Reducing Child Poverty with Cash Transfers: A Sure Thing?

Abstract

Children are disproportionately represented among the income‐poor, many suffer from severe deprivation, and their poverty and vulnerability have cumulative and long‐term consequences. This article provides a comparative examination of the poverty‐reduction effectiveness of cash transfer programmes targeting children, focusing on three types of such programmes: the Child Support Grant in South Africa, family allowances in transition countries, and targeted conditional cash transfer programmes in Latin America and the Caribbean. It finds that, despite differences in design, cash transfer programmes targeting children in poor households are an effective way of reducing poverty.