Publications

The paper reflects on the potential of the OECD DAC creditor reporting system to systematically capture flows of official development assistance (ODA) in support of realising children’s rights. The growth in modalities for delivering aid - including sector programmes, SWAP’s, dedicated funds which encompass public-private partnerships such as the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria, as well as the OECD-DAC commitment to promote harmonization and simplification in provision of ODA and promote government ownership through general budget support - raises challenges to assessing ODA for children. The question 'Is it meaningful to single out and measure direct assistance to children?' also must be raised. The paper goes on to analyse ODA trends for basic social services. The analysis further confirms that social sector programmes and sector wide approaches (SWAP’s) are on the rise but still account only for a small portion of total ODA to basic social services although a number of such programmes are targeted specifically to basic services.

This paper is produced alongside Innocenti Report Card 7 "Child Well-being in Rich Countries". It provides more detail on how the indicators were chosen for the Report Card, and how they were combined into components and then into dimensions. It also provides additional analysis to complement the Report Card.

Children’s opportunities to develop according to their talents and competencies and to establish trust in the adults with whom they live, their neighbourhoods, kindergardens, schools and municipalities crucially influence the future of the society in which they grow up. Yet, international comparisons have until recently centred on resource availability, material well-being and health outcomes. However, initiatives such as the OECD/PISA and WHO surveys of ‘healthy lifestyles among school-aged children’ have explored child well-being along several dimensions. In the case of Germany child well-being appears to be more advanced in the western than the eastern regions of the country, and in the south compared to the north. On the basis of the analysis a series of policy recommendations may be identified for the federal states and the municipalities concerning dimensions of child well-being which deserve special attention in their particular regional context.

Die Chancen von Kindern, sich in ihrer Lebensumwelt entsprechend ihren Fähigkeiten und Kompetenzen entwickeln zu können und Vertrauen zu den Erwachsenen aufzubauen, mit denen sie in Elternhaus, Nachbarschaft, Kindergarten, Schule und Gemeinde zusammenleben oder zusammen sind, entscheiden auch über die Zukunft der Gesellschaft, in der sie aufwachsen. Internationale Vergleiche stellten lange fast ausschließlich das materielle Risiko von Kindern in den Mittelpunkt. Die Bildungsvergleiche der OECD/PISA und die Übersichten der WHO zu gesundheitsbezogenen Verhaltensweisen von Schulkindern haben die Perspektive erweitert. Darauf aufbauend vergleicht die Innocenti Report Card 7 (2007) ‘Child Poverty in Perspective: An Overview of Child-wellbeing in Rich Countries’ die Situation von Kindern anhand der sechs Dimensionen: Materielle Lage, Gesundheit und Sicherheit, Bildung, die Beziehungen zu Eltern und Freunden, die Risiken im Alltag und das subjektive Wohlbefinden von Kindern.

An accumulation of research across hundreds of studies shows the benefits of quality early childhood care and education for children’s later learning, school success and social development. In recognition of the value of providing early learning opportunities, many nations have expanded early childhood care and education in recent years. Mexico provides an interesting case in which expansion of early childhood care and education has occurred in the past 5 years, as have initiatives to improve quality and revise the national curriculum for pre-schoolers. This paper examines three policy initiatives that occurred in Mexico between 2000 and 2006 - preschool expansion, quality improvement and curricular reform. The preschool expansion included a mandate for all parents in Mexico to send their preschool-aged children (3, 4 and 5 years old) to preschool, with target dates of 2004, 2005 and 2008 for 100 per cent coverage of 5-year-olds, 4-year-olds and 3-year-olds, respectively. The quality improvement initiative was part of a larger programme providing supplemental funds to select preschools and schools in Mexico’s public education system. Finally, the curricular reform instituted a new preschool curriculum to be implemented nationwide for all programmes across the 3- to 5-year-old age range.

This paper analyzes the changes that have intervened in the field of income poverty and human poverty since the onset of the transition in Moldova. With a biblical contraction of GDP, a fast rise in inequality, a drop in social expenditure and a weakening of civil society, most indicators of income poverty and human poverty deteriorated sharply after 1991. A clear improvement is evident since 2001, but most indicators of well-being still have to recover their pre-transition levels. There is some scope for social and macroeconomic policy to help reduce the negative inheritance of the first ten years of transition. Macroeconomic policy is rather deflationary, and keeps aggregate growth below what is needed to eradicate poverty quickly while paying little attention to its impact on inequality. There is room therefore to place greater emphasis on an equitable pro-poor growth characterized by greater investment in agriculture and higher overall employment intensity, as well as a better allocation of migrant remittances and stronger social policies.

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.

This paper examines poverty in recent years among children in the countries of South Eastern Europe and the Commonwealth of Independent States. The indicator used to measure poverty is found to be robust to sensitivity testing, and to correlate well with non-income indicators of well-being among children. The absolute poverty rate among children is highest where national income is lowest, and where the density of children in the population is highest. The paper analyses two dimensions of child poverty - according to household composition, and according to its urban, rural and regional dimensions. The most important findings from a policy point of view are the strong rural character of child poverty, and the relationship between child population density (at the level of the country, the sub-national region, and the household) and child poverty: where child population shares are higher, child poverty rates are also higher. This relationship, moreover, may have strengthened over time. Child population density needs to be seen more as a trigger to redistribution.

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 study seeks to promote children’s visibility and their voices within the scope of research on child poverty in rich countries through both a theoretical and empirical exploration. It discusses how recent sociological approaches to the study of childhood can further advance attempts to consider poverty from the perspective of the child. Additionally, to further understand children’s own responses to growing up in poverty, current literature on coping mechanisms among children is considered. Subsequently, this study seeks to give children’s perspectives, on the basis of qualitative in-depth interviews conducted in the Netherlands among six- to sixteen-year-old children (and their parents) of 65 families living at the national minimum benefit level.

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.