Introduction
Women and children are considered the most marginalized ad vulnerable people globally. They face various kinds of discrimination and cannot defend themselves in the face of injustices that are imposed on them. The traditional beliefs and customs have exposed many children to suffering and discouragements in their lives (Hulme & Shepherd, 2003). They are forced to drop out of their studies to look after the elderly in their households and have faced several dehumanizing practices like female genital mutilation. Others are engaged in cult-like practices and early marriages without questioning. The immovable ones are those who are aware of their rights, and they have avoided this kind of injustice (Barrientos & Villa, 2013). Unfortunately, they have become street children living miserable life. Inadequate gender empowerment in several developing countries has driven a girl child and women into poverty due to insufficient basic needs like food, shelter, sanitation, clothing and good healthcare. Insufficient healthcare facilities have resulted in a high infant mortality rate, and this shows the unadorned influence of poverty and vulnerability on the worth and extent of life. According to United Nations Children’s Funds, about one-half of the income-poor are children (Barrientos & Villa, 2013). Besides, at least 600 million children who are under age struggle to survive with less than one dollar a day, and this is approximately 40 per cent of the children in the South.
The Difficulties of Women, Children and their Importance in Human Development
Gender inequality and child mistreatment are rampant cases globally. The term gender inequality covers a wide scope of education, health and employment. Children are largely epitomized among the income-poor, suffering from unadorned deficiencies and poverty. Individuals, cultures, and organizations in a given geographical area do not have objective resources required to create a well-being and income. Thus, they lack a voice of claiming redistribution as evident in the geographical theory of poverty. The incorporation of human development conditions in the anti-poverty transfers will have a positive effect on the vulnerability of children and women (Wolf et al., 2013). Various human development conditions include education, healthcare, gender empowerment and labor.
According to individual deficiencies theory of poverty, people are blamed for creating their own problems. Cuesta et al. (2018) study shows that the prevalence and profundity of poverty amongst children can suggestively reveal an insight into the long-term repercussions of poverty that might extend from a child’s life view to the point of reinforcing intergenerational poverty persistence. The reinforced intergenerational poverty persistence covers an array of channels. Failure to offer education totally or less schooling to children has long-term impacts on the future production capacity and living standards. A family living in extreme poverty is incapable of affording the basics of life. Thus, a child born will be subjected to malnutrition that ultimately results in reduced levels of learning concentrations.
Effective handling of human development conditions that children and women are being deprived of in the global South will mitigate the dire impacts of poverty that has been prevalent in developing countries. Education and gender equality have seen UNESCO implement a 2030 education plan to empower girls and boys, men and women empowerment without discrimination based on gender through education (Jones, 2018). Different bodies to fight for children and women have been established. The UN 2015 implemented the Millennium Development Goals, of which two of the goals are aimed at quality education and equal quality education for all.
Role of Anti-Poverty Transfer
Poverty is the deficit in the well-being of households and individuals. In the recent past, an anti-poverty transfer has been interchangeably used either with social transfers or with social protection (Miežienė & Krutulienė, 2019). If there is a high level of poverty in a country, its economy may face various threats. Thus, any kind of revenue received will be used to improve the citizens’ standards of living rather than improve the infrastructure, anti-poverty, and various sectors of the economy. According to the Keynesian economic model, the economic recession lowers the demand for commodities and services (Galí, 2018). This will cause a protracted downturn and a vindictive phase. In conjunction with other countercyclical modules of fiscal policy, income transfers aid in stabilizing income in a downturn in an attempt to alleviate poverty (Galí, 2018).
However, there are various reasons why people are in poverty, and some of the models tell why they find themselves there. In consumption-based poverty model, poverty is calculated by comparing the family’s consumption and poverty thresholds that differ by the size of the family. In cases where the family’s consumption does not exceed the poverty threshold, the members of the family are considered poor. Poverty as income protection deficits reveals that income inequality affects the rate at which the growth enables poverty reduction (Kumhof et al., 2012). There will be less growth efficiency in the countries where the growth distribution pattern sidelines with the rich.
It is important to categorize the social transfer programs in order to describe the significance of anti-poverty transfer. It can be classified into pure income transfers, integrated poverty reduction programs, and income transfers combined with asset accumulation. The categorization is based on the main indulgent of poverty sustaining the programs. The integrated anti-poverty transfer programs share a multifaceted outlook on poverty and focus on social inclusion. However, income transfers collected with the assets accumulation have a broad insight into poverty (Kumhof et al., 2012). Pure income transfers depend on the insight into poverty effects due to consumption deficits or income.
A pure income transfer program is meant to transfer cash directly to the families living in much poverty (Haushofer & Shapiro, 2013). Moreover, the funds are also targeted at people facing acute vulnerability. The income transfer collective with the asset accumulation includes the initiative providing funds transfers collective with and advancing prolific assets’ amassing. General assets cover the financial, physical and human assets (Haushofer & Shapiro, 2013). The association of direct transfers with interpositions intended for assets and accumulation underlines that the initiative aims to strengthen the productive capacity of households in poverty. Finally, the integrated poverty decrease programs are crucial modernism in the social assistance touching different interpositions concentrated on individuals living in extreme poverty.
There is a need for well-synchronized procedures since the solutions to poverty are just but beyond the economic policies (Larrañaga et al., 2014). The measure forms eth logic behind the poverty reduction policies. It is important to first focus on the macroeconomic issues in order to describe the advantages of anti-poverty transfer. Its necessity is answerable by the fact that economic growth is the major factor that is critical in influencing poverty. Besides, microeconomic stability is important in ensuring sustainable growth rates (Larrañaga et al., 2014). Therefore, macroeconomic stability should be the underpinning of an anti-poverty program.
In the political economic structure theory, individuals are not blamed as the cause of poverty but instead the social, political and economic system is responsible for causing limited opportunities available to people. This will restrict their achievements of income and well-being. Anti-poverty transfers have the upper hand in ensuring macroeconomic stability (Caminada et al., 2021). There exists a correlation between macroeconomic policy and poverty reduction strategies. Capital accumulation by households drives growth. Therefore, it is imperative to argue that anti-poverty transfer programs are vital in implementing stable macroeconomic policies. The only way to ensure macroeconomic stability in the global South is by increasing the scope of anti-poverty strategies to cover areas such as banking and financial sectors, regulatory environment, trade liberalization, and labor markets (Caminada et al., 2021). Such an anti-poverty program certainly increases the efficiency of public investment in education, health, and other social service sectors.
The cultural theory of poverty argues that the poverty is because of transmissions over the generations with norms and beliefs that are socially created and held individually. The individuals cannot be blamed because they are victims of the dysfunctional culture. Mexico’s progresa program was vital in ceasing early marriages by combining the school attendance graded transfer and the school graded conditions. Disparities in economic development in Mexico have resulted in the South Mexican residents residing in poverty and thus unable to access education. Girls are disadvantaged in that they are seen as future wives, as evidenced by Mexican parents (Masino & Niño-Zarazúa, 2020). They did not see the importance of educating a girl child as they saw in a boy child since they perceived little benefit from that as they were carried away. Besides, the trend is more prevalent during retrenchment, increased poverty, and recession, whereby girls’ access to education could take significant steps backwards. Dropout rates are normally high in transition from primary school to secondary school, especially for girls. The program works by giving more transfers to secondary school students to ensure that girls do not drop out of school. This has largely improved the retention of several girls in school.
Implications of Human Development Conditions Anti-Poverty Transfer
In order to increase the effectiveness of anti-poverty programs those implementing such programs need to establish enough theories to guide the program. They should as well ensure that the approaches of community development are simple and precise. Human development has involved various studies for the human condition, which has a core on the capability approach. In the implementation of antipoverty transfer policies, the inequality adjusted Human Development Index has been used to measure actual progress. This is imperative especially for gender issues and inequality. It should be noted that every program implementation is always associated with a certain main goal. Gender inequalities and the vulnerability of women and children have necessitated the establishment of organizations and programs to protect their well-being (Hanna & Olken, 2018). Increased poverty levels have been an area of concern in the global South. Anti-poverty transfer programs have been developed; some of them include; the Minimum Living Standard Guarantee scheme in China, Progresa in Mexico, Chile Solidario in Chile, Avancemos in Costa Rica, and Child Labor Eradication Program (CLEP) in Brazil (Hanna & Olken, 2018).
The main goal of establishing these programs was mainly to reduce poverty levels. It is apparent that upon the establishment of these programs, poverty levels in those countries reduced significantly. The implementation of the Progresa transfer program in Mexico, according to a survey study done by Larrañaga et al. (2014), shows that poverty headcount rates reduced to 7.5% compared to earlier studies that indicated a poverty headcount of 17.5%. Additionally, Anti-poverty transfer programs such as integrated anti-poverty programs play a role in overcoming economic and social marginalization. These programs are developed to link families in thrilling poverty to the bursting array of public services and interventions stimulating poverty diminutions and child defence. Additionally, the Chile Solidario and Paraguay’s Tekoporá programs considerably continue to overcome social and economic exclusion (Larrañaga et al., 2014).
The United Nations Development Program has defined a development as the process that tend to enlarge the choices of people. In this regard, the factors of human development that seek to impact on how people live a healthy life must be considered in anti-poverty policies. A well-designed and instigated anti-poverty transfer improves the productivity of the households, addresses long-term structural and continuous poverty, and enables households to distribute their resources well (Ferraro, & Simorangkir, 2020). The anti-poverty transfers are important in supporting sustainable development. They are likely to be promoted where there are emerging social contracts and fiscal pacts. Besides, direct anti-poverty transfers decrease poverty among the old people and also focus on the issues of the ageing population
An important aspect of human development is human rights, and particularly those if children. The goal of these rights is freedom of humans. It is notable that anti-poverty transfers reduce the degree of child labor by assigning extra income to the poor families and allowing them financial subsidies, especially to the households who have children in school (Ferraro & Simorangkir, 2020). This has encouraged parents or guardians to substitute child labor with school enrolment. Integrated anti-poverty programs can monitor children’s labor status and align interventions to solve them. For example, Costa Rica’s Avancemos anti-poverty transfer program developers call upon parents to show that their children are not victims of labor. In addition, the Child Labor Eradication Program (CLEP) institution in Brazil, considering school attendance conditions, income transfers, and a long-drawn-out school day offering supplementary education, effectively reduced child labour incidences (Ferraro, & Simorangkir, 2020). Combinations of these elements in CLEP reduced the number of hours worked by children by around 50%.
Anti-poverty transfer promotes migration (Wei & Su, 2021). Providing additional income to households stricken with poverty paves the way for the parents to relocate productive household resources. Social transfer of cash opens internal immigration opportunities for parents eager to work in larger metropolitan centres leaving behind their children in the villages until they become financially stable. According to Wei and Su (2021), social transfer aids children aged between 14-and 17 years and participating in Mexico’s Progresa to accumulate more human capital, making it easy for them to leave their homes in the hunt for better work opportunities.
Cumulative and cyclical theory of poverty looks at individual situations and community resources as commonly dependent. The economy is faltering for instance generating individuals with insufficient resources to take part in the economy. This will make the survival of the economy difficult for the society since the collected taxes are few. The theory has an important aspect of human development that seeks to establish equity and economic freedom. Equity entails the idea of fairness for each person. In as much as some social programs, such as Costa Rica’s Avancemos that, are designed to reduce child labor, others, such as India’s National Rural Employment Guarantee or Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program, were instituted to ensure labor rests on adults (Ortigueira & Siassi, 2021). Ethiopia’s Productive Safety Net Program reduced daily hours spent on household chores and childcare and increased school enrolment. With their children in that whatever little they earn, they are assured of some subsidies.
In addition to equity, sustainability is a key consideration for program implementation. For human development, people should not only have the right to earn a living but also the opportunity to sustain the lives. Therefore, anti-poverty transfer programs go a vast way in ensuring that funds that would otherwise be directed to infrastructural development are not used to mitigate poverty. This is per Ortigueira and Siassi (2021), who argued that macroeconomic stability, to a large extent, is affected by poor economic growth. Macroeconomic stability is guaranteed when key economic relationships are at equilibrium, for instance, fiscal revenues and expenditure. Anti-poverty transfer programs mitigate the troubles that greatly befall the poor due to macroeconomic instability (Kim, 2018).
Economic stagnation and recession place much burden on the poor. Low-income earners feel the adverse effects of inflation resulting from arbitrary and regressive taxes. The hysteresis phenomenon significantly impacts the poor. In times of crisis, such as war, drought, or famine, children from impoverished backgrounds drop out of school (Kim, 2018). A study on Latin American countries suggested that adverse terms of trade shocks formed the reason behind the decline in schooling attainment (Kim, 2018). Extending cash or some form of aid will boost their living standards and conditions.
Anti-poverty transfer programs tend to target poverty-stricken individuals (Zuo et al., 2021). Doubtless, these individuals reside in less developed regions of the particular country. There are disparities and non-uniformness in resource and finance allocation in the global South; thus, parts not endowed with natural resources are left undeveloped, and residents are subjected to abject poverty. Anti-poverty transfer programs reduce inequalities that exist (Alkire & Foster, 2011). Conclusively, anti-poverty transfer programs intensely play an essential role in ensuring macroeconomic stability to reduce poverty. Anti-poverty transfer programs and their effectiveness have advocated for various changes. Increased poverty levels and poor standards of living among global south countries have attracted global awareness. Governments and NGOs have been lively in fighting children’s education and health and gender inequality (Hanna, & Olken, 2018). Poverty reduction-based programs have been instituted, such as Progresa in Mexico and China’s Minimum Living Standards Scheme.
In Mexico, Progresa was instituted in 1997 to aid low-income families with school-age children in marginalized rural communities (Hanna, & Olken, 2018). this anti-poverty transfer program was renamed Oportunidades in March 2002. This program provides cash transfer with three elements; education incentives for each secondary school child and higher for girls, a family nutrition element, and an annual transfer to cater for uniforms and books. These elements are combined to avoid fertility spurs and shrink the possibility of subsidy reliance. Oportunidades extends subsidies that are conditional only to children recording at least 85% of school attendance (Saucedo Delgado et al., 2018). The subsidies are also entitled to infants and mothers attending consistent primary healthcare checkups and childcare sessions. By the end of 2002, Oportunidades was benefiting around 2.6 million rural households in Mexico.
The Minimum Living Standard Guarantee scheme (MLSS) reflects one of China’s most effective anti-poverty transfer programs (Figari et al., 2013). China’s change from a premeditated to a market economy has faced challenges in different sectors. To leverage these challenges, China implemented the Minimum Living Standard Guarantee scheme. This scheme expressively enhanced the well-being of low-income families. The Minimum Living Standard Guarantee scheme also amplified family outlays on education, housing, and health (Peng & Ding, 2012). The impacts of the Minimum Living Standard Guarantee scheme were more Anti-poverty 9 significant on families with educated household heads (Figari et al. 2013). The MLSS was established to target old-style kinds of poverty, “old poverty,” primarily households with unstable earnings, devoid of family support, and incapable of working. MLSS was anticipated to offer such households with transfer equivalent to their poverty gap. In other words, MLSS was premeditated to; provide an outstanding income support scheme for poverty-stricken households and also to act as the last line of defence against poverty.
Conclusion
These anti-poverties transfer programs have efficiently solved and are still pressing on to alleviate the mystery facing human development conditions due to high poverty levels, especially in global south countries of Latin America, Asia, and Sub-Saharan Africa. Women and children are viewed as feeble creatures, and their position in Society is demeaned. They are vulnerable to Anti-poverty, ten social injustices, and inequality. The essay has presented them as being exposed to danger that hinders their responsibilities in human development. Human development conditions, health, education, gender empowerment, and labor have been critical in evaluating the role and effectiveness of anti-poverty transfers. Anti-poverty transfers programs such as Progresa in Mexico, and Chile Solidario, have solved injustices and inequalities facing women and children. Besides, the goal and role of their implementation were to ensure poverty reduction and the protection of women and children.
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