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Each person’s childhood is unique and different. Those of us who have already experienced it know that it is a foundational period of our lives. Be it Marcel Proust, who recalls his childhood through the taste of a madeleine in the novel “In Search of Lost Time”, or Luis Alberto Spinetta, with his prayer for a sleeping child. Childhood is a recurring theme in the arts or science. Numerous studies in psychology and neuroscience underline this period’s relevance in developing capacities and skills in the medium and long term.

What will the children of today’s Argentina remember as adults? We cannot give a complete answer to that question, but we can infer some general ideas from the conditions in which they live.

In our country, poverty is infantilised: 51% of households with children do not earn enough income, a figure that drops to 18% in homes without children. Almost six out of ten children (58%) live in poverty, and two (17%) of those ten live in extreme poverty.

In addition to insufficient income, a significant proportion of children live in precarious conditions without access to essential goods and services. Around four out of ten children live in a household with no access to sewage, five have no access to the gas network, and four do not have a computer at home.

Exacerbated inequalities

The relevance of living in an adequate socio-spatial environment and its externalities on other issues like care and education became even more visible with the pandemic. Given the confinement measures, families with children faced increased care and education tasks within their respective households. From March 2020 onwards, most students continued their schooling exclusively online, and only between the end of 2020 and the beginning of 2021 did they move to blended learning schemes. Resources available to each household, such as access to the Internet, a computer, adequate space for homework, educational level of the responsible adults, etc., were decisive in the quality of access to remote education. This situation exacerbated educational inequalities according to socio-economic status.

The government implemented significant public policies to alleviate the adverse effects of the crisis. It is worth highlighting the reinforcement of income transfer measures aimed at the most vulnerable households, such as the Emergency Family Income (IFE for its initials in Spanish), the extra bonuses for holders of the Universal Child Allowance (AUH for its initials in Spanish) and the Alimentar Card (a food card). At the same time, there were actions to support schooling. Some examples are diversifying the means of access to remote education beyond the online modality through the distribution of printed booklets and the provision of computers. The measures adopted in response to the emergency made it possible to avoid a worse scenario in social terms. Still, they were not enough to counteract all the adverse effects of the crisis.

In short, the pandemic crisis added new vulnerabilities and exacerbated pre-existing ones. In the last decade, child poverty never fell below 40%, revealing structural problems that governments could not solve even in more favourable times.

How to reduce child poverty

There is a close link between growth and poverty. When the economy is not growing, it is challenging to improve people’s quality of life. Regaining a path of sustained economic growth is necessary to reduce poverty, but it is not enough. Public policies central to curbing the intergenerational reproduction of poverty must also be adopted, such as improving the child allowance system, guaranteeing sexual and reproductive rights, expanding access to quality child-rearing, education and care, and improving school completion and learning for adolescents, among others.

All of this requires more significant investment in the resources needed for children, which currently are not plentiful. For example, the average per capita investment per child under 18 is more than three times less than for a person over 60. It creates the dilemma of the end of the “demographic bonus” (increase in the proportion of the working-age population). In about 15 years, this bonus will come to an end, and, in the context of population ageing, the resources earmarked for the retirement age will become ever greater. It will further reduce the room for manoeuvre for intergenerational redistribution.

It may sound counter-intuitive to say that investing in children should be a priority to improve conditions for the elderly, but it is not. Laying the foundations for increased productivity of the future workers, which can compensate for the expected fall in the proportion of the working population, is indispensable for sustaining social protection. Moreover, it is crucial to explore whether the pension system has room for equity, sustainability, and efficiency improvements.

The present moment is critical for agreeing on a development strategy that incorporates child poverty reduction as one of its objectives for two reasons. Firstly, the country is now at the peak of its demographic bonus, which provides more opportunities for growth and intergenerational redistribution. Secondly, moments of crisis such as these enhance the capacity to establish dialogues and agreements between different actors and sectors of society. Reducing poverty among children responds to the rights agenda and is necessary to construct a future with inclusive growth and a better quality of life for all.