Towards Universal Social Protection for Children: Achieving SDG 1.3

Highlights

Social protection systems, and in particular social protection floors, play a crucial role in addressing child poverty and socio-economic vulnerabilities. Evidence clearly shows impacts of social protection, and cash transfers in particular, on poverty, food security, health and access to education – thus helping to ensure that children can realize their full potential.

This joint report provides an overview of the state of social protection for children, with a focus on child and family cash benefit programmes, examining aspects like effective coverage, recent trends, financing, and social protection in risk-prone, fragile and humanitarian contexts.

Towards the aim of achieving SDG 1.3 for children, the report calls for rapid expansions of child and family benefits for children, inclusion of universal approaches to child and family benefits to national social protection systems, and institutionalization of monitoring and reporting on social protection for children.