Child Poverty Research Day: Yisak Tafere Institute of Development Studies, Brighton. 18th November 2016

1. POVERTY, SOCIAL PROTECTION
AND THE IMPLICATIONS FOR
CHILDREN IN ETHIOPIA
Yisak Tafere, PhD
Child Poverty: Research Scoping Day,
Institute of Development Studies (IDS),
Brighton, UK
18 November 2016

2. Outline
•Background
•Social Protection in Ethiopia
•Implications for Children
•Discussions

3. Background
 Population Est 100 million
• Child population – 45% under
age 15 (CSA 2014).
• Economic growth (29.6%
below poverty line in
2010/11) but with increased
inequality,
• Children are disadvantaged
and the magnitude of their
poverty rarely understood
 Expansion of education – as a
means of achieve national
development
 expansion of schools and
increased number of
school children
 But many unable to achieve
because of low quality,
poverty

4. Social Protection in Ethiopia: Evolution
and its implications to children
Constitutional basis of Social Protection:
• Article 41/5 of the FDRE Constitution states:
• ‘The State shall, within available means, allocate resources to provide
rehabilitation and assistance to the physically and mentally disabled, the aged,
and to children who are left without parents or guardian.’
• Article 41/6:
• ‘The state shall pursue policies which aim to expand job opportunities for the
unemployed and the poor and shall accordingly undertake programmes and
public work projects’.
• Article 41(7):
• ‘The state shall undertake all measures necessary to increase opportunities for
citizens to the find gainful employment’.
• Article 90:
• ‘to the extent the country’s resources permit, policies shall aim to provide all
Ethiopians access to public health and education, clean water, housing, food and
social security.’

5. Ethiopian productive Safety net:
addressing food insecurity
• Productive Safety Net Programme (PSNP) was
designed fore this purpose: Started in 2005
•Public work: Cash/ food for work program –
household supply labour
•Direct support (cash/food aid)
•Designed for rural areas
•Targeted households with assumption it
benefits all including children

6. •Objective – ensure food security through
•Asset protection
•Community asset creation – ‘productive’
•Components
•Public work – ‘adult able bodied’ - 5 days
in a month – was unclear of age limited
for work
•However, in 2010, limited 16-55 age and
maximum work required for HH is 15
days
•Direct Support – Households ‘without
labor’ (elderly, disabled, etc.)
•‘Wages’ – 15kg of grain or 30 birr [50 in
PIM 2010] per person
•Impacts: prevented hunger, sale of assets,

7. Implications for Children
• Safety net: too small to
change lives and trickle
down to children (Tafere
and Woldehanna 2012)
‘I work at safety net for three
days a week. The rest is done
by my mother and brother. The
amount from safety net is not
enough to buy food. So we
usually face food shortage. To
support this I work in the
private irrigation farm which
involves hoeing, planting,
weeding and harvesting. I get
birr 6 or 7 per day. I work to
support family, to pay my
heath care and school fees. I
am in grade 4 now. I repeatedly
dropped out of school due to
illness and workload. I am
trying to combine work and
schooling. But I do not have
time for study. I usually study
during the evenings.’ A girl,
14, grade 4 from Oromia

8. Rarely helped children’s
long-term developmental
needs:
‘I had to discontinue my
education because my family
is very poor. As I often got
hungry, I ran away from
home and started carrying
things for pay in the nearby
town… I usually sleep on the
veranda with other poor
boys. …I caught a cold. I
became ill and lost weight
because of the hunger and
cold.’ (Defar, Amhara, 2011)
His family was very poor and
depended on the social
safety net transfer provided
by the government for their
food needs. Dropped from
grade 4, gave his hope of
finishing university and have
Unintended impact:
children engaged in
public work
‘Children participate in
public work by replacing
their parents who go to
other activities or attend
funerals. They also do
the public work together
with their parents.
Those aged 15 or above
do the work equally as
adults. (PW supervisor,
Tigray).

9. Growing Sensitivity to children:
• PSNP 4 (2014) :
• Raised awareness on the needs of sending
children to school and not incoming in PW –
• Prohibited child work in PW, but some involved
in work as far as their family is required to
preform PW
Social protection (2012) address vulnerable
children:
School feeding: in selected schools for poor
children
The continuity of PSNP to ensure food security
Free health care for poor families and their
children
Job opportunities for young people – micro

10. Discussion (1): Twin Task of Social
Protection
•Household poverty
•Material –economic needs – thereby child
needs
•Relieve child stress of supporting family at
the expense of their development (e.g. child
work or substituting the family work)
•That would contribute to the economic
improvement
•May contribute to Break intergenerational
poverty transfer
•Child poverty
•Address economic, material, developmental
needs

11. Discussion (2) Understanding Child
poverty: Do we have child poverty
measures?
•Our limited focus on child-sensitive social
protection is influenced by our understanding
of child poverty – child poverty as embedded
in household poverty!
MDG perhaps failed to address child
poverty, because it failed to understand the
multidimensional and longitudinal nature of
poverty

12. Discussion (3): Can social protection
contribute to end poverty without
addressing child poverty?
•If social protection is to Contribute to
overall poverty reduction in Ethiopia, it
requires adopting child-focused social
protection
It is only by breaking life course poverty
that intergenerational poverty could be
tackled
the Post-2015 Agenda seems to offer
renewed promise –can social protection
contribute to this?