How do economic shocks, in particular the current economic downturn, affect the wellbeing of children? What can be done to mitigate harm? This paper explores these questions, presents a framework for analysing the impact of shocks on children in different contexts and suggests initial policy implications.
This paper analyzes changes in the allocation of child labor within the household in reaction to exogenous shocks created by a social program in Nicaragua. The paper shows that households that randomly received a conditional cash transfer compensated for some of the intra-household differences, as they reduced child labor more for older boys who used to work more and for boys who were further behind in school. The results also show that households that randomly received a productive investment grant, in addition to the basic conditional cash transfer benefits, both targeted at women, show an increased specialization of older girls in nonagricultural and domestic work, but no overall increase in girls' child labor. The findings suggest that time allocation and specialization patterns in child labor within the household are important factors to understand the impact of a social program.
The relationship between wealth and child labor has been widely examined. This paper uses three rounds of time-series, cross-sectional data to examine the relationship between wealth and child labor and schooling. The paper finds that wealth is crucial in determining a child's activities, but that this factor is far from being a sufficient condition to enroll a child in school. This is particularly the case for rural girls. Nonparametric analysis shows a universal increase in school enrollment for rural girls from 1998 to 2006. This increase is independent of wealth (measured by per capita expenditure). Multinomial logit regression further shows that wealth is insignificant in determining rural girls' activity decisions. Thus, interventions to increase school enrollment should incorporate broad-targeted, demand-side interventions as well as supply-side interventions.
Application deadline for West Africa workshop: 20 April
The Women's Refugee Commission will be conducting three livelihood workshops this year in West Africa, East Africa and Asia. The workshops focus on the needs of displaced women and youth, and will include a session that addresses implications for child protection.
The first one will be a three-day, highly participatory regional livelihoods workshop in Accra, Ghana from May 12-14, 2009 designed to bring practitioners from throughout the region to learn new techniques, share experiences, and collect tools designed to improve economic programming practice on the ground. Two days of the workshop will focus on findings from the Women’s Refugee Commission’s three-year research project on livelihoods in refugee, IDP, and returnee settings and will include practice sessions on usage of the newly released Livelihoods Field Manual. The third day of the workshop will cover findings on the Commission’s project on livelihoods as a tool of protection against gender-based violence and how GBV and livelihood programs should complement each other to better protect women.
Participants will be required to cover their own travel expenses. Meals and materials will be provided. Participants attending from local NGOs can apply for financial assistance for partial coverage of travel and hotel expenses.
To request an application or for any questions, please contact Sonali at livelihoodsworkshop@wrcommission.org
