The Role of Social Protection in the Elimination of Child Labour: Evidence review and policy implications

This ILO-UNICEF report provides a rigorous review of what the latest research says about the power of social protection to combat child labour. Providing families with direct assistance to help them weather crises can help reduce negative coping strategies like child labour and child marriage. This report explores the mechanisms by which social protection can impact child labour, and assesses the role of programme design features and contextual characteristics. To do this, it updates and expands previous ILO work in this area (ILO 2013), builds on recent systematic reviews (Bastagli et al 2019; Dammert et al. 2018), and conducts new searches for impact evaluations on the child labour impact of social protection in the period 2010-22.

Because all forms of social protection can impact child labour (even when not designed with an explicit child labour reduction objective) this report considers programmes beyond child and family benefits to include social protection available to caregivers of children (working-age adults and older persons) such as unemployment benefits or pensions. Section 1 follows with a closer look at child labour trends and social protection policies globally. Section 2 summarizes the evidence on social protection policies by type, and their impacts on child labour. Section 3 concludes with policy implications and research recommendations.