Including Children in Policy Responses to Economic Crises

This synthesis paper is motivated by a concern about the effects of the current financial crisis on children and their care givers, who are often particularly vulnerable when crises strike. Substantial evidence from developing countries associates negative growth with worse human development outcomes, particularly for children. A key reason for concern is that, if children are adversely affected by shocks, this often has lifelong and potentially inter-generational consequences. Inadequate nutrition at a critical time in a child's life, inadequate or absent health care at a critical moment, being withdrawn from school in order to work and/or being denied adequate child care and protection may all have consequences that cannot be reversed later, to say nothing of cases of avoidable infant and child mortality.