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Blurred Definitions and Imprecise Indicators: Rethinking Social Assistance for Children’s Work
Get PDFThis chapter argues that the design and delivery of social assistance does not take adequate account of the nuanced role of work in children’s lives and that current interventions are therefore ill-equipped to tackle children’s harmful work. This argument is developed against a background of increasing evidence that social assistance has the potential to reduce children’s engagement with work but limited understanding of its impact on children’s engagement with harmful work. The chapter reviews a set of evaluations of social assistance schemes, and shows that few studies look beyond prevalence or intensity of work. This results in a substantial knowledge gap about the extent to which, and how, social assistance may reduce harm through work. An alternative way of understanding benefits and harms of children’s work is proposed
Successes in Social Protection: What lessons can be learned?
No full textFirst published online : December 2011The recent food, fuel and financial crises have triggered innovation in social protection programmes around the world. Existing evidence suggests that such programmes both protect people from shocks and enable them to participate in economic growth. This paper explores lessons learned in social protection initiatives across countries and contexts, and identifies a set of ‘success conditions’ for social protection programmes, focusing mainly on sub-Saharan Africa. Ghana’s national health insurance illustrates well three key features of an enabling environment: political commitment at the top; high administrative capacity; and financial sustainability and commitment to programme spending controls. To influence policy, these lessons need specification to the given context
Children’s Work in Ghana:Policies and Politics
Get PDFThis chapter explores policy and legislation aimed at preventing, regulating and abolishing harmful children’s work in Ghana. The government aligns itself with mainstream development partners and the UN in viewing harmful children’s work as a breach of dignity, wellbeing and fundamental human rights. Campaigns, laws and policies have been put in place to stop such work, yet the number of children involved in prohibited work and those combining such work with schooling continues to rise. The chapter identifies the incompatibility of these policies and programmes with the country’s historical, socio-cultural, economic and political realities. It concludes that legislation and interventions aimed at preventing children’s hazardous or harmful work should draw on both the formal legislative rights and the informal, traditional rights discourses if they are to help advance children’s development, rights and best interests
Children’s Work in African Agriculture
Get PDFEPDF and EPUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC-ND licence. This book examines children’s involvement in African agricultural work. It argues that framing all children’s engagement in economic activity as ‘child labour’, with all the associated negative connotations, is problematic.
The conceptual and case-based chapters reframe the debate about children’s work and harm in rural Africa with the aim of shifting research, public discourse and policy so that they better serve the interest of rural children and their families
Seasonality and capital in farm household models
No full textA wide variety of farm household models have provided a valuable theoretical basis for empirical and conceptual analysis of interactions between production and consumption resource allocations of poor rural people. A weakness of common applications of many such models, and unfortunately of much analysis, is failure to also recognise and adequately describe the fundamental seasonal nature of most agricultural production and the effects of pervasive seasonal finance market failures on poor rural people’s behaviour and welfare. This is despite considerable theoretical work that uses such models to investigate (often limited) production impacts of formal financial services. A general model recognising this is presented, with graphical applications showing the potential importance of seasonal finance constraints on the behaviour and welfare of different farm households. Formal methods for investigating the effects of seasonal finance constraints on household behaviour and welfare should be standard tools used by applied rural development economists
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Understanding Children’s Harmful Work: The Methodological Landscape
Get PDFThis chapter details the merits and challenges of a range of quantitative, qualitative, participation and certification methods that have been used to measure and evaluate the extent and impact of children’s work and child labour. The review highlights the paucity in methods to accommodate considerations of children’s harmful work. It proposes a set of research design principles for studying children’s work. The chapter also calls for the use of new and innovative methods, highlighting the need for truly integrated mixed methods as well as more exploratory qualitative, participatory and emergent methodologies
The Impact of Irregular Status on Human Development Outcomes for Migrants
Get PDFThe purpose of this paper is to explore how irregular status impacts a range of human development outcomes for labour migrants. The analysis indicates that for poorer labour migrants, irregular (or undocumented) migration provides a positive, private return to income and livelihood improvements for themselves and their families as compared to 1) no movement at all, and at times, 2) regular (or documented) migration. However, irregular status is associated with a range of forms of disadvantage and vulnerabilities that often compromise migrants’ rights, entitlements and the rate of return they achieve from the migration process. Migrants are as rational as other members of the population and, being aware of these vulnerabilities, many still choose to migrate. The larger hypothesis of this paper is that, as long as poverty drives migration, legal status will not be a priority for migrants. Migrants will be willing to endure short to medium term hardship and the undermining of a range of capabilities and rights (such as education, social assets, rights and personal welfare) to provide economic safety nets for their families and future improvements to their (and their families) livelihoods and wellbeing. As long as migrants on average achieve a positive increase in income and assets through the migration experience (which they do) they will sacrifice a whole range of freedoms and rights. It is therefore imperative that policy makers make active steps to protect migrants with regard to basic human rights and facilitate positive outcomes from their migration experiences. In particular, we urge southern governments to advocate for all their migrants abroad, regardless of legal status. If southern country governments accept the mainstream opinion that migration is good for development, and furthermore recognise that a substantial number, if not the majority, of their migrants are irregular, and continue sending remittances and investment, then governments should seek to protect their citizens aboard, facilitate safe remittances, and begin to stand firm in the face of pressure to control national borders.Irregular status, migration, vulnerability, poverty, protection
Heterogeneity in target populations and locations: Reflections on the challenges for poverty targeting
No full textThe author of Chapter 9 draws on in-depth knowledge of a set of recent and active social protection programs implemented in eastern Africa to discuss three challenges inherent to poverty-targeting that constrain the achievement of program objectives. These challenges are the difficulty of identifying the poorest among the poor, heterogeneity in household characteristics within a target population that is assumed to be relatively homogeneous, and provision of “individual/household” transfers in diverse social and cultural contexts
Heterogeneity in target populations and locations: Reflections on the challenges for poverty targeting
No full textThe author of Chapter 9 draws on in-depth knowledge of a set of recent and active social protection programs implemented in eastern Africa to discuss three challenges inherent to poverty-targeting that constrain the achievement of program objectives. These challenges are the difficulty of identifying the poorest among the poor, heterogeneity in household characteristics within a target population that is assumed to be relatively homogeneous, and provision of “individual/household” transfers in diverse social and cultural contexts.PRIFPRI1; ReSAKSS; IFPRI4; 4 Transforming Agricultural and Rural Economies; 5 Strengthening Institutions and GovernanceAFR; DSG
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