Publications

This brief examines the potential ethical issues, including benefits and risks, associated with predictive analytics as they pertain to children. 
It is based on a more in-depth working paper, UNICEF Innocenti Working Paper 2021-08, which provides further detail, guidance, and tools.

This paper examines potential ethical issues, including benefits and risks, associated with predictive analytics as they pertain to children. It is designed to support readers in gaining an overview of the current state of the field, knowledge of real-world deployments of predictive analytics and ultimately, a deeper understanding of the opportunities and potential harms of deploying predictive analytics that directly or indirectly target children.

This paper reports findings from a mixed-methods evaluation of the Government of Zambia’s Child Grant Programme, a poverty-targeted, unconditional transfer given to mothers or primary caregivers of young children aged 0 to 5. Qualitatively, we found that changes in intrahousehold relationships were limited by entrenched gender norms, which indicate men as heads of household and primary decision-makers. However, women’s narratives showed the transfer did increase overall household well-being because they felt increased financial empowerment and were able to retain control over transfers for household investment and savings for emergencies. The study found that women in beneficiary households were making more sole and joint decisions, although impacts translated into relatively modest increases.

Decision makers frequently need evaluation to help them work out what to do to build on strengths and address weaknesses. To do so, they must know not only what the strengths and weaknesses are, but also which are the most important or serious, and how well or poorly the programme or policy is performing on them. Evaluative reasoning is the process of synthesizing the answers to lower- and mid-level evaluation questions into defensible judgements that directly answer the key evaluation questions.