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Ilaria Tercelli

Development Studies Institute London School of Economics and Political Science

Targeting: The Most Effective Means of Social Protection? An evaluation of the impact of conditional cash transfers on schooling and child labour in Peru.

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ABSTRACT

According to the Peruvian Constitution the legal minimum age for child workers is 12 years old,making it the youngest level in Latin America and among other continents. More than 2 million children in Peru are employed in agriculture, gold mines, as domestic workers and street sellers. Peru is the latest country where conditional cash transfers have been implemented in Latin America. The question is whether a targeted or universal approach of basic rights and income would be the mostfruitful in enhancing school attendance and eradicating child labour. This highlights the importance of factors such as vulnerability within the family that can potentially lead to child labour. This paper examines in depth the arbitrary method of targeting and the exclusion from the programme of groups at greater risk such as street children and single mothers by collecting recent quantitative datafrom the World Bank and the Peruvian Government (2009) and by interviews with programmes executives of United Nations agencies and NGOs. From the results it can be concluded that the only sustainable fashion to enhance the life chances of Peruvian children is to create strong mechanisms of social protection, such as basic income and services, to every household.

Keywords:

Child

labour,education,

conditional

cash

transfers,

exclusion,

vulnerability, social protection

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Abbreviations and definitions

BCRP CCT CDL CEPAL

Banco Central de Reserva del Peru (Central Bank of Peru) Conditional Cash Transfers Child Domestic Labour Comisión Económica para América Latina (United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean)

CIESConsorcio de Investigación Económica y Social (Association of Economic and Social Research)

CIDA IEP ILO INEI

Canadian International Development Agency Instituto de Estudios Peruanos (Institute of Peruvian Studies) International Labour Organisation Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Informática (National Institute of Statistics)

NGO ODI OECD OTI

Non-governmental Organisation OverseasDevelopment Institute Organisation for Economic Co-Operation and Development Oficina Internacional del Trabajo (International Labour Organisation)

PNUD UCW

Programa de las Naciones Unidas Para el Desarollo (UNDP) Understanding Children’s Work (Inter-agency Research Project on Child Labour - ILO, UNICEF and WB)

UNDP UNESCO UNICEF WB

United Nations Development Programme United NationsEducational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation United Nations Children’s Fund World Bank

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Chapter 1

Introduction
Peru has the highest incidence of child labour among all the countries in Latin America, a figure which has increased to 27 percent (Oficina Internacional del Trabajo, 2007a). In rural areas children are mostly employed in agriculture, in urban areas they sellgoods, and on the periphery they manufacture bricks. Sexually exploited children number more than 500.000 (U.S. Department of State, 2006), while gold mining employs more than 50.000 children (International Occupational Safety and Health Information Centre, 2004). Worryingly, the Office of Labour Protection for Minors releases certification for children from the age of 12 to be legally employed(Government of Peru, 2000). Furthermore, education within the reach of deprived households is of poor quality, and this leads parents to send their children to work.

On a theoretical level, this paper argues that it would be sensible tactically to give higher importance to universal cash transfers, or in other words a basic income, in the agenda of governments and international agencies engaged...