Economic and social policy
Every child deserves a fair chance in life
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Across the world, children are more likely to live in poverty than adults. They're also more vulnerable to its effects. Social protection programmes – like cash transfers, health insurance and school subsidies – help give every child an equitable chance in life. They improve children's access to healthcare and education, and reduce the lifelong consequences of poverty.
But global coverage is low. Social services are often underfunded, with available resources neglecting the most disadvantaged families. Local governments – increasingly responsible for providing healthcare and education – may also lack the means to determine why and where children remain left behind.
What we do
Together with partners, UNICEF works to give every child a fair chance in life.
We call for governments to recognize child poverty as a national policy priority and protect children from its most devastating effects. We support countries’ efforts to assess monetary and multidimensional child poverty – measures of deprivation that go beyond income – and to address them through regulations, programmes and budgets.
And we help build the capacity of local governments to generate data, plan services, budget equitably and monitor results for children. Explore our work across these key areas:
Programme overview
Poverty can be defined across multiple dimensions. Globally, living in “extreme poverty” means surviving on less than $3 a day. But poverty is more than a dollar figure, especially through the eyes of a child. Children experience poverty when they don’t get the nutrition, water, shelter, education or healthcare they need to survive and thrive. Growing up without these necessities is a violation of a child's rights, with consequences that can last a lifetime.
Social protection covers the range of policies and programmes needed to protect children in times of crisis and reduce the lifelong consequences of poverty. These include child grants for families in need, benefits for caretakers of children with disabilities, parental leave, childcare, and other services that help give all kids a fair chance in life.
But these benefits remain out of reach for many families. Nearly three out of four children worldwide are not covered by any form of social protection, leaving them vulnerable to economic hardship and exclusion. Children may be cut off from these services for various reasons – and even where social protection programmes do exist, their design or implementation isn’t always adequate to provide children with the full support they need.
Our response
UNICEF is a leading global partner for social protection, working in more than 140 countries on a range of policies and programmes to address child poverty in all its dimensions. Our efforts include:
- Generating evidence on child poverty and vulnerability, and the impact of social protection programmes on kids and their communities.
- Expanding inclusive and responsive social protection systems that account for the specific needs of the kids most likely to be excluded, including children with disabilities and girls.
- Enhancing the preparedness and effectiveness of social protection programmes to respond to shocks and crises, and to support communities struck by fragility, conflict and disasters, including climate-driven disasters.
- Supporting the development of social protection systems in fragile contexts, including places where migrant and displaced populations face barriers to access.
- Working with governments and partners to ensure sustainable and adequate financing for social protection systems and programmes.
- Providing technical support to establish and expand national social protection programmes, including cash transfer programmes, through core diagnostics, design and operational elements, monitoring and evaluation, and capacity development.
- Connecting families in social protection programmes to critical complementary services, including education, nutrition, health and child protection.
Public resources too often miss the children most in need. Sometimes it's because policymakers fail to allocate enough funds for kids' healthcare or schooling. Other times, public finances may not be well coordinated. Departments may work in isolation without looking at the bigger picture. Or resources, stretched too thin across too many projects, don’t deliver the best value.
Global evidence shows that public spending on children is a smart investment – for kids, their communities and entire countries. When governments invest in children, health outcomes improve, incomes rise, economies grow and societies become more cohesive.
Despite these benefits, public spending on social services has stagnated in many parts of the world. Governments have tight budgets for competing priorities. Many are also dealing with debt or working with international financial institutions, which shapes what and how they can spend.
Improving children’s lives isn’t just about the amount of money a government has. It’s about making efficient choices with the resources at hand. When leaders use reliable data, ensure different departments work together, and get the right support, public resources are more likely to create real, positive changes for children.
Our response
UNICEF works to tackle challenges in public financial management so that all children, especially those most vulnerable to poverty and exclusion, get a fair chance in life. We partner with governments and financial decision makers to improve how money is raised, allocated and managed. Our efforts:
- Help governments set priorities and manage trade-offs with limited budgets.
- Align budgets with child-related policy commitments to translate plans into real spending.
- Support cost-effective and equitable solutions to deliver services and life-saving supplies.
- Improve how resources flow and are used for service delivery, including at the subnational level.
- Promote fair and transparent budgeting so resources reach the children most in need.
- Strengthen community participation by giving people a say in the decisions that affect them.
- Improve coordination in service delivery, including by partnering with the private sector and civil society.
- Encourage coordinated financing across sectors, so budget decisions reinforce one another rather than compete.
Our work is guided by the commitments countries made in the Convention on the Rights of the Child, the Sustainable Development Goals – which call for the better use of public funds – and UNICEF's own strategic plan.
Too many young people struggle to find safe, meaningful ways to earn a living. As poverty, unequal access to education, gender discrimination, disability, displacement and economic shocks make it difficult to secure decent work, rapid changes to technology and labour markets are transforming the types of skills young people need to transition to adulthood.
Economic opportunity is about more than income. When young people get the chance to develop skills, access finance and engage in productive work, communities can invest in their futures. That means harmful coping mechanisms too often relied on to alleviate poverty – like child labour or child marriage – become less prevalent. Expanding youth livelihoods helps protect children’s rights, while setting up young people to support themselves and their families. Communities become more inclusive and resilient. And economies can grow and thrive.
Our response
UNICEF works with governments, development partners, civil society and the private sector to expand economic opportunities for adolescents and young people, especially those facing the greatest disadvantages.
We support national systems that help young people move successfully from education to employment. This includes generating evidence, supporting policy reforms and advocating for greater public investment in skills development, social protection and inclusive labour markets.
UNICEF also helps connect young people to opportunities through partnerships that promote training, entrepreneurship, financial inclusion and pathways to decent work, including in fragile and crisis-affected settings. By combining policy engagement with practical solutions, we help build inclusive economies where more young people can realize their potential.
UNICEF’s work on economic opportunities and youth livelihoods aligns closely with Generation Unlimited, a global partnership focused on expanding education, skills and employment pathways for young people. This collaboration strengthens UNICEF’s ability to link policy efforts with real opportunities for young people, accelerating progress towards more inclusive and resilient economies.