1. 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

2. The Poverty and Economic Policy (PEP) Research network
Capacity building, research funding and promotion of developing country researchers
Research grants (and scientific support) to conduct policy research on poverty issues.
Open and competitive global call for proposals (deadline: Jan. 6, 2010)
150 projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America (45.7% female; 22.5% under 30): Since 2002
Activities: training workshops, study visits, distance support, general meetings, national and international policy conferences, working papers, journal articles, policy briefs, presentations in international conferences, newsletters.
Child welfare topics: Policy impact evaluation, community-based poverty monitoring, macro-micro shock and policy simulations, multidimensional poverty analysis, implementing the capabilities approach, incidence analysis…
Offices: Africa (Dakar), Asia (Manila), Latin America (Lima) and Quebec.
Funding: AusAID, CIDA and IDRC
Projects can be found by country (“PEP in the World”), by “Themes” or by “Programs” on the PEP web site.
Policy briefs, working paper, newsletters, external publications and many other PEP outputs can be found under “Publications”
More information on PEP “Activities” is provided under “About PEP”

3. 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

4. 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 GDP)
Food subsidies
Child cash transfers: proxy means, no administrative costs, sharing

5. Impacts on monetary poverty and hunger in BF

6. Education and Child Labour: 6 to 10 years

7. Education and Child Labour: 11 to 14 years

8. Health: 0 to 14 years

9. 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

10. 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.)