Child Poverty - Policy Implications

Policy Implications

According to the Overseas Development Institute*, greater visibility for children's rights issues is needed in donor policies and attempts should be made to emulate the success achieved using gender markers to develop gender-sensitive development policy. They believe major influential players in the children's rights community - the UNICEF, UNFPA and NGOs, such as Save the Children, Plan and World Vision - should do more to highlight the impact of mainstream macro-policies issues on children. The Overseas Development Institute further suggests that an international commission be established to address the impact of the 3-F crisis (food, financial and fuel) on children as a platform for dialogue and new initiatives.

However, determining the appropriate policies for dealing with long-term childhood poverty and intergenerational economic inequality is hotly debated, as are most proposed policy solutions, and depends on the effects that most impact the region. In order to combat the lack of resources available in developed nations, policies must be developed that deliver resources to poor families and raise skill levels of poor children by building on successful welfare-to-work initiatives and maintaining financial work supports, such as Earned Income Tax Credit, refundable child care tax credits and housing vouchers. To effectively address economic, demographic and cultural changes, economic and social service strategies to reverse the factors that generated the urban underclass, such as providing jobs and social services policies that deal with the effects of isolation, should be implemented. Finally, in order to reduce the loss of “family values”, policies should be aimed at expanding economic opportunities especially for disadvantaged girls.