Publications

Germany ranks lowest regarding educational equalities among OECD countries, as the recently published PISA ‘Programme of International Student Assessment’ data revealed (ref. PISA 2000). This might be due to the remarkable German transition process from primary to secondary school where children are selected into diversely prestigious school environments at an early stage of their intellectual development. This paper aims at examining whether sorting of children is leading to educational inequalities. Based on the two different surveys of learning achievement TIMSS (‘Third International Math and Science Study’) and PISA 2000 we find consistently that although ability is a main criterion of the sorting process, pupils' socio-economic background, their gender and the region they live in also exert a significant influence on the selection results. Since sorting is difficult to correct and school choice determines career options, these educational inequalities in secondary schooling very probably have an impact on pupils’ life even long after they have finished school.

This paper examines the impact of the Asian crisis on children in Indonesia. School attendance dropped slightly after the onset of the crisis but has since rebounded to higher than pre-crisis levels. Fewer children are now working, although the older children who are working and are not attending school seem to be working longer hours. Several studies have examined the social impacts of the crisis. The findings can largely be summarized as showing that rather than being uniformly negative and severe, the crisis impact has been quite heterogeneous, depending on geographic location and household socio-economic status. Overwhelmingly, households have been shown to be very resilient in the face of hardship.

This paper uses regression and matching techniques to evaluate Indonesia’s Social Safety Net Scholarships Programme. The scholarships programme was developed to try to prevent large numbers of children from dropping out of school as a result of the Asian crisis. The expectation was that many families would find it difficult to keep their children in school and drop out rates would be high as they were during the 1980's recession. Drop-outs, however, have not increased markedly and enrolment rates have remained relatively steady. This paper examines the role played by the scholarship programme in producing this result.

The social and economic changes in Bulgaria since the beginning of transition naturally raise concern about their impact on child well-being. This paper investigates the changes that occurred over the last decade in three dimensions of child welfare recognised as fundamental child rights economic well-being, health and education. Then it concentrates on particularly vulnerable groups of children those born of teenage and single mothers and those living in institutions. The data show that the human cost of economic transition has been high and children have been among the most vulnerable groups of the society.

Socio-economic and political turmoil in Indonesia has had an impact on the country's thirty years of progress in social development. However, it has also opened up new avenues for participation and region-specific policy formulation alongside growing demand for new approaches to the monitoring and analysis of social change. This paper examines the Family-in-Focus Approach - a comprehensive lifespan-based concept of human development. This joint initiative from UNICEF, the Government of Indonesia and others, sees families as participants in development rather than passive recipients of programmes. A family focus in the planning of multi-sectoral interventions could ensure better targeting, while building capacity for analysis at Governmental and institutional levels.

Within the last decade governments of donors and developing countries have committed themselves to achieving a number of International Development Targets (IDTs) to be reached by 2015. These include halving the proportion of people living in extreme poverty and ensuring universal primary education. While the bulk of the resources for this task will come from the national budgets of developing countries, without additional official development assistance (ODA) the task is daunting for most of the low-income countries. This paper examines the extent to which poverty alleviation through support for basic social services has become part of the official development assistance strategy of donors. It finds an alarming gap between the rethoric of poverty reduction on the one hand, and the feature of ODA, especially to basic services, on the other.

Progress towards the target of universal access to basic education by the year 2000, set by two global conferences in 1990, has been too slow in many countries. Most of the reasons for this inadequate progress are country-specific. However, in virtually all countries one explanation stands out: inadequate public finance for primary education. This paper updates the global and regional cost estimates for achieving 'education for all' by 2015 the new target date set by the Social Summit in 1995. The estimates are based on the most recent country-by-country data on budgetary expenditure, population and enrolment trends, and unit cost.

Research in many countries has confirmed that teenage mothers and their families are often at a disadvantage compared with those whose children are born in their twenties or thirties. But there has never been an opportunity for a systematic comparison between countries, based on a common data source. This paper analyses the current situation of women whose first child was born when they were teenagers, across 13 countries in the European Union, based on the European Community Household Panel survey. Outcomes considered include educational attainment, family structure, family employment and household income. Teenage mothers were disadvantaged in all countries, but the severity of their position varied substantially between countries.

Do preferences for income inequality differ systematically between the post-socialist countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the Western established market economies? This paper analyses 1999 data from a large international survey to address this question. In particular, we examine whether attitudes to inequality differ between East and West even after the 'conventional' determinants of attitudes are controlled for. Results suggest that this is indeed the case. A decade after the breakdown of communism, people in transition countries are indeed significantly more 'egalitarian' than those living in the West, in the sense that they are less willing to tolerate existing income inequalities, even after the actual level of income inequality and other determinants of attitudes are taken into account.

The project, through a series of reports on child and family well-being, has had a remarkable impact on policy makers, academics, politicians and members of the public. One of the keys to its success has been the comprehensive set of demographic and social indicators and related policy and institutional information collected via a wide network of experts. By drawing a comparison with similar analytical efforts, this paper highlights the distinctive features of the project, including a holistic and regional perspective based on a systematic mix of statistical and analytical investigations. This approach offers some comparative advantages relative to UNICEF's global surveys and national situation analyses in terms of its capacity to grasp key patterns of change and the role of institutional factors.

Putting data on children into macroeconomic debate can be achieved in a variety of ways. Economic policy is about improving the lives of people and the most basic data of all concerning children - demographic data - can be used to underline this fact. The key economic variables on which economic policy operates can all be given a child dimension. And direct measures of various dimensions of child well-being must also be brought into the picture.

Evidence is considered on differences in access to education and in learning achievement within the countries of Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. The situation inherited from the communist period is first summarized: there were some significant disparities with, for example, family background having a strong association with tertiary enrolments, as in Western countries. Analysis of the transition period focuses on the differences in access and achievement associated with household income and geographic location. Disparities are not the same across the region; in some countries, such as Russia, there are clear grounds for serious concern, but it is unlikely that any country has cause for complacency.