The global crisis has sharply underscored the need to strengthen social protection institutions in developing countries, and especially in low income countries. Before the onset of the crisis in November 2008, a growing body of research had accumulated proving a comprehensive knowledge base demonstrating that social protection programmes are effective instruments in reducing poverty and enhancing human development.
In the decade prior to the onset of the crisis a large number among the new social protection programmes had emerged in the South with a specific focus on children. Children are the largest group within the global poor, and by investing in children’s development, social transfers contribute to providing a permanent exit from poverty. The focus on children signals the fact that social protection is as much to do with reducing current poverty, as with investing in the future (Barrientos & DeJong, 2006).
These programmes exhibit considerable diversity in terms of objectives and programme design. They can take the form of pure income transfers, like in the case of South Africa’s Child Support Grant, whereas other countries have adopted a different approach consisting in linking income transfers with basic service provision. For example, Mexico’s Oportunidades (previously known as Progresa), and Brazil’s Bolsa Familia, which provides income transfers to poor households on condition that they regularly send their children to school and that household members attend health clinics. In fewer countries, like in the case of Chile Solidario, income transfers are combined with a wide range of interventions in health, education, employment, and housing. Our focus on social protection programmes directly focusing on childr...
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... of revenue collection of the machinery of redistribution, important though these are. An optimal financing mix should do three jobs well: (i) generate the resources needed to establish and strengthen appropriate social protection systems; (ii) ensure that the incentives generated by the financing modalities reduce child poverty and child vulnerability; and (iii) secure legitimacy for social protection institutions and policies. Section three examines the main issues involved in financing social protection in low income countries, beginning with a discussion of trends in sub-Saharan Africa, and the issues raised by the current global crisis; followed by a discussion of alternative policy strategies adopted in three Latin American countries: the use of natural resources in Bolivia; budgetary surplus policies in Chile, and borrowing in Mexico. Section four concludes.
Even the mere inequality of wealth in a child’s social, cultural, or educational setting can have effects on a child’s peer to peer interactions, hierarchical structure and their ability to achieve. Gorard 2010 as discussed in Victoria Cooper, 2014 (p160), links poverty and or social deprivation with lower academic results. In the Xiao Bo case study by Child poverty research and policy centre, 2013 (Heather Montgomery, 2014) it demonstrates the multifaceted effects of poverty on a child, such as the stresses it places on the family to educate children, pressure on the children themselves to succeed in education to enable them to assist with family finances and lifestyle, the compromises and sacrifices made as a family unit in lifestyle and financial planning in order to pursue education of the child, as well as demonstrating the wide range of instigators that create inequalities of wealth, such as political/policy decisions, loopholes in aid assistance, cost of education and unequal access to resources. In 2001 the Millennium development goals were set out in response to the millennium summit of the united nations to reduce poverty and its associated issues, of the eight goals, the first goal was to eradicate extreme poverty and hunger, demonstrating the comprehension of the wide ranging affect of poverty on children and society as a whole, and an understanding that poverty ‘Damages children in every way’ as stated by Unicef
Kenworthy, L. (1999). Do social-welfare policies reduce poverty? A cross-national assessment. Social Forces, 77(3), 1119-1139.
When Chile became a democracy in the early 1990s, it experienced a rapid drop in poverty, which corresponded with its economic growth. However, despite continuing growth as Chile approached the turn of the century, the decline in poverty stagnated (see fig 1.) with the number of people in extreme poverty actually increasing from 5.6% to 5.7% in the years 1998-2000, highlighting that growth alone is not sufficient in reducing poverty. The imperative to look beyond economic growth for reducing poverty is reinforced by data from ECLAC, which reveals that Latin American countries with better social indicators than others had lower levels of poverty than those with the lowest social indicators. It was within this context, with the intention of addressing this issue, that Chile Solidario was created.
The neoliberal policies have benefited some people in generating great wealth for them, but controversially, the policies have failed to benefit the people who live in extreme poverty and those people are the most in need for financial support (Makwana, 2006). In the last 2 to 3 decades, the wealth disparity between nations as well as within nations has increased. Currently, one out of every 5 children in the United States is in a state of poverty, continual hunger, insecurity and lack of health care (MIT, 2000). This situation is becoming even more desperate. Between 1960 and 1980, the developing countries’ economic growth was 3.2 percent. Then it dropped significantly to 0.7 percent between 1980 and 2000, and this is the period when neolibe...
most affected by poverty are the future of this country, the children. “Young children are the
When one thinks of poverty often the mental picture that comes to mind is of single parent welfare, dependent, women and unemployed, drug-addicted, alcoholic lackadaisical men. The children are often forgotten. The impact of poverty, the destruction of crime and stigmatization of the violence on the children is more devastating and irreversible than the miseducation and illiteracy that most often companies poverty. The implication is not the poverty can not be overcome but that the cycles of teenage pregnancy, welfare dependency, and dropping out of high school continues and are hard to break. The badges of poverty are just as addictive and capitiving as any disease such as alcohol or drugs.
Before Lula, the military was still a strong player in politics and past presidents had center and right ideologies so a shift to a leftist party, was a start to a new era of politics in Brazil. Lula was a representative of “the most ideologically coherent and disciplined party in a field dotted with parties whose politicians possess few principled commitments and have been known to switch allegiances in order to get ahead” (Hunter 152). The Worker’s Party was known to be a programmatic, non-clientelist party. When Lula was in power, there was changed in the party’s ideology, he prioritized economic stability. This approach resulted in a lack of attention to other economic and social development problems, such as poverty, inequality, and education. When Lula realizes that the poverty in Brazil remained at an alarming rate, he established an innovative approach to poverty called “Bolsa Familia”. This social policy was a family allowance, or conditional cash transfers made to low-income families. The money was ideally given to the mothers under some conditions: the child must be enrolled in school, had to regularly see a doctor, and receive vaccinations. This policy decreased the levels of poverty, “…by over 55 percent, from 35.8 percent of the population to 15.9 percent in 2012. Extreme poverty [was] reduced by 65 percent, from 15.2 percent to 5.3 percent over the same time period.” (Weisbrot, Johnson, and Lefebvre
One of the main problems that are evident in the world today is children at risk. In many cases people's thoughts are directed to children in third world countries who are living below the poverty line. In this website the topics that are to be covered include, what determines a child at risk in a third world country, what the needs are and what a child at risk looks like, what the organisations Blue Dragon and Habitat for Humanity are doing, and what their most successful processes have been. The World Health Organisation defines a child at risk as a child who is deprived of their basic needs and rights (WHO, 2011) More specific to a third world countries Richard Jolly writes in The Lancet that ‘Many children younger than 5 years in developing
Collier, Paul. The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done About It. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007. Print.
However, Patel & Hochfeld (2012) in their study in South Africa identified significant difficulties with micro-economic development interventions and they discovered that social workers felt ill-equipped and ineffective in these areas. When it comes to economic concepts social workers are blank. Other participants in this study questioned whether economic development was indeed a social work role. They indicated that they are not economists (Patel & Hochfeld, 2012). But being closely associated with the poor and vulnerable in society, social workers are key social partners and change agents in development and should therefore play an important role in the nation-wide effort to reduce inequality and eliminate poverty (Lombard,
Within the Caribbean there are various ‘reduction of poverty’ programmes and policies which endorse reduction on dependency and self- reliance such as Jamaica’s National Poverty Eradication Programme and Trinidad and Tobago’s Social Sector Investment Programme. These programmes however, fail miserably because the resources provided does not reach into the hands of the poor and there are no supplemental programmes in place to track individuals and thus ensure that they reach a level of stability so that they can withdraw from government’s assistance (Haralambos & Holborn 2008).
Many studies illustrate that high quality child care helps children who have been brought up in poverty to develop skills that enable better education, jobs and earnings (Adelman). It would help to reduce poverty if more parents would invest money `into high quality child care, because children would be able to learn the skills that they should know to get a good education. In an article entitled “9 Ways to Reduce Poverty,” Larry Adelman stated that “Investments in infrastructure—fixing old bridges, building mass transit, converting to clean energy sources—and investments in vital services such as schools, childcare and eldercare generate both public benefits and jobs.” Investments in the most important buildings and structures in a community would help to create job opportunities, which could benefit people who are in poverty by allowing them the opportunity to get a job. Poverty reduction would benefit the economy and the people who suffer from
Child poverty is a major and complex issue that New Zealand faces today. The degree is far more severe than the public's perception and it is a problem that we cannot afford to ignore. A combination of factors contributes to child poverty, from individual causes at the micro level to the macro collective government involvement. This occurs partly due to social construction and it is potentially avoidable. The consequences can impact on both individual and to a great extent affect significantly on the country as a whole. If the issue is not resolved, the inequality will continue, if not worsen and becomes an ongoing intergeneration cycle. 'The poor get poorer and poorer', children can easily fall into the poverty trap where it becomes nearly impossible to reach an end to this issue. The consequences of the disparity have a major outcome on the societal level.
Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs award cash payments to poor households that meet certain behavioral requirements, generally related to children’s health care and education. In some cases, conditional cash transfers have been used for broader environmental goals, such as making payments to people living near forests in return for protecting the area rather than damaging it in order to earn income. In the form of grants to the elderly, they are a tool for strengthening social protection systems.Conditional cash transfer programs, financed by the governments, have spread rapidly over the last decade in the developing world. The concept of CCT structures originated in Latin American countries mainly in response to the economic crisis of the 1990s . During this time there was a drastic decline in the demand for social services from low income households. These programs represent a change in governmental approach that used to focus on the supply-side delivery of basic services. Alternatively, they focus on the demand-side, by protecting the consumption of merit goods. These programs also represent a shift from general subsidies to more sharply CCT programs providing cash transfers to poor families that are contingent on children’s educational and health investments, typically school attendance and regular medical checkups, with the goal of breaking the intergenerational cycle of poverty.
The majority of South Africans are unemployed and therefore can’t satisfy their needs and wants, and also their children’s needs and wants, thus more than half of South Africa’s children live in poverty.