1. Impacts de la crise mondiale sur les enfants en Afrique de l’Ouest et du Centre The global economic crisis – Including children in the policy response ODI-UNICEF, London, November 9-10, 2009 Burkina Faso: Lacina Balma and Samuel Kabore Cameroon: Christian Emini and Paul Ningaye Ghana: Theodore Antwi-Asare, Edgar Cooke and Daniel Twerefou Regional: Sami Bibi, John Cockburn, Massa Coulibaly, Ismaël Fofana and Luca Tiberti Commissioned by UNICEF’s West and Central Africa Regional Office

2. The Poverty and Economic Policy (PEP) Research network Capacity building, research funding and promotion of developing country researchers Research grants (and scientific support) to conduct policy research on poverty issues. Open and competitive global call for proposals (deadline: Jan. 6, 2010) 150 projects in Africa, Asia and Latin America (45.7% female; 22.5% under 30): Since 2002 Activities: training workshops, study visits, distance support, general meetings, national and international policy conferences, working papers, journal articles, policy briefs, presentations in international conferences, newsletters. Child welfare topics: Policy impact evaluation, community-based poverty monitoring, macro-micro shock and policy simulations, multidimensional poverty analysis, implementing the capabilities approach, incidence analysis… Offices: Africa (Dakar), Asia (Manila), Latin America (Lima) and Quebec. Funding: AusAID, CIDA and IDRC www.pep-net.org

3. Export prices/demand Import prices Impacts Household (micro models) Remittances FDI Foreign aid Input prices Consumer prices National economy (CGE model) Producer prices Child welfare: monetary poverty, hunger, schooling, labor, health Employ- ment Objective: Simulate child welfare impacts of the global crisis and policy responses in Burkina Faso, Cameroon and Ghana (and S. Africa)

4. Methodology 1.Macro impacts: CGE model capturing main channels of impact of the global crisis on the national economy, notably prices, wages and employment. 2.Child welfare impacts – Monetary poverty: Based on changes in prices, wages, employment and remittances – Hunger (caloric adequacy): Consumption behavior + nutritional tables – School/child labor participation: Econometric estimation: f(real income) – Health access/choice of supplier: Econometric estimation: f(real income) 3.Simulations – Business as usual (no crisis): historic trends (6-8 years) – Crisis -2009: Various sources (IMF, UNCTAD, national, etc.) -2010: Stagnation, except import prices -2011: Back to historic growth trends – Policy response (financed by foreign aid equal to 1% of 2008 GDP)  Food subsidies  Child cash transfers: proxy means, no administrative costs, sharing

5. Impacts on monetary poverty and hunger in BF

6. Education and Child Labour: 6 to 10 years

7. Education and Child Labour: 11 to 14 years

8. Health: 0 to 14 years

9. Targetting (proxy means) Cash transfers target predicted poor children = f(demographics, housing conditions, durable goods, region): easily observable and non-manipulable characteristics Predicted status nationalurbanrural Actual status non- poorpoor non- poorpoor non- poorpoor Burkina non-poor 63.136.974.725.359.440.6 poor 23.476.69.690.424.475.6 Cameroon non-poor 70.030.093.36.741.758.3 poor 9.990.158.141.95.194.9 Ghana non-poor 60.839.267.932.155.045.0 poor 19.280.823.976.117.982.1 Exclusion errors Inclusion errors Cash transfer amount Burkina Faso 12340 CFA francs per child Cameroon: 21065 CFA francs per child Ghana: 23.10 cedis per child

10. Take-home lessons Crisis brings many shocks: imports, exports, FDI, aid, remittances Complex impacts: wages, employment, self-employment income, consumer prices Strongly increases monetary poverty and hunger (up to 10 percentage points) Mildly reduces schooling and recourse to (modern) health services (up to 1 percentage point), while increasing child labor Food subsidies marginally offset the impacts of the crisis (Well-) targeted cash transfers are far more effective (Pursuit of fiscal balance further (slightly) worsens the impacts) Future work: focus subsidies on poor child foods, focus CTs on youngest children, other financing (domestic taxes, deficit, other cuts), other dimensions (mortality, morbidity, nutritional status, etc.) Impact of the global crisis on child poverty in West and Central Africa