Economic and social policy
Every child deserves a fair chance in life
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Across the world, children are more likely to live in poverty than adults. They're also more vulnerable to its effects. Social protection programmes – like cash transfers, health insurance and school subsidies – help give every child an equitable chance in life. They improve children's access to healthcare and education, and reduce the lifelong consequences of poverty.
But global coverage is low. Social services are often underfunded, with available resources neglecting the most disadvantaged families. Local governments – increasingly responsible for providing healthcare and education – may also lack the means to determine why and where children remain left behind.
What we do
Together with partners, UNICEF works to give every child a fair chance in life.
We call for governments to recognize child poverty as a national policy priority and protect children from its most devastating effects. We support countries’ efforts to assess monetary and multidimensional child poverty – measures of deprivation that go beyond income – and to address them through regulations, programmes and budgets.
And we help build the capacity of local governments to generate data, plan services, budget equitably and monitor results for children. Explore our work across these key areas:
Programme overview
Poverty can be defined across multiple dimensions. Globally, living in “extreme poverty” means surviving on less than $3 a day. But poverty is more than a dollar figure, especially through the eyes of a child. Children experience poverty when they don’t get the nutrition, water, shelter, education or healthcare they need to survive and thrive. Growing up without these necessities is a violation of a child's rights, with consequences that can last a lifetime.
Social protection covers the range of policies and programmes needed to reduce the lifelong consequences of poverty. Programmes like cash transfers – including child grants, school meals, skills development and more – help connect families with healthcare, nutritious food and quality education to give all kids a fair chance in life.
Yet, almost three out of four children worldwide are not covered by any form of social protection, leaving them vulnerable to economic hardship and exclusion.
Children may be cut off from social protection for various reasons. Families who live in hard-to-reach places, or who are affected by conflict or natural disasters, are often missed by cash transfer programmes and other critical services. Kids with disabilities are also more likely than their peers to be left behind. And women and girls face specific vulnerabilities that increase their likelihood of poverty.
For children in places where some form of social protection is accessible, services may be fragmented. Governments that fund programmes to expand education but neglect those that tackle malnutrition, for example, may find that kids still struggle to learn. When social protection programmes don't reinforce one another – in education, health, nutrition, child protection and other areas – children miss out on key opportunities and remain vulnerable to the effects of poverty.
Social assistance for parents is also crucial. Child care and other forms of support help families pursue the opportunities they need to build better futures for their children. Still, these services remain out of reach for many families in need.
Our response
UNICEF is a leading global partner on social protection, working in more than 140 countries on a range of policies and programmes – from cash transfers to social welfare services – to address child poverty in all its dimensions. Our efforts include:
- Generating evidence on child poverty and vulnerability, and the impact of social protection programmes on kids and their communities.
- Promoting inclusive and responsive social protection systems that account for the specific needs of the kids most likely to be excluded, including children with disabilities and girls.
- Enhancing the effectiveness of social protection programmes in the wake of humanitarian crisis, such that governments are prepared to support communities struck by conflict, economic shocks and climate disasters.
- Supporting the development of social protection systems in fragile contexts, including places where migrant and displaced populations face barriers to access.
- Working with governments and partners on laws and policies to improve synergies between social protection and public financial management.
- Providing technical support to establish and expand national cash transfer programmes through core diagnostics, registries, monitoring and evaluation systems, and decentralized capacity development.
- Connecting families in social protection programmes to critical information for their child's health and development.
- Promoting a case management approach by incorporating child-related data in social and beneficiary registries for cross-referrals and social care.
Public resources too often miss the children most in need. Sometimes it's because policymakers fail to allocate enough funds for kids' healthcare or schooling. Other times, public finances may not be well managed, reducing the quality or accessibility of services critical for child development.
Global evidence shows that public spending on children is a smart investment – for kids, their communities and entire countries. When governments invest in children, health outcomes improve, incomes rise, economies grow and societies become more cohesive.
Despite these benefits, public spending on health and education has stagnated in many parts of the world, and may be insufficient to meet the needs of children.
Challenges in public financial management make matters worse. Weak funding structures may delay teacher payments, resulting in teacher absenteeism and poor learning outcomes for students. In healthcare, inadequate costing can lead to a shortage of critical medicines, vaccines and other supplies. Management issues can also diminish hard-won gains, with consequences that ripple across society.
When deciding how to allocate funds effectively, governments must respond to children’s full range of needs. Public resources should be adequately directed to health, education, nutrition, protection and other areas that help kids reach their potential.
Our response
UNICEF works to tackle challenges in public financial management so that all children, especially those most vulnerable to poverty and exclusion, get a fair chance in life. We partner with governments and financial decision makers to influence and support the mobilization, allocation and utilization of domestic public financial resources. Our efforts:
- Ensure child-related policy commitments are better reflected in budget processes.
- Identify cost-effective and equitable ways to deliver services and life-saving supplies, and help governments plan, cost and budget for them.
- Improve the flow and use of budgeted resources for service delivery, including at the subnational level.
Our work is guided by the commitments countries made in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Sustainable Development Goals – which call for the better use of public funds – and UNICEF's own strategic plan.
More than half of the world’s population live in urban areas. And as millions more make the move, many end up in slums or informal settlements. An estimated 350 – 500 million children live in slums, with limited access to essential services like healthcare, education and sanitation.
Opportunities stemming from cities’ abundant resources and strong infrastructure – the “urban advantage” – are often denied to the most vulnerable. The poorest urban children are twice as likely to die before their fifth birthday compared to their rich peers. In some countries, poor urban children are also worse off than their rural peers.
Various factors are to blame. Families who end up in slums often live in overcrowded settings, without adequate housing and open public spaces, and under the constant threat of eviction. They’re increasingly exposed to disease outbreaks and environmental hazards like toxic chemicals and air, water and soil pollutants.
Children’s safety may be compromised in other ways unique to urban living. Road traffic perils, exploitative labour, trafficking, and exposure to violence and criminal activity all put young people in harm’s way.
And as humanitarian crises increasingly affect urban areas – directly, through civil conflict, natural disasters and disease outbreaks; or indirectly, as more refugees settle there – inequalities worsen. In cities, refugees and displaced families tend to fall outside the reach of traditional humanitarian operations, often leaving them to fend for themselves.
Our response
By 2050, an estimated 70% of the world’s population will live in urban settings, with most population growth occurring in low- and lower-middle-income countries. Without a stronger focus on children in cities, humanitarian organizations will fail to reach the most vulnerable with the protections set out under the Convention on the Rights of the Child and the Sustainable Development Goals.
In response, UNICEF is stepping up its programming in urban areas with a special focus on slums and informal settlements. We prioritize:
Evidence and data
A critical first step towards reducing urban inequality is identifying patterns of poverty. UNICEF is strengthening our intra-urban data collection and analysis to monitor the situation of children who tend to fall outside the reach of traditional humanitarian operations.
Local planning, financing and budgeting
UNICEF adapts programming strategies for various territorial contexts, including cities and towns. We support the development of systems, capacities and resources for evidence-based local planning and budgeting, to help build solutions that reach children in slums and informal settlements.
Community engagement
People in informal settlements are not always recognized by governments. In response, UNICEF is working to establish effective child-participatory mechanisms in cities, with special attention to disadvantaged groups.
Quality and equitable services for children
UNICEF’s strategy for reaching urban children with quality, equitable social services accounts for country contexts. In lower- and middle-income countries, we’re exploring ways to introduce integrated models for coordinating quality services with local governments. We focus on reducing urban marginalization, reaching excluded and underserved children, and lowering barriers to access, especially by improving equity in public spending.
Child-responsive urban planning
UNICEF is working with partners to ensure that national planning standards set for urban land use take children’s need for healthy environments and play into consideration. This includes all public spaces central to children’s well-being, like housing, parks, roads and public transportation, in addition to other infrastructure for child-related services.
Local governments play a key role providing essential services to children. Whether in urban or rural settings, they help connect kids to nutritious food, safe water, quality education and other forms of social protection that reduce the burden of poverty.
Yet, in many countries, local governments aren't fully equipped to meet children’s needs. Lack of information and resources can prevent them from reaching every child – especially those vulnerable to discrimination and exclusion.
Without data on children’s well-being, local governments may struggle to understand who’s being left behind and why. Insufficient resources can also hinder their efforts to plan, budget for and monitor social services. And since governments often rely on partners to help improve the quality and reach of services, coordination may create additional challenges that cut children off from care.
Our response
UNICEF works with local governments and communities in more than 100 countries to find lasting solutions for governance challenges. We help policymakers meet children’s needs by:
- Generating geographically disaggregated data that show how children in various communities are faring across health, education and other outcomes.
- Ensuring local government budgets are equitable and allocate funds to benefit the children most in need.
- Empowering children and their communities to participate in decision-making processes and evaluate local services.
- Enhancing service delivery and coordination by partnering with the private sector and civil society.