Monday, April 26, 2021
10:00am EDT
via Zoom
Policy and programme impacts of multidimensional (child) poverty measurement
Multidimensional poverty measures are being used increasingly widely, and indeed included in the Sustainable Development Goals which require countries to reduce at least by half the proportion of men, women and children of all ages living in poverty in all its dimensions according to national definitions by 2030. Despite this increased prominence and adoption of multidimensional poverty measures both at the global and national level – including by UNICEF country offices, there have been few if any comprehensive assessments on the policy and programme use of multidimensional poverty measures.
The talk, and the paper behind it, aims to address this knowledge gap to understand how in practice multidimensional poverty measures – with a focus on child poverty – have been used to guide policy makers and practitioners towards poverty reduction. Accordingly, rather than focus on possible or conceptual pathways of impact, the work intends to review real world examples of how measures have been used to better understand their potential and their limits.
Meet the Presenters:
Sola Engilbertsdottir is a Social Policy Specialist at UNICEF Headquarters in NY and has 14 years of social policy and research experience with UNICEF, with a specific focus on child poverty. She has broad experience working in the East Africa region, in Kenya she supported a decentralized social budgeting initiative and the development of the Kenyan social protection strategy. With UNICEF Rwanda she managed the first ever Rwandan multidimensional child poverty analysis and the evaluations of a child sensitive social protection pilot and an integrated ECD programme. Between 2008 and 2012 Sola provided research and policy advocacy support to over 50 countries participating in a Global Study on Child Poverty and Disparities. She currently supervises UNICEF’s child poverty efforts, including support to UNICEF country offices in measuring child poverty and translating child poverty evidence into policy action. Prior to joining UNICEF Sola was a social worker in her native country, Iceland. She holds a degree in Anthropology, as well as a degree in Social Work from the University of Iceland and an MPA from Columbia University.
David Stewart began his career at the Global Human Development Report of UNDP where he spent 6 years working on the Human Development Reports and indices and researched, wrote and presented Reports on Human Rights, Democracy, the Millennium Development Goals, New Technologies, Cultural Freedom and Development Assistance. Between 2005 and 2010 he worked with UNICEF in New York working initially on State of the World’s Children, and subsequently led the organisation’s work on Policy Advocacy. David spent 4 years as Chief of Social Policy and Evaluation for UNICEF Uganda where he has worked on a range of social policy issues including child poverty, social protection, and public finance for children. He is currently the Chief of the Child Poverty and Social Protection Unit for UNICEF in New York, where he works on measurement, technical support to country and regional offices and global advocacy in the areas of social protection and child poverty. Recent work includes “A World Free from Child Poverty” a practitioner’s guide to achieving the SDGs on child poverty, “Making Cash Transfers Work for Children and Families” and he is currently working on universal child grants and developing UNICEF’s updated social protection framework. He co-chairs the Global Coalition to End Child Poverty, and holds a degree in Economics from the University of Sussex and a Masters in Development Economics from the University of Oxford.
Meet the Discussants:
Gonzalo Hernández Licona is Director of the Multidimensional Poverty Peer Network (MPPN), providing strategic direction to the activities of the South-South network of 60 countries and 20 international agencies sharing best practice on how to measure multidimensional poverty.
He was formerly the Executive Secretary of the National Council for the Evaluation of Social Development Policy (CONEVAL) in Mexico, which is responsible for evaluating social development programmes and carrying out the country’s poverty measurement. Previously, he was Head of Evaluation and Monitoring at the Ministry of Social Development in Mexico.
Between 2017 and 2019 he was the author, together with 14 scientists of the 2019 Global Development Sustainable Report for the United Nations. He was full-time Chair Professor at the Autonomous Institute of Technology of Mexico (ITAM) in the Economy Department from 1991–1992 and 1996–2002. He has taught Development Economics at ITAM since 2003.
