF joint pilot conditional cash transfer programme for child nutrition. These are all actual programmes undergoing or seeking to undergo an evaluation—implementers should feel free to contact the study teams for their full proposals! Impact Evaluation Training with AERC: Ghana's LEAP Programme Technical Research Proposal from The Transfer Project It was clear the participants had absorbed the course contents when, by the end of the second week, we noticed an increasing number of jokes and statements using evaluation language. Patrice from Congo suggested that we didn’t know if we could replicate the success of the course again because he and the other participants were “self-selected”; Isabelle from Cote d’Ivoire suggested we use ‘exact matching’ to figure out who should stand next to whom for the group photo; and everyone supported the idea that the order of group presentations should be randomly assigned... If nothing else, at least we have increased the number of nerdy evaluation jokes that are likely to be cracked across sub-Saharan Africa. In the closing session, Gustavo Angeles from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill told participants that the workshop itself was an intervention, and he was expecting a steep upward slope in the intervention group relative to the counterfactual. AERC Executive Director Dr. Njuguna Ndung’u encouraged participants to make the most of the training by using impact evaluation techniques to make a difference in their home countries. While increasingly used to inform policymakers on the effects of policies, impact evaluation methods are not always included in curricula of undergraduate economics degrees, and even when they are, the focus is merely theoretical with few methods covered. There is increasing demand for comprehensive courses on impact evaluation methods, which has led to the proliferation of several intensive workshops worldwide. In developing countries, however, the supply of such courses has not yet met the demand. The Transfer Project is beginning to close this gap with its capacity building work, but it is clear from the large number of applications for this training that there is a large appetite in the region for more information on this technical topic.   Assess your own knowledge of impact evaluation techniques—take our ‘Who Wants to be a Millionaire?’ quiz and see whether you would benefit from this course! Ashu Handa, University of North Carolina: Ashu is Lawrence I. Gilbert Distinguished Professor in UNC’s Department of Public Policy. Elsa Valli, UNICEF Innocenti: Elsa is a Research Analyst with UNICEF’s Office of Research - Innocenti in Florence. Gustavo Angeles, University of North Carolina: Gustavo is the Senior Evaluation Advisor for MEASURE Evaluation & Associate Professor at UNC. All three authors contribute to the work of the Transfer Project research and learning collaborative.

Hargeisa city is a fast-growing urban environment that remains safe, unlike many parts of the region. Yet young people living in the city face a myriad of challenges. Unemployment is high amongst youth, and poverty is widespread. In this context, it is not surprising that young people think of a life abroad. “I couldn’t afford a university education, and I couldn’t find a job,” said a young Somali who tried to get to Europe. “I have multimedia skills, but I still couldn’t find a job. I wrote a dozen CVs, but organisations would just throw them away.” To understand the situation of young Somali’s like the youth quoted above, I joined a research study conducted by UNICEF’s Office of Research - Innocenti along with its partners at the University of Hargeisa, School of Social Work. Like so many Somali young people, the students are concerned about their futures, about the prospect of finding jobs when they graduate and challenges they will have in supporting themselves and their families who have invested in their education. Migration is such a prominent feature of life in the region that I don’t doubt every one of the researchers I worked with has asked themselves the question of whether to stay or go. Understanding the situation from a research perspective started with a crash course, with me as an instructor, on research methodologies, research skills, interviewing techniques, and ethical concerns. We mapped out what we sought to understand and why. The interview map included a series of questions sketched out to be adapted to each respondent and our procedures. I observed the student interviews, provided feedback, and then conducted several interviews alongside the university students to demonstrate different qualitative research techniques. The process was enlightening, as student reflections were not limited to the research skills I was teaching, but also the subject matter of the deeper issues, including drivers of migration; the social, political, familial and economic challenges of young people; their hopes and aspirations. “It dawned on me that this research provided an incredible opportunity for the students to reflect on the real-life impact of these issues.”The student researchers were grappling with personal opinions, experiences, struggles and aspirations as young people; but they were not outsiders looking in to another society, as I was, they were part of it. It dawned on me that this research provided an incredible opportunity for the students to reflect on the real-life impact of these issues. They had a unique opportunity to listen to the experiences of other young people – people who might be their clients (as social workers) in the near future. Social workers in the region are in short supply and have large caseloads which limits the time they can spend with each individual client. This research offered an opportunity to take time and simply listen to young people reflect upon critical social issues. What do we do if a child tells us that he/she wants to migrate?On Mubarak's first journey abroad, Mubarak went to Ethiopia. In his second he went to Sudan. On his third trip he was hoping to make it to Europe. "I left Hargeisa because of a lack of work here," Mubarak explains.The questions raised during the training revealed the innate ethical concerns that most of the students had about their work: What do we do if a child tells us that he/she wants to migrate? Should we warn them about the dangers? Should we tell their parents? How can we reconcile confidentiality with the potential danger a child can face? On many occasions, once on the ground, students faced challenges and obstacles which required adaptation and creativity to overcome. Despite the support offered by supervisors and UNICEF, students had to be creative and quickly adapt new strategies. I witnessed genuine growth in their self-confidence as their engagement and ownership of the research developed; it was a completely new and exciting experience for many of them. As one of the students said, “Now I can do another piece of research like this.” A supervisor shared that one student was able to find another job – “because of this training she was able to convince them that she had the expertise to do the job.” The experience has encouraged some of the students to continue with further research on those issues which were not fully addressed by the project. It has also had an impact on the school of social work at Hargeisa University, which is building its reputation as a credible research partner – and motivated the dean to pursue its own research agenda. I am sure the students are proud of the report published today. Seeing the findings in writing and disseminated globally demonstrates the value of their work and I hope it inspires them. For now, the student researchers have all decided to stay, but they have all had friends or relatives who have left. These researchers are a critical part of this story, the publication was enriched by their contribution, and their insights are the essence of the key findings revealed in this publication. However, the pressure remains as long as the deeper issues stay unresolved. I hope we can continue to include young people in our research, not only as respondents in a research exercise, but also as participants constructing and writing the stories that we read.   Olivia Bueno is the lead researcher and author of ‘No Mother Wants Her Child to Migrate: Vulnerability of Children on the Move in the Horn of Africa’. She has been working on migration and human rights issues in the Horn and Great Lakes regions of Africa for the last fifteen years. She has consulted with a number of organizations in the region, including local women’s and human rights organizations. She is also a co-founder of the International Refugee Rights Initiative, a non-governmental organization based in Kampala and conducting research and advocacy on both the causes and consequences of displacement. She has a Masters degree in International Affairs from the School for International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.

Pinocchio is sitting at the defendant’s seat with his lawyer, when the judges enter the hall. On one side the prosecutor looks at him grimly, with the Cat and the Fox, Mangiafuoco, the puppet master, and the teacher next to him. On the other side, the father Geppetto, a poor woodcarver, and the Fairy with the Turquoise Hair, the fictitious mother who Pinocchio never had, wait for their turn in silence. All of them will tell about Pinocchio’s behavior - the good and the bad. Around the courtroom, the mood was grim as a trial was about to begin. The accusations against Pinocchio were serious: playing truant from school; lying; betraying the trust of those who loved him, being a slacker. At the prosecutor’s request the witnesses repeat, one by one, the same story: Pinocchio is an unruly, ungrateful and listless child, fully aware of his misdeeds, therefore he is guilty and punishable. Only his lawyer, with the Turquoise Fairy and Geppetto, defends Pinocchio, speaking loudly the language of love and care: he is just a child whose rights have been violated. And in a few seconds the accusers are turned into accused: "Parents, teachers and governments, as duty bearers, are called to help children and young people to enjoy their rights. But Pinocchio was abandoned by all of them!” the lawyer thunders. At the reading of the sentence, the judge is inflexible, ruling in the language of rights: “A child is always a child. Parents and every institution have the responsibility to ensure, within the limits of their possibilities and their financial means, all conditions necessary for the full development of a child, in the best interests of the child.” Pinocchio is not guilty! Nobody could have imagined - 30 years ago - to apply the principles of the Convention on the Rights of the Child (CRC) to one of the most well-known children’s stories in the world: “The Adventures of Pinocchio",  about the famous animated puppet who, after going through a series of troubles, finally becomes a child.   Children participate in "Pinocchio on "Trial" in the hall of the Italian Parliament on May 20, 2019.“Pinocchio on Trial” occurred in the hall of the Italian Parliament on May 20, 2109, to commemorate the 30th anniversary of the CRC, organized by the Italian Committee of UNICEF and the Chamber of Deputies Presidency. Students of a second-grade school and their teachers presented an exciting theater piece, sending a clear and strong message to the hall, full of authorities, children, and parents for the occasion: Pinocchio can only become a real child through the help of the adults who have the duty of protecting and caring for him. “Pinocchio on Trial" was the brainchild of Emilia Narciso, a member of the Italian UNICEF National Committee. In her story, Pinocchio becomes an allegory of the journey from childhood to adulthood in modern society, with its contradictions and difficulties in ensuring that every child has the future he/she is entitled to. Leaving the Parliamentary hall, each of us reflected: who is the Cat and the Fox today? Who is Mangiafuoco, or Lucignolo, the bad friend? Who is the Turquoise Fairy, Geppetto or the Talking Cricket? Everyone could relate because, as the Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce said: "Humanity is the wood in which Pinocchio is carved”. Patrizia Faustini is Senior Communication Associate at UNICEF Office of Research - Innocenti.

If UNICEF were a rich country instead of my employer, it would rank 24th out of 41 EU and OECD countries in the league table of our new report “Are the world’s richest countries family friendly?” on the indicator of full-rate equivalent childcare leave available to female staff (see figure below, which shows where UNICEF would fall among 41 countries).This may not sound generous compared with countries like Estonia and Hungary, where mothers can stay at home until the child’s third birthday and earn the equivalent of more than 70 weeks at full pay for an average earner. But on a closer look, UNICEF’s policy is pretty good.Consider the concept of full-rate equivalent. It combines the duration and generosity of childcare leave so that we can compare policies across countries. It is the number of weeks of leave multiplied by the rate of pay (for an average earner). But in practice are 20 weeks on full pay really the same as 40 weeks on half pay?Only six countries out of 41 allow female employees on average earnings stay at home at full pay for the whole duration of their leave: Mexico (12 weeks), Israel (14 weeks), the Netherlands (16 weeks), Spain (16 weeks), Chile (30 weeks) and Lithuania (62 weeks). Compared to these countries, UNICEF’s provision of 24 weeks at full pay is only behind Chile and Lithuania.When I gave birth to my child in 2016, as a UNICEF staff member, I took advantage of 24 weeks at full pay. I would not have wanted to stay at home for nearly a year on half my pay instead. I was eager to resume my full responsibilities and was keeping up with office developments. I took part in key meetings, worked on research papers, increased my Twitter following and prepared for the launch of my edited book Children of Austerity. A study on maternity leave policies offered by universities across the United Kingdom shows that institutions with more generous maternity benefits (over and above national statutory provision) have a higher share of female academics who passed productivity-based promotion hurdles in their child-bearing years to become professors. Institutions that employ high-skilled staff do their best to give them incentives to stay.Yet well-paid leave is just one part of the story. I would not have managed to get any research done while on maternity leave or sweep into my old job as I returned from leave if I had been the sole carer of my child with no resources. Between the end of my maternity leave and the start of my child’s nursery entitlement at 12 months I’ve scrambled together a combination of: annual leave, having my partner stay home full-time with the child, unpaid help from extended family and paid babysitters.I was privileged to have had these options. What about those who do not?Note: entitlements in place as of April 2016.Source: OECD Family Database (Table PF2.1).Read more:Global indicators of family policies compiled by the WORLD Policy Analysis Center at the University of California, Los Angeles.An OECD brief ‘Parental leave: Where are all the fathers? Men’s uptake of parental leave is rising but still low’ (2016) Yekaterina Chzhen is the lead author of the newly released UNICEF report “Are the world’s richest countries family friendly?”. Follow her on Twitter @kat_chzhen. The Office of Research–Innocenti, is UNICEF’s dedicated research centre. It undertakes research on emerging or current issues to inform the strategic directions, policies and programmes of UNICEF and its partners, shape global debates on child rights and development, and inform the global research and policy agenda for all children, and particularly for the most vulnerable. Please follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

Over the past decade there has been escalating concern that the time children spend using digital technology might be harmful. Calls have been made to protect children by restricting the amount of time they spend in front of digital screens. But recently there has been a change in tune, following research showing that the effects of screen time on children may be too small to warrant such restrictions.In other words, we don’t have enough evidence to inform policy on child screen time. These views were echoed in an inquiry into the impact of social media and screen-use on young people by the UK Parliament’s Science and Technology Committee. They highlighted methodological and practical issues with existing research, such as misinterpreting small effect sizes and focusing on statistically significant rather than meaningful effects. Similar concerns were reported by UNICEF Innocenti in an evidence review from 2017, which called for an improved research agenda in this field.Young people finding amusement online in Dili, Timor-Leste.As expressed in a report by the Children’s Commissioner for England, the pleasure children derive from digital technology is often seen in a negative light by adults; even though they would agree that digital technology is important for living a full life and developing one’s potential. Rigid screen time rules may have deprived countless of children of freedom to pursue their interests in a digital world. Parents have been put in the role of policing rather than coaching children’s digital engagement.Children have an extraordinary capacity to learn and develop when motivated by genuine interest and provided the right opportunities. Cultivating their intrinsic motivation – through education or play – is critical for learning outcomes. As Roger Hart writes in an essay on children’s participation published by UNICEF Innocenti in 1992, “much of play is a training ground for later participation with adults in work: learning the properties of materials, developing physical skills, exploring tool use, and social cooperation.”For these reasons, play is enshrined as a fundamental right of all children. It is recognised as being essential to the development of creativity, imagination, self-confidence, self-efficacy, and a range of social, cognitive and emotional skills. Digital technologies can facilitate this development, albeit in new ways that older generations may not yet fully appreciate.Today virtual platforms and social networks forge new cultural environments for play and artistic opportunities that can broaden a child’s horizons, provide opportunities to learn from other cultures and traditions, experience autonomy, and contribute toward mutual understanding and appreciation of diversity.In other words, we don’t have enough evidence to inform policy on child screen time.This autonomy, where children and adolescents participate and make their own choices, express their own views, and take responsibility, is not a binary state, but rather depends on a young person’s evolving capacities – maturity, skills, and abilities. Therefore, a delicate balancing act needs to take place – between a child’s right to be protected, and their right to have progressive autonomy in making decisions about their lives. Unfortunately, Hart notes, children are the least listened to members of society and have limited opportunities for genuine participation, in part because adults underestimate their competence. Moreover, opportunities for free play with peers are declining due to a combination of forces: fear for children’s safety, parents’ work patterns, and growing pressures for academic achievement. UNICEF Office of Research- Innocenti · The Screen Time Debate: What Do We Really Know About the Effects of Children’s Time Online? This is highly relevant in contemporary debates around children’s use of digital technologies. Digital media has become the primary means through which young people play, communicate, receive, create, share information, and express themselves. Young people explore their identities online, access health information and sources of advice and counselling, learn about their rights, report abuse or violations, express opinions and engage civically and politically with governments and the world around them. The internet has become a powerful vehicle through which young people can overcome forms of discrimination or exclusion, to participate and be heard in meaningful decision-making processes, and exercise rights on their own behalf.However, nearly 30 years after Hart’s essay, the barriers that prevented children’s play and participation in the 90s still prevail, now limiting children’s rights and freedoms in the digital environment. In making a case for a UN Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) General Comment on Children’s Rights and Digital Media, researchers argue that in order to shift adult thinking on the digital environment, children’s rights (including to participation and play) must be emphasized within popular and policy debates around digital technology.A rights-based perspective on children’s engagement with digital technology is useful for at least three reasons:It makes clear the need for integrated perspectives: All of children’s rights need to be considered together, meaning that the right to protection from harm cannot supersede the rights to participation, privacy, play, education, freedom of information or expression.It emphasizes that children should be consulted on decisions concerning their use of digital technology: Article 12 of the UNCRC states that children have a right to be heard in matters that concern them, and that their views should be given due weight in accordance with the age and maturity of the child.It acknowledges the obligation to ensure that the best interests of the child are a primary consideration in all actions concerning the child: Article 3 of the UNCRC calls upon all actors to ensure that children’s beset interests are at the heart of these conversations. To achieve this, guidance and policy needs to draw on children’s own voices and experiences. By consulting with children on how to best balance their use of digital technology, we could help them turn digital technology into a tool for creative expression, participation, play or learning. Schools could teach children how to search for high-quality information and distinguish fake news through their mobile phones. In doing so, they will be training children to use technology purposefully while negotiating and overcoming its distracting elements. Learning how to stay focused on a task despite technological interference will likely be an important skill in the future.Piaget found that children learn best not by unequivocally accepting what authority tells them is right, but when, through discussion and cooperation, they can form their own views and reach consensus. As Hart states, when seen in this light, children’s participation is not just an approach to developing more socially responsible and cooperative youth; it is the route to the development of a psychologically healthy person.It is entirely possible to make digital technology work in children’s best interest. This will require less alarmism in the public debate and greater respect for children’s opinions. Daniel Kardefelt-Winther is UNICEF Innocenti's lead researcher on child internet use, online safety and child rights. 

Getting the ‘development’ right in sport for development (S4D) means that on the pitch, disabilities are dissolved into strengths. It means that traditional ‘no girls allowed’ attitudes are torn away. It means that children’s voices are valued in both the planning and the playing, and real efforts are made to protect children from violence. Because when S4D gets the ‘development’ right, sport is more than just a game.Approximately 1 in every 500 children around the world take part in S4D initiatives. These children face risks that include poverty, violence, poor health, learning disabilities and ethnic discrimination. It is universally known that sport is a fun and engaging way for children to be active and develop skills, so it is no surprise that they are drawn to S4D by the appeal of sport activities. However, once they are hooked, children are involved in programming that develops soft skills, promotes social inclusion, empowers young people and aims to reduce negative behavior.  In other words, these children come for the sport and stay for the support.Children come for the sport and stay for the support.When sport’s potential is harnessed, it can also play a critical role in achieving development outcomes for children and society. For S4D programming to be effective, however, it is crucial for policy makers and practitioners to understand the development component of S4D. Thus, the UNICEF Office of Research—Innocenti, generously supported by the Barça Foundation, conducted a first-of-its-kind study to comprehensively map the global evidence on S4D for children. The aim is strengthening the evidence base on the implementation and impact of S4D policy and programming for children. Through an integrative literature review, systematic mapping of available evidence, and global surveys of S4D programmes, the study: Getting Into the Game: Understanding the evidence for child-focused sport for development, analyzed programme design, implementation, monitoring and evaluation systems to understand what works in S4D.Findings from the research revealed that football was the most common sport found in S4D, used by 42 per cent of surveyed programmes around the world. By striking the right balance between sport and non-sport activities, S4D initiatives can have an important impact on children’s education, social inclusion, protection, and empowerment. They can increase children’s engagement in learning, improve their attainment of life skills and support their access to and participation in initiatives and services.However, the research also suggests that achieving development goals through sport cannot be taken for granted. Children’s engagement with sport does not always translate into skills development, better relationships with adults and greater self-esteem and efficacy. It is not a given that by playing together, children with different abilities or from different backgrounds will build bonds that promote social inclusion. Nor are sports settings always the safest places for children to be.To become more than just sport, S4D programmes must be designed well. The report’s key recommendations include that in order for S4D to achieve complementarities at the community and system levels S4D practitioners should:Focus on linking activities with development outcomes through specific strategies and objectives;Design programmes that include an adequate balance of sport and non-sport activities;Facilitate multisectoral collaboration;Tie sports into existing social programmes;Establish settings where negative societal views and family disapproval do not become barriers to initial and continued participation;Purposefully facilitate greater family and community engagement, such as through consultation forums and festivals that share knowledge;Balance coaches and staff in terms of gender and diversity of experience; andProvide training for and monitoring of child safeguarding procedures for all interacting with children and young people.To continue getting the ‘development’ right in S4D, a second phase of research will test current findings from this first phase and develop primary data collection tools to further understand the common characteristics and practices in S4D.To further promote the translation of the research into practicable action, UNICEF—in partnership with the Barça Foundation and in collaboration with an international S4D for Children Working Group—is developing an S4D for Children Framework and accompanying toolkit for policy and programming by 2021. The Working Group members met in March in Barcelona to share their expertise and experience from the field and were subsequently joined at the report launch an auditorium full of S4D stakeholders who voiced their enthusiasm for the same mMessage: that when S4D gets the development right, sport is more than just a game! Sarah Fuller is an education research assistant for the S4D project at UNICEF Innocenti. Juliana Zapata is an education research associate and coordinating the S4D project at UNICEF Innocenti. Read our report: Getting into the Game: Understanding the evidence for child-focused sport for development   Watch the launch event partnership with UNICEF and the Barça Foundation. 

In 2014 the World Economic Forum called the rapid spread of misinformation online one of the ten most critical issues for our societies. A 2016 Stanford study of 7,800 student responses from middle school to college highlighted discomforting results. Researchers found that students had a “dismaying inability” to recognize the difference between: fake and real news, advertising and journalistic writing, neutral and biased sources and fake and real social media accounts. Results of the Stanford survey “shocked” the researchers, they said. According to the Global Digital Report from We Are Social and Hootsuite, in 2018 there were 4 billion people worldwide using the internet, and nearly a quarter of a billion new users had come online for the first time in 2017. The global number of people using social media has grown by 13 percent in the past 12 months, with Central and Southern Asia recording the fastest gains (up 90 percent and 33 percent respectively). Children comprise approximately one in three of all internet users, as explained in the UNICEF Innocenti Discussion Paper One in Three: Internet Governance and Children’s Rights. In more developed countries, children under the age of 18 comprise approximately one-fifth of the population; in less developed countries, however, children constitute a substantially greater percentage of the total population – between one-third and one-half of the population. The complexity of the information environment that news consumers are immersed in today requires new abilities and skills to navigate safely. The rapid spread of ‘fake news’ has amplified the necessity for all internet users to learn how to separate fact from fiction, how to recognize the difference between opinion and facts. As more and more people rely mostly or entirely on internet news sources, it is increasingly difficult for them to maintain the capacity to distinguish between true and false, good and bad, and right or wrong on many practical issues. Children and young people tend to be avid users of social media. As shown in a recent UNICEF Innocenti paper, the impact of digital technology use can have positive impacts on children’s mental well-being. However, relatively little research has been conducted on children’s exposure to false or misleading content and online interactions.   An adolescent girl checks her mobile phone on a street in the Southeastern state of Minas Gerais, Brazil.  While the overall trend of youth literacy (aged 15-24) is positive, in a society where objective facts are becoming less influential than emotion and belief in shaping public opinion, education systems can miss an historical opportunity to provide children with the skills and tools necessary to critically assess information sources. How can we prepare savvy citizens to quickly separate myth from fact? How can we ensure young people do not lose their connection to the bulk of reliable inherited scientifically verified knowledge?  And then how can research matters to reduce inequality and increase educational opportunities if evidence is constantly discredited by counter-narratives propagating appeals to emotions and personal beliefs? Although research and evidence can be bent for special interests, post-truth epistemology cannot simply be reduced to “denying truth and giving all opinions equal weight.” On the contrary, schools and educational curricula can and must play a critical role in equipping children to recognize misinformationAlthough research and evidence can be bent for special interests, post-truth epistemology cannot simply be reduced to “denying truth and giving all opinions equal weight.” On the contrary, schools and educational curricula can and must play a critical role in equipping children to recognize misinformation and to tackle its spread online by cultivating truth-based reality through critical media literacy and historical analyses. Andreas Schleicher, education director of the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development, is planning to include questions about distinguishing what is true from what is not true in the next round of the influential international PISA tests. According to him, the scope is “to test children about their ability of engaging with diversity, to be open to that, to draw value out of it, and to see diversity not as a problem.” The same aspects are also measured by UNICEF Innocenti’s Global Kids Online survey and will be the focus of an upcoming synthesis report due towards the end of 2019. A recent study shows that the spread of misinformation is driven by several mechanisms that create false beliefs, which once adopted, are rarely corrected. Content-selective exposure is the primary driver of content diffusion, and leads to the generation of homogenous clusters –  echo chambers – which have their own cascade dynamics.  Selection of information based on harmony with personal beliefs and “vision of the world” create a “comfort zone” where people feel safe. The lack of mediation between the news source and the final user gives rise to increasingly polarized and homogenous communities having similar consumption patterns. Members of these polarized communities then tend to read and discuss only what confirms their original convictions and beliefs. Developing critical thinking skills is one of the main objectives of an educational science of any time and today it remains one of the main antidote to the spread of fake news. How to force students out of their comfort zones and to break those echo chambers is still part of a debate among teachers and educators and maybe there is not one single answer. Interesting perspectives, ideas, strategies can be found on the net that suggest how to develop the ability of students to judge the credibility of information that comes from smartphones, tablets, and computers, but it is still a work in progress. All too often young people are seen as easily manipulated political storm troops where adults “exploit” them. If children and youth were truly treated as rights holders and provided –  by educational systems as duty bearers –   with the ability and skills to enjoy their “right to information” maybe they would be less vulnerable to these bubbles and echo chambers. The internet stimulated a great acceleration of globalization. And while many communities reaped the reward from increased communication and interaction between diverse cultures and peoples, mono-culture pockets defined and strengthened by post-truth echo-chambers were also propagated. The online debate on immunization, which has recently led WHO to raise the alarm about a dramatic increase in measles infections and outbreaks in Europe, shows how the circulation of fake news can potentially have even life-threatening impacts. How to help children and young people navigate fake news and misinformation online is one of the key questions for education in the years ahead. Patrizia Faustini is a Senior Communication Associate at the UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti.

It is a known fact that in nearly every country, children are more likely to live in (monetary) poverty than adults (19% versus 9% respectively in 2018). This has immediate effects on the well-being of children, their development prospects and consequently their adult life. Cash transfer programs targeted at the poorest households have become one of the key policy tools for ameliorating the situation with a proven track record of success.However, contemporary approaches to targeting are notoriously error-prone. Deserving groups may be excluded, some miss out due to fluid transitions in-and-out of poverty. Cash transfers are operationally costly, and sometimes give rise to intra-community tensions. Some cash transfer programmes impose conditions that diminish dignity, re-enforce gender stereotypes that exacerbate women’s time poverty, or promote political patronage.Universal child grants are monthly cash transfers that are provided to the caregiver of every single child that lives in a defined jurisdiction – perhaps only subject to legal status requirements. Universal child grants are proposed as a possible solution to fix these challenges associated with the targeted cash transfer schemes. They can essentially reduce child poverty to the bare minimum or eradicate it altogether. Two obvious objections are the fiscal implications of full coverage and the potential unintended negative consequences (such as increasing fertility or reduced labor supply).Universal child grants are monthly cash transfers to the caregiver of every single child that lives in a defined jurisdiction.Click image to access the report.Recently UNICEF, ILO and the Overseas Development Institute convened an international conference to explore arguments and evidence from implementation of alternative cash transfer schemes and their implications for universal child grants. (Find all key conference background documents – agenda, session recordings, participant list, concept note here) I had the pleasure of attending and presenting at this conference and am eager to share key takeaways and reflections.First, it would be better to use the word ‘benefits’ in place of ‘grants.’ While this may sound like mere semantics, the word ‘benefits’ frames the proposition as a need to fulfill an entitlement: a positive right, not the idea of a favour, which the word ‘grants’ is more associated with. If there are no costs associated with changing the framing, I would think ‘universal child benefit’ would be more appealing term, but I will stick to ‘universal child grant’ for the rest of the this post.The next three takeaways are communicated in three numbers: 35, 8 and 1.5.35% of children/households receive child/family cash benefits globally. Differences exist across countries and regions with 88% coverage in Europe and Central Asia, 28% in Asia and the Pacific and 16% in Africa. Given the large shares of children in Africa and Asia, these figures imply that almost two thirds of children (1.3 billion) are not covered by any form of social protection. Some 23 countries already have non-contributory universal child grants while an additional 40 countries have non-contributory means-tested schemes, and there are a lot of lessons learnt from these schemes to inform other countries in design and implementation. (Click on the report cover image to download the full ILO-UNICEF report)8 policy options have been proposed for creating fiscal space in national budgets to fund universal child grants outlined in this paper:Re-allocating of public expenditures;Increasing tax revenues;Expanding social security coverage and contributory systems;Lobbying for aid and transfers;Eliminating illicit financial flows;Using fiscal and foreign exchange reserves;Managing debt; andAdopting a more accommodative macroeconomic framework.The paper illustrates how Governments can apply them based on their unique circumstances. The authors contend that “fiscal space for social protection and the SDGs exists even in the poorest countries.”  Mario Györishowed how reallocating the funding for a current food and energy subsidy could create fiscal room to fund a universal child allowance, with greater impact on poverty.1.5% of GDP, on average, is required to fund universal child grants in various countries. An important contribution frm one session at the conference was that funding for universal child grants should be indexed as a share of government expenditure and not GDP, and I fully agree with this position. Linking funding to government expenditure would directly put the question of prioritization (not trade-offs) in focus.The World Bank and the IMF representatives in the final plenary agreed, in principle, to the idea of universal social protection for children (at least for those aged 0-2 years).  Michal Rutkowski, Senior Director for Social Protection and Jobs at the World Bank described the idea of supporting children (especially the vulnerable) and investing in their future as marriage made in heaven: good social contract and good economics.Author's presentation at the International Conference on Universal Child Grants, Geneva. Click image to access slides.Listening to presentations from different countries, it was clear that governments around the world recognize the need to progressively move towards universal child grants in some shape or form. There were discussions about administration and implementing challenges, and the question of the covering the last mile (reaching the hardest to reach). The question of benefit level and provision for the caregiver (or rest of the household) are also open questions for which there was not much time to cover.To achieve SDG goal 1.3 to implement nationally appropriate social protection systems for all children, the best route would be through universal child grants. They should be prioritized in government allocations as an important first step towards social protection for all. A global universal child grant fund – like the Global Fund for HIV, Tuberculosis and Malaria should be created to accumulate enough reserve to finance grants starting with the poorest countries, and where political conditions are least favourable. These are often the very countries where child poverty rates are highest and where the investments would yield the highest returns. Operational headwinds may abound but that should not be enough justification for delaying action. I look forward to the final publications from the conference and the next steps in the space. Frank Otchere  Social Policy Specialist at UNICEF Innocenti, is a Statistician and Demographer by training, and has worked on several Transfer Project impact evaluations, including Ghana, Malawi and Zimbabwe. 

On March 12th 2019, UNICEF will co-host a side event to the sixty-third Commission on the Status of Women, together with the UK’s Department for International Development and GAGE Consortium managed by ODI, to share evidence and policy approaches to strengthen gender equality outcomes of social protection programmes, with a particular focus on adolescents and the safe transition to adulthood. Well-designed social protection can address risks and vulnerabilities across the life-course for girls and women, yet so often gender and age inequalities are not considered in social protection systems. Social protection is failing to deliver on this potential – missing the opportunity to benefit the most marginalized girls and women and risks widening inequalities even further. More work and investment is needed to make gender- and adolescent-responsive social protection a reality. Life-course risks and vulnerabilities are influenced by genderWomen and girls face multiple barriers throughout their lives, such as limited access to basic services in education, health and nutrition; limited resources and assets including land and finance; and limited economic, social and political opportunities. Because they lack equal access to resources and assets, women and girls are less able to fully develop their capabilities, and ability to manage and mitigate the effects of risks and vulnerabilities. Women and girls face specific risks in different stages of their lives – adolescence, pregnancy and child birth – that are related to their biological sex as well as to entrenched gender norms that discriminate against them in diverse ways. For instance, more women and girls die before birth, in childhood, and during reproductive years than men and boys. Women and girls shoulder the greatest responsibility for unpaid care and domestic work – amounting to around 2.5 times more time than men. This limits their opportunities to access an education and take on paid work, and makes them more vulnerable to the impacts of poverty. This unpaid care and domestic work differentials between females and males start early in the life course and persist throughout their lives. This unpaid care and domestic work differentials between females and males start early in the life course and persist throughout their lives. Globally girls aged five to nine engage in household chores for an average of almost four hours per week, while girls aged ten to 14 years old spend around nine hours per week Unpaid care and domestic work among adolescents: staggering statistics55050%2/3  Girls under 15 spend 550 million hours every day on household chores, 160 million more hours than boys  Girls 10-14 spend 50% more of their time on household chores than boysOf children performing household chores for 21 hours or more per week are girls  Adolescence is a transformative period to address gender inequalities and break cycles of life-course and intergenerational transmission of inequalitiesAdolescence is a period of life during which transformative change can be accelerated, and more equitable outcomes can be achieved for both girls and boys. It is a profound period of biological and psychosocial development when gender dynamics, relations, beliefs and norms consolidate for life. While children discover their gender and sexuality in their first years of life, it is during puberty and adolescence that gender starts to play a more defining role in their lives. Differentiations between females and males start to widen and become more entrenched, particularly roles within households, and in their relations with family members, peers and in their intimate communities. Yet adolescence is a formative stage of life, and interventions have shown to have an effect on modifying behaviours and outcomes, making this period a unique one for intervening through programmes and policies.vii Recent studies, including from low- and middle-income countries, suggest that this period could be a second window of opportunity in the life-course – where there is the opportunity not only to catch up and redress earlier negative experiences, but also to ensure that previous investments are not lost when children enter adolescence and face new risks and vulnerabilities. Tapping on this window of opportunity is particularly important - there are 1.2 billion adolescents worldwide, of which 90 percent live in low- and middle-income services, at risk of poverty, exclusion and vulnerabilities. Evidence demonstrates positive impacts of social protection programmes on adolescent well-beingEvidence suggests that social protection systems  play a crucial role in lifting children and adolescents out of poverty and improving their well-being. These programmes can act as buffers against shocks, minimizing use of negative coping strategies such as withdrawing children from schools, sending them to work, or selling productive assets such as livestock. Governments have recognised this potential, and in the past two decades, many countries across Asia and the Pacific, Africa, Latin America and the Caribbean, and the Middle East, have designed or expanded social protection programmes to families with children. Many of these programmes have been cash transfers to families with children, either unconditional or conditional onto certain behaviours such as school enrolment or attendance and visits to health centres for check-ups. Some countries have also established a path of progressive universalization of cash transfers, such as Argentina ix. Evaluations of these programmes have shown some positive results – ranging from school enrolment or even attendance, improved nutrition, reduced risky behaviours such as unsafe sex, multiple partners and early sexual debut for girls. For instance, the Zomba cash transfer in Malawi, which targeted girls aged 13-22 for two years, showed strong impacts on school participation by facilitating girls returning to school, as well as reducing early marriages and pregnancies, reducing risky sexual behaviours and HIV infection – although all these positive impacts lasted only for the short-to-medium term. The Malawi Social Cash Transfer Programme and the Zambia Multiple Category Targeted Grant, both government-run unconditional cash transfers targeted to ultra-poor, rural and labour-constrained households, have also demonstrated reductions in poverty and improved schooling outcomes among youth, although no effects on early unions or teen pregnancy were demonstrated. Despite this expansion, only 35 percent of children or adolescents on average across the globe have access to any form of social protection. And there are significant regional disparities: 87 per cent of children in Europe and Central Asia and 66 per cent in the Americas receive benefits; however only 28 per cent of children in Asia and the Pacific and 16 per cent in Africa. A gender and life-cycle lens is needed to strengthen social protection programmes to improve adolescent well-beingMany programmes are not designed with gender dynamics in mind and others are either targeted at younger children, or at adult women and households more generally. Research in eight countries between 2009 and 2012 found very little or no attention to gender considerations in most social protection programmes. While some studies have found that cash transfers can have a positive impact on women’s economic empowerment by increasing women’s economic participation, few studies have systematically assessed the influence of design features on gender outcomes. Moreover many programmes, by identifying women as the transfer recipients, either as beneficiaries themselves or on behalf of their children, have at times unwittingly perpetuated the stereotype of women as primary caregivers. Among the few adolescent-targeted social protection programmes that have tackled child marriage as a primary objective, there is limited efficacy and sometimes even unintended negative effects. And in the case of humanitarian and conflict-affected contexts, while the risks of child marriage and coerced transactional sex are high, we also have very limited evidence on the efficacy of social protection programming. The absence of both gender and adolescent-responsive approaches creates a gap in adequate coverage throughout the life-cycle and across a range of risks, compounding vulnerabilities, increasing exclusion and perpetuating cycles of inequity. Much promise exists in new approaches to respond to adolescent and gender vulnerabilities by looking at social protection in conjunction with other social and economic policies, including infrastructure, health systems, education systems, and labour market systems. This article was written by Prerna Banati, UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, Elena Camilletti, UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, Roopa Hinton, UK Department for International Development (DfID), Shreyasi Jha, UNICEF Programme Division, Nicola Jones, ODI-GAGE, Muriel Kahane, ODI-GAGE, Atif Khurshid, UNICEF Programme Division. Read more about the event.    

The lights dimmed and the theatre hushed. Spotlights swirled in the dark from one person popping up out of the darkness to the next as a late-night emergency meeting of refugees unfolded in front of us. I was at the Playhouse Theatre in London and then I was transported somewhere else.Set in a reimagined version of the ‘Afghan Café’, there we were, suddenly in the middle of The Jungle of Calais. The stage, set with a platform wrapping around tables, chairs, pillows, and posters, resembled a cozy yet provisional slum restaurant – I could almost swear I smelled spices matching the colours of the scene. Audience members sipped and nibbled as one character, and then another, jumped onto the stage in front of their tables. I sat perched above in the gallery looking down at the performance, listening as the actors – some of whom were actual migrants re-enacting versions of their experiences – shared incredible stories of hardship and hope from the border-town slum village that came to be called The Jungle. ‘The Jungle’, which ended its West End run in London after I saw it in November, was picked up for a sold-out U.S. run at St. Ann’s Warehouse in New York and will begin performances at San Francisco's Curran from March 2019. Months after my viewing, I’m still ruminating, lingering on the powerful stories told, and also, what we can learn from them. The play is a fictional portrayal and amalgamation of the realities of the men, women, and – notably – children who came to live at the edge of Calais in the so-called makeshift migrant city, which self-assembled and then was abruptly demolished in 2016. After surviving harrowing journeys from Africa and the Middle East, these asylum seekers made a home in The Jungle, as a stopgap, in limbo – hoping to make the final leap to the U.K., but many found themselves stuck there at the border. Little ‘Amal’ is a young girl in the play – she is an unaccompanied minor, often wandering about, on her own, clutching a ragged stuffed animal, or holding the hand of an aid worker, ‘Paula’, who takes her under her wing when she can. She has no parents, no healthcare, no education. Her story – that of child migrants – stuck with me. I watched as they celebrated her birthday with what little they had. She didn’t know her actual birthdate – since running from a war-torn country meant there were no official records – many celebrated their birthdays on January 1.  Throughout the play, Paula is often the character taking care of Amal and also the one championing child rights – fighting to protect the children of The Jungle. She looks after Amal and cries out in anger that the International Convention of the Rights of the Child has been blatantly ignored in the context of migrant children. She is angry that the U.K. fails to live up to its commitment to reunite migrants with existing family members in the U.K, and even when it does, the children often have no support when they get there. As a new mother, I couldn’t hold back tears as, halfway through the play, images of Alan Kurdi, the young Syrian boy whose corpse washed up on the shore of a Turkish beach, lit up screens installed around the theatre. In the play, that viral news came to change the course of the conversation about the camp in Calais and on migration globally – as everyone finally asked: what about the children?Mirzal, 16, arrived in Calais alone in 2015. Here he takes a nap at an Afghan barber’s shop in The Jungle.The play starts and ends with the funeral of a young boy killed on a nearby roadway – a demonstration of the looming threat of life at the camp, and especially the dangers for migrant children. In the play, Paula notes that of 400+ children at the camp, about three quarters of them are unaccompanied. While the Calais Jungle became a cohesive, vibrant community, it wasn’t enough to protect the people and children who lived there, and there wasn’t a reliable system to help get them out. “Jumpers” – I learned – referred to migrants who would attempt to jump onto a truck going from Calais to the U.K. – It was incredibly risky and often children would lie about their age and then end up getting punished unfairly as adults for jumping – with no way to prove their age, or worse – would die in the act itself. Only a year ago a 15-year-old was crushed to death by a refrigeration truck – and this isn’t the only such story. At UNICEF’s Office of Research – Innocenti, where I’m proud to work, new research findings have the potential to transform the lives of children around the world. Our research on children and migration helps to fill in the gaps on why children migrate, the unknown threats and realities of children on the move, and how we can better protect child migrants.Like the play, 2017’s Best of UNICEF Research-winning report – Neither Safe Nor Sound: Unaccompanied children on the Coastline of the English Channel and the North Sea, available in English and its original French – dared to ask ‘What is the experience of unaccompanied children in France’s migrant camps?’The sociological study, undertaken by Trajectoires on behalf of UNICEF France, sought to understand and document the risks migrant children are exposed to throughout their migration journey and during their stay in camps.  The report made ten key recommendations to help protect child migrants and decrease their vulnerability: Create a place of ‘protection’ within sites, secure and specific to unaccompanied children.Guarantee all children equal access to information and various services through regular contact with professionals speaking the children’s languages and through the use of age-appropriate information.Support and coordinate those working on the region’s sites with the aim of implementing uniformity of practices and information distributed, enabling access to all children, including those within the smaller camps.Introduce regular training on child protection for the organizational workers, police forces, administrators and volunteers to help them identify situations involving human trafficking and provide guidance to unaccompanied children.Refer back to the legal framework for the protection of children, which includes the importance of reporting to Public Prosecutor’s departments, and of reporting unsettling information, which will allow the departmental councils to become empowered in their mission to care for children in danger.Report all evacuations if there are no adapted arrangements for the reception and guidance of unaccompanied children, to prevent a trend of dispersal and the breaking of the bonds that children and young people may have formed with social workers or other trusted adults.Ensure that the French and United Kingdom governments dedicate sufficient resources to the family reunification process, thereby significantly reducing the duration of this process to a maximum of three months.Ensure that children have received reliable information regarding the family reunification procedure under the Dublin Regulation, including the criteria on which decisions will be based.Guarantee access to high-quality legal assistance for unaccompanied children, so that their request for family reunification in the United Kingdom can be submitted as quickly as possible.Publish practical advice on how to handle family reunification cases under Dublin III, including clarification of responsibilities and processes in the assessment of the unaccompanied children’s families in the United Kingdom, ahead of transfers. Two plus years since the demolition of The Jungle, we are still learning the same lessons. While a mandate to prevent the creation of a new ongoing camp continues, hundreds, if not thousands, of migrants and children still occupy the border-town area, and raids persist against a looming Brexit to clear out new camps and prevent illegal crossings into the U.K. In many ways, nothing has changed, and what’s worse is that the journey and the hardship doesn’t end when they reach their destination. Once they get there, then what? The existing systems in place to support migrant children are letting children down. Mental health of these child migrants is seldom considered and last year alone, at least three teenage refugees who arrived in Britain from the migrant camp in Calais killed themselves. Research conducted by UNICEF has identified not only the experience children face while on their journey, but also the difficulties they face as refugees, lost in systems that don’t adequately meet their needs.UNICEF Innocenti’s recent report Protected On Paper? An Analysis of Nordic Country Responses to Asylum-Seeking Children goes further to analyze to what extent the rights of asylum-seeking children are respected and protected in Nordic countries, with specific recommendations for these country contexts as well as broader recommendations on how to strengthen and extend legal, policy and practice frameworks to ensure the full protection of child asylum seekers’ rights and entitlements. Even after they have arrived at their final destination, the struggle for many – especially for vulnerable children – to successfully integrate and enjoy a childhood, continues.  Listen to our podcast: The Role of Research on Migration: Insights on Migrants’ Experiences with Bina D'CostaRead more: Child-related Concerns and Migration Decisions: Evidence from the Gallup World PollA Child's Crisis: Why the Refugee and Migrant Crisis Should Matter to Us All Kathleen Sullivan was a communication specialist and acting Chief of Communication at UNICEF Innocenti from 2017-2022. She is passionate about finding narratives that drive change. Follow Kathleen @ksulli on Twitter, and for more updates from UNICEF Innocenti, follow @UNICEFInnocenti.

How does a Ghanaian female scholar navigate social-protection research in Africa? Fidelia Dake is a Lecturer at the Regional Institute for Population Studies at the University of Ghana, and recently completed a research fellowship in UNICEF Innocenti with the Transfer Project. UNICEF Innocenti’s Amber Peterman sits down with Fidelia to chat about her fellowship experience and to discuss newly published research on cash transfers. Thanks for speaking with me Fidelia. To start, can you tell us a little about your background, your research interests, and what originally motivated you to work on development issues?My undergraduate studies at the University of Ghana was a combined Bachelor of Science in nutrition and food science with specialization in nutrition. However, I decided that I did not want to work in the laboratory, rather, I wanted to figure out how things worked in the real world. This is what motivated me to do my MPhil and Ph.D. in Population Studies, which I also completed at the University of Ghana. I did a lot of my research on social determinants of obesity, which led to a number of different opportunities, for example visiting scholarships at Pennsylvania State University and the University of North Carolina. After I completed my Ph.D. in 2014, my first job was as a research fellow at the U. N. Economic Commission (ECA) for Africa in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. This is where I really got into international development, working on myriad issues including gender inequalities, health financing, social protection, schooling, health and nutritional outcomes and how they affect people’s lives, particularly poor and vulnerable populations.The Transfer Project hosts early career African research fellows at Innocenti to generate evidence on effectiveness of cash transfer programmes. What initially attracted you to working with the Transfer Project and can you tell us about the fellowship experience?I first heard about the fellowship while at a conference on Population and Development in Addis Ababa. I saw a call for applications for the Transfer Project advertising the fellowship, so I decided to apply. One thing that originally attracted me was the opportunity to work on impact evaluation. I had some background in methodology and theory from coursework, and also had some experience from working on social inequalities policies from ECA. The fellowship brought these together, with the opportunity to apply data to real world problems. I think it has been a really productive and fruitful partnership. Given that these skills are not the typical types of skills that are learned in our academic training, this is a great opportunity. In fact, I think that the fellowship should be expanded. For example, in addition to visiting Innocenti and working collaboratively on analysis and publication, fellows should also be able to learn the design and data collection phases of evaluation starting from the beginning. And, for those of us finishing up our fellowships, how can we continue collaborating?Your collaborative research with the Transfer Project was recently published—can you tell me about the study you undertook?This study, which has just been published in Studies in Family Planning, is titled “Cash Transfers, Early Marriage and Fertility in Malawi and Zambia.” Basically, the study examines two unconditional Government cash transfer programmes to see if there was any impact on delayed pregnancy and marriage for both male and female youth. The youth we looked at were 14 to 21 years when the programmes started, and were followed for about three years in each case. Although they were not direct recipients of the cash transfers (which went to the household head), we were interested in knowing if there were effects on safe transitions to adulthood. At the end of the day, we do not find evidence of impacts on these outcomes. Nonetheless, I think the study is important to think about how to broaden the scope of domains that are typically looked at, and the pathways through which change can occur for young people. Most of the time, for social protection, the focus has been on adult women or young children, but data is not typically collected on adolescents and youth, so this is a missed opportunity.These results may be disappointing for advocates of cash transfers, however they contain important lessons. What are your main recommendations for future research and for programme implementers?First and foremost, these cash transfers were not meant to impact safe transitions—they were general household support for poverty related objectives. So we cannot say that the cash was unsuccessful. In fact, we find that the programmes positively affected several key pathways, like education, through which improvements for young people may materialize over time. Yet, at least during the study, we see this is not enough to affect the transitions on partnership formation and pregnancy. For researchers, as I mentioned previously, we should try to get a more holistic understanding on how cash works when it enters the household. This includes who we collect data on. There should be a deliberate effort to collect information on adolescents, including their migration and movement as they make these transitions. This can be used to design interventions which could specifically target youth. For example, cash plus programmes, which provide complementary services or benefits to youth themselves in order to target certain outcomes, including reproductive outcomes and union formation....Our research should inform development — but this is not always the case, especially on the African continent, where there tends to be a divide between doing research and engaging directly with development programmes. I encourage young scholars to explore the intersection.One last question: As a female scholar working in a field which is still underrepresented by women, what advice do you have for young girls and women who aspire work in development?I am currently a faculty member at the University of Ghana, and in addition to teaching, I also do research. I really enjoy working in international development, which as you say tends to be a really male-dominated field. I believe research should be done for more than research sake alone — it should be relevant and should impact people’s lives. So, I would encourage young girls and women to strive to do this and explore how they can improve other people’s lives through their research, which can be more fulfilling than just doing research for research sake. For example, if I can show that a small amount of (Ghanaian) cedis can improve people’s lives, I think that is very gratifying. This is important because our research should inform development — but this is not always the case, especially on the African continent, where there tends to be a divide between doing research and engaging directly with development programmes. I encourage young scholars to explore the intersection, even if they think they do not have the right experience at the outset. I have learned a lot in doing this and now have a better understanding of development issues. I would definitely recommend the fellowship to young scholars particularly females who aspire to work in international development.   UNICEF’s Office of Research—Innocenti has hosted six early-career African Researchers to collaborate on analysis of cash transfer programmes with the Social and Economic Policy Team and the Transfer Project. Read more about the fellowship and the capacity building objectives here. This fellowship is made possible with funding from the Swedish International Development Agency (Sida) (2016-2020) and the Hewlett Foundation (2018-2020).  

UNICEF Innocenti's Chief of Social and Economic Policy reflects on two years of research.When I am asked why I do research, what difference it makes, and especially in an institution, like Unicef, that does rather than thinks, my answer is 1.68.[1]This number has contributed to change the lives of many children and youngsters in Venezuela. It is the benefit-to-cost ratio of investing USD 211 million in 500,000 children annually over seven years in a social development program through music. The number resulted from an ex-ante evaluation projecting the socioeconomic (reduced school dropouts, reduced victimization, and increased tax revenue) and personal (discipline, school achievement and employability) benefits of the program against its costs.It is not important whether you are familiar with ex-ante evaluations, simulations or cost-benefit principles. This research did two things everyone can understand. First, it proved that a youth orchestra is not just a music project. It can be a pretty effective massive social development program. Second, it demonstrated that children armed with violins rather than guns have better chances in life.Let me give you another number: 16. These are the years I had been working on poverty and equity before joining UNICEF. Those years gave me ample opportunity to cover many issues: the (surprising) interconnections between poverty and inequality; the mutual links with conflict; how machismo can affect poverty; or how social transfers affect behavior among the poor; which are the most effective interventions to reduce poverty; or how best to measure this complex phenomenon.But it has been working for UNICEF that I have focused on the specific vulnerabilities of children and adolescents; that monetary poverty can be a dreadful proxy for children deprivations in some settings; that standard measures do not fare well in emergencies; and that while we invest so much time thinking whether we should equally weigh indicators in our indexes, governments are instead calculating political costs and benefiting of introducing a new poverty number that will hold them more accountable.The bottom-line is that working for UNICEF Office of Research-Innocenti has allowed me to incubate fresh ideas that I might not hatch in other places. Intellectually, this is critical for a researcher. Innocenti has incredibly inspirational vibes. Florence hosts our office in premises that 600 years ago—this is not a typo—emerged as the first dedicated caring center for abandoned and abuse children in history. A dedication that inspires many of us day after day. I was enthused to work on understanding the equity effects of fiscal policies specifically on children or how different genocides––no two are alike––can affect the long-term wellbeing of surviving adolescents. These are just two examples of the many incredibly interesting and relevant themes and challenges we work on at Innocenti.A final number: 34. This is the number of researchers I have co-authored a piece of research with in these last two years. Some 26 are researchers I did not know before when I joined UNICEF. Thanks to them and Innocenti, I have developed my own evidence-based voice against injustices to children. Please keep listening!Jose Cuesta speaks at the 2018 Public Finance for Children workshop in Florence, Italy.More UNICEF Innocenti research by Jose Cuesta: UNICEF Evidence to Action BLOG by Jose Cuesta: From a human face to human emotion: Valuing feelings in developmentUNICEF Innocenti article: Economics of inequality and conflictUNICEF Innocenti article: Adolescents may be less resilient to catastrophic events than previously thoughtUNICEF Innocenti article: Global workshop raises capacity on Public Finance for Children All research produced by Jose Cuesta at UNICEF Innocenti.Jose Cuesta’s research for the World Bank.Other blogs by Jose Cuesta. [1] https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/13504851.2010.517187?scroll=top&needAccess=true Presentation: UNICEF Innocenti - Fiscal Policy & Equity in Uganda + Equity in education finance for children