Publications

The UNICEF research programmes at Innocenti were established in 1989 with funding from the Government of Italy, a contribution and commitment that continues today. Two broad areas of research were established early on: the impact of socio-economic change on children, and the implementation of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child which had recently come into force. The Centre’s most significant contributions to date have continued to be in these fields, but programmes, projects and plans have grown, developed, evolved and been re-dimensioned over the 25 years of the Centre’s existence, according to global needs and resources. This publication offers a brief history of both the Florentine Ospedale where the UNICEF Office of Research is house and with contributions from former directors and staff members, an overview of successes, opportunities and a look towards the future.

This paper compares the well-being of children across the most economically advanced countries of the world. It discusses the methodological issues involved in comparing children’s well-being across countries and explains how a Child Well-being Index is constructed to rank countries according to their performance in advancing child well-being. The Index uses 30 indicators combined into 13 components, again summarised in 5 dimensions for 35 rich countries. Data from various sources are combined to capture aspects of child well-being: material well-being, health, education, behaviour and risks, housing and environment. The scores for the countries on all variables and combinations of variables are discussed in detail. The Child Well-being Index reveals that serious differences exist across countries suggesting that in many, improvement could be made in the quality of children’s lives.

The analysis shows that the rankings are relatively stable: indeed, the Netherlands and the Scandinavian countries are still in the best performing group while the United States is still in the bottom of the ranking. Data analysis also highlights a common pattern for East European countries as material conditions improved and the behaviour of young people became more similar to their peers living in Western economies even though children’s living conditions have not improved overall. On the whole, Norway, Portugal and the United Kingdom recorded the most positive changes, while Poland, Spain and Sweden recorded the most negative changes.

Changes in subjective well-being during the last decade are analysed. The paper then explores the relationships between subjective well-being and objective domains: material, health, education, behaviour and housing and environment. The relationship between subjective well-being and structural indicators is explored further. The paper concludes that subjective well-being should be included in comparative studies of well-being but not necessarily as just another domain within a general deprivation count. Subjective well-being (or the lack thereof) is related to but not a part of (material) child deprivation.

Economic collapse in the former Communist bloc led to soaring levels of child poverty in the 1990s. The effects of rising unemployment, underemployment and wage arrears were exacerbated by the erosion of state support for families with children as governments responded to a collapse in revenue. Since 1998, even the poorer countries of the bloc - those in South Eastern Europe and the CIS - have seen a return to economic growth. But have the benefits of growth been felt by children? Are child support policies being restored or restructured as economic conditions improve, and to what effect? This paper examines three aspects of government support for the youngest children – maternity leave policy, child and family allowances and pre-school/nursery provision. The paper calls for governments and donors to pay greater attention to the needs of very young children. It calls for a substantial increase in public spending on each of these policy areas, and it further recommends that governments (a) introduce proxy means tests to improve the targeting of family allowances; (b) make maternity benefit available on a social assistance as well as a social insurance basis; and (c) make a commitment to ensuring that all 3-5 year olds have free access to some early years education each week, albeit on a part-time basis.

Child Friendly Cities in Italy describes the evolution of childhood in Italy and the emergence of a new culture of the city. It analyses the consideration given to the Child Friendly Cities initiative and in particular the attention provided to the child as an active citizen and the role of the city in promoting the participation of young people in decision-making processes at the local level. The study looks at the specific experience of 12 of the more than 100 Italian cities that have adopted this approach, considering planning, budgeting and monitoring plans of action for children and ways through which children’s views are taken into account. The study provides recommendations on how to further promote children’s rights within local governance.

La presente ricerca si prefigge di documentare i processi che hanno condotto alla realizzazione di città amiche dei bambini in Italia, tanto a livello nazionale, quanto a quello locale, analizzandone le tendenze, le metodologie, le strategie, con lo scopo di identificare le lezioni e di evidenziare le buone pratiche. La ricerca si sofferma su alcuni temi principali. Innanzitutto, sono state analizzate le idee guida, gli obiettivi e i destinatari degli interventi, le visioni complessive che sono alla base degli interventi. In secondo luogo, sono state descritte le iniziative innovative sperimentate dal programma italiano, con riferimento alle attività ed ai metodi e alle tecniche.

In this paper the situation of three EU countries that have recently experienced substantial but very different reforms of their systems to support families with children is analysed and compared: Austria, Spain and the United Kingdom. The structure of these systems is very different: Austria gives emphasis to universal benefits, Spain to tax concessions and the United Kingdom to means-tested benefits.

This paper has three objectives. The first is to discuss the major issues involved in defining and measuring child poverty. The choices that must be made are clarified and a set of six principles to serve as a guide for public policy is proposed. The second objective is to take stock of child poverty and changes in child poverty in the majority of OECD countries since about 1990 when the Convention on the Rights of the Child came into force. Finally, the third objective is to formulate a number of suggestions for setting credible targets for the elimination of child poverty in the rich countries. This involves the development of appropriate and timely information sources as well as the clarification of feasible targets that may vary across the OECD.

This paper documents levels and changes in child poverty rates in 12 OECD countries using data from the Luxembourg Income Study project, and focusing upon an analysis of the reasons for changes over the 1990s. The objective is to uncover the relative role of income transfers from the state in determining the magnitude and direction of change in child poverty rates, holding other demographic and labour market factors constant. As such the paper offers a cross-country overview of child poverty, changes in child poverty and the impact of public policy in North America and Europe. The paper offers a set of country specific results, and also attempts to draw general lessons. First, family and demographic forces play only a limited role in determining changes in child poverty rates. These forces change only gradually and are limited in their ability to cushion children from detrimental shocks originating in the labour market or in the government sector, which are the sources of the major forces determining the direction of change in child poverty. Second, in countries facing severe economic crises it does not appear that the amount of social transfers available were increased in a way to cushion children from these changes and put a backstop on their risk of low income. Third, there is no single road to lower child poverty rates. Changes in income transfers need to be thought through in conjunction with the nature of labour markets.

This paper offers a descriptive portrait of income poverty among children in Germany between the early 1980s and 2001, with a focus on developments since unification in 1991. Data from the German Socio-Economic Panel are used to estimate poverty rates, rates of entry to and exit from poverty, and the duration of time spent in and out of poverty. The analysis focuses upon comparisons between East and West Germany, by family structure, and citizenship status. Child poverty rates have drifted upward since 1991, and have been increasing more than the rates for the overall population since the mid-1990s. In part these changes are due to increasing poverty among children from households headed by non-citizens. Children in single parent households are by all measures at considerable risk of living in poverty. There are also substantial differences in the incidence of child poverty and its dynamics between East and West Germany.

The objective of this paper is to analyse the impact of fiscal policy on the economic resources available to children, and on the child poverty rate. A static microsimulation model specifically designed for the purposes of comparative fiscal analysis in the European Union, EUROMOD, is used to study the age incidence of government taxes and transfers in 2001 in 15 EU countries. Three related questions are addressed. First, what priorities are currently embodied in government budgets across age groups, and in particular to what degree do cash transfer and tax systems benefit children relative to older groups?; what fraction of the needs of children are supported by elements of the tax and transfer systems directed explicitly to them?; what impact do measures of public resources for children have on child poverty rates?