Impacts de la crise mondiale sur les enfants en Afrique de l’Ouest et du Centre Burkina Faso: Lacina Balma and Samuel Kabore Cameroon: Christian Emini and Paul Ningaye Ghana: Theodore Antwi-Asare, Edgar Cooke and Daniel Twerefou Regional: Sami Bibi, John Cockburn, Massa Coulibaly, Ismaël Fofana and Luca Tiberti Commissioned by UNICEF’s West and Central Africa Regional Office The global economic crisis – Including children in the policy response ODI-UNICEF, London, November 9-10, 2009

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National economy (CGE model) Objective: Simulate child welfare impacts of the global crisis and policy responses in Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Ghana (and S. Africa) Export prices/demand Import prices Impacts Household (micro models) Remittances FDI Foreign aid Input prices Consumer prices National economy (CGE model) Producer prices Child welfare: monetary poverty, hunger, schooling, labor, health Employ-ment

Methodology Macro impacts: CGE model capturing main channels of impact of the global crisis on the national economy, notably prices, wages and employment. Child welfare impacts Monetary poverty: Based on changes in prices, wages, employment and remittances Hunger (caloric adequacy): Consumption behavior + nutritional tables School/child labor participation: Econometric estimation: f(real income) Health access/choice of supplier: Econometric estimation: f(real income) Simulations Business as usual (no crisis): historic trends (6-8 years) Crisis 2009: Various sources (IMF, UNCTAD, national, etc.) 2010: Stagnation, except import prices 2011: Back to historic growth trends Policy response (financed by foreign aid equal to 1% of 2008 GDP) Food subsidies Child cash transfers: proxy means, no administrative costs, sharing

Impacts on monetary poverty and hunger in BF

Education and Child Labour: 6 to 10 years

Education and Child Labour: 11 to 14 years

Health: 0 to 14 years

Targetting (proxy means) Cash transfers target predicted poor children = f(demographics, housing conditions, durable goods, region): easily observable and non-manipulable characteristics Predicted status national urban rural Actual status non-poor poor Burkina 63.1 36.9 74.7 25.3 59.4 40.6 23.4 76.6 9.6 90.4 24.4 75.6 Cameroon 70.0 30.0 93.3 6.7 41.7 58.3 9.9 90.1 58.1 41.9 5.1 94.9 Ghana 60.8 39.2 67.9 32.1 55.0 45.0 19.2 80.8 23.9 76.1 17.9 82.1 Exclusion errors Inclusion errors Cash transfer amount Burkina Faso 12340 CFA francs per child Cameroon: 21065 CFA francs per child Ghana: 23.10 cedis per child

Impact of the global crisis on child poverty in West and Central Africa Take-home lessons Crisis brings many shocks: imports, exports, FDI, aid, remittances Complex impacts: wages, employment, self-employment income, consumer prices Strongly increases monetary poverty and hunger (up to 10 percentage points) Mildly reduces schooling and recourse to (modern) health services (up to 1 percentage point), while increasing child labor Food subsidies marginally offset the impacts of the crisis (Well-) targeted cash transfers are far more effective (Pursuit of fiscal balance further (slightly) worsens the impacts) Future work: focus subsidies on poor child foods, focus CTs on youngest children, other financing (domestic taxes, deficit, other cuts), other dimensions (mortality, morbidity, nutritional status, etc.)