Highlights

Empirical Analysis using Household and Micro-level Datasets

Formal empirical analysis of the social impact of crises, policy adjustments and other economic events is typically underpinned by an ex- post analysis using nationally representative household survey data.

Social Budget Tracking and Analysis

Social budget tracking and analysis tools monitor the extent of priority and protection given to public budget items and can influence government policies in favour of allocations to children and families.

A Child Rights Lens for Poverty and Social Impact Analyses (PSIAs)

Poverty and Social Impact Analyses, PSIAs, are aimed at facilitating an ex-ante understanding of the potential distributional impacts of a given policy reform. Child rights centered PSIAs, add a child focus to these impact assessments, as tools specifically designed to promote more child sensitive real-time policy making.

Economic Policies and Child Wellbeing

Economic trends and policies affect children through their impact on household income, employment, access to health, nutrition and education. The food and financial crises, together with escalating humanitarian emergencies, climate change, rapid urbanization and fiscal adjustments all profoundly affect children, particularly the most impoverished and marginalized.

In this rapidly changing world, robust evidence is critical to promoting the rights of children and ensuring that equitable policies are in place to improve children’s daily lives and protect them against shocks.

This UNICEF website provides analytical tools on economic trends and policies and their impacts on children. It gives policymakers, child rights advocates, academics and practitioners practical means to assess and formulate timely and effective responses to crises, economic shocks and policy reforms, and to analyse the social impacts of economic trends.

The range of instruments presented in this website include: Rapid Surveys and Sentinel Site Monitoring; Macro-micro Models and Micro-accounting Methodologies; Ex-ante Child Rights Centered Poverty and Social Impact Analyses; Empirical Ex-post Analysis; Social Budget Tracking and Analysis; and recent Innovative Desk Reviews. Supporting documents such as country cases, briefing notes, presentations, simulation tools and surveys' questionnaires are also available for download.

The site is linked to initiatives underway across UNICEF connecting research with data collection tools such as ChildInfo and with policy advocacy initiatives led by UNICEF’s Division of Policy and Practice that encourage policymakers to lend greater attention to children’s rights and the UN's calls to integrate economic and social policy.

This portal, which will be continuously updated as the latest knowledge becomes available, draws on a wide base of evidence to make the case for swift action on behalf of children – before, during and after crises, other shocks and policy reforms.

Please contact us at florence@unicef.org should you have any questions about the tools presented on this site, or would like to contribute to this resource.