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.

Millet Prices, Public Policy and Child Malnutrition: the Case of Niger in 2005

A study on food prices, child malnutrition and public policy in Niger was undertaken by a team of the University of Florence (Italy) in 2006-07. The UNICEF Niger Country Office, the Regional Office for West and Central Africa and the Innocenti Research Centre, gave technical support to the study, which has been released in the Innocenti Working Paper series in 2008.

Between March and August 2005 Niger was hit by a doubling of millet prices, and a sharp rise in the number of severely malnourished children admitted to feeding centres. The extent and causes of such crisis remain controversial. Some argue that these extreme events are part of a normal seasonal cycle, while others suggest that in 2005 Niger’s chronic food insecurity turned into a nutritional crisis that in some areas reached near-famine conditions.

This paper reviews the evidence in this regard, in light of the main famine theories and against the background of the chronic food insecurity and high child malnutrition characterizing Niger. The study concludes that the decline in food production invoked by many to explain the crisis, does not help in understanding a complex crisis that can only be understood by examining the entitlement failures of several socio-economic groups, the malfunctioning of domestic and regional food markets, and policy mistakes in the fields of food security, health financing, and international aid.

Documents

Millet Prices, Public Policy, and Child Malnutrition: the Case of Niger in 2005 (2008)
Authors: Cornia, G.A. and L. Deotti
Innocenti Working Paper No. 2008-04, UNICEF Research Centre, Florence