Asignación Universal por Hijo para Protección Social: una política de inclusión para los más vulnerables[Universal Allocation per Child for Social Protection: an inclusion policy for the most vulnerable]

Conditioned transfers programs are used by several countries in the region as a mechanism to fight poverty and inequality. These policies are basically aimed at focusing monetary transferences on families with underage children, and to condition the same so as to promote health care and human capital formation of children. By means of decree 1602/09, the Argentinean government sought to extend the benefits of the universal allocation per child for workers in the formal sector of the economy, to those children whose parents are either informal or unemployed workers. Considering the number of minors benefited by this policy and its positive effects on the short and long-term brought about by health and education conditions, the universal allocation per child is, undoubtedly, one of the most important social welfare programs implemented in the recent years with a clear objective of equal distribution. This work intends to analyze the universal allocation per child in terms of social protection. The first sections describe the contributory system of family allocations per child along with the new non-contributory universal allocation. Sections 3 & 4 address an estimate of this benefit’s contribution on aggregate demand and poverty levels. Section 5 presents a brief analysis on the re-distributory impact of regional allocation, while section 6 provides general conclusions. This work ends with an appendix presenting a compared analysis of the universal allocation per child with other similar programs in Latin America.