Family Benefits to Promote Children's Health and Well-being: Findings from 128 Low- and Middle-Income Countries

Children who grow up in poverty are at greater risk of malnutrition, disease, and premature mortality. Social protection policies, such as family cash benefits, are an important way to address this critical social determinant of health and reduce the prevalence and intensity of the extreme poverty experienced by 400 million children today. Using a quantitatively comparable database of laws and policies in 193 United Nations member states from the WORLD Policy Analysis Center at the University of California, Los Angeles, this paper will examine the quality of legal commitments to family cash benefits among 128 low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). Using WORLD data, this analysis will explore the extent to which LMICs guarantee families access to cash benefits, generosity of benefits, and availability of specific benefits for children with disabilities. Provision of family benefits results in marked improvements in children’s nutrition, development, and school attendance. Yet just over half of middle-income countries and about one-third of low-income countries provide some form of family benefits. A global body of evidence attests to the additional economic costs of caring for children with disabilities, but just 25 middle-income countries and 1 low-income country provide benefits or supplements specifically for families supporting children with disabilities. To date, there has been little readily accessible, easily comparable information on national policies and laws; this study addresses this gap and examines variations in legislation and policy by income-level and region to demonstrate that provision of adequate family benefits is feasible for all LMICs.