A Peruvian Child-Focused Budget Study. A study of Public Social Expenditure Targeting Children in Peru: 1990-2000.

The Peruvian Child-Focused Budget Study ‘A study of Public Social Expenditure Targeting Children in Peru: 1990-2000’,  is part of an international project about the development of methods for budget analysis in seven of the countries participating in Save the Children Sweden programmes: Ethiopia, El Salvador, Peru, South Africa, Sweden, Vietnam, and the West Bank and Gaza. Each country has selected the subject of its budget study on the basis of specific national conditions.

The Peruvian study covers the decade of 1990-2000,  and is a first step towards creating a budget that will focus especially on boys and girls. It presents a two-dimension focus of children: First, by area of social investment (education, health, nutrition, wellbeing and justice), and, second, by the vulnerability of children at risk (working boys, girls and adolescents, teenage mothers and boys, girls and teenagers in the streets). The findings regarding each area of social investment showed a preoccupying deficit in the outcomes of most social policy initiatives during the nineties. Although some indicators showed overall improvements, analyzed at a more detailed level, it is possible to conclude that differences between urban and rural areas have not decreased and, in some cases, even increased. Also, that when compared to other countries in the region, Peru ranks only above Bolivia.

Read here the summaries of the eight child focused budget studies.