Covid-19 & Children Supporting Families and Children Beyond COVID-19 Social protection in high-income countries Dominic Richardson Alessandro Carraro Victor Cebotari Anna Gromada Gwyther Rees December 2020 UNICEF OFFICE OF RESEARCH – INNOCENTI The Office of Research – Innocenti is UNICEF’s dedicated research centre. It undertakes research on emerging or current issues in order to inform the strategic direction, policies and programmes of UNICEF and its partners, shape global debates on child rights and development, and inform the global research and policy agenda for all children, and particularly for the most vulnerable. Office of Research – Innocenti publications are contributions to a global debate on children and may not necessarily reflect UNICEF policies or approaches. 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For readers wishing to cite this document, we suggest the following form: Richardson, D., Carraro, A., Cebotari, V., Gromada, A., Rees, G. (2020). Supporting Families and Children Beyond COVID-19: Social protection in high-income countries, UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti, Florence. No conflicts of interest were reported by the authors. Correspondence should be addressed to: UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti Via degli Alfani, 58 50121 Florence, Italy Tel: (+39) 055 20 330 Fax: (+39) 055 2033 220 [email protected] www.unicef-irc.org twitter: @UNICEFInnocenti facebook.com/UnicefInnocenti Cover photo: © UNICEF/UNI324961/Diffidenti 20 April 2020: Toys are chained to the railings of the playground of a nursery school in Bergamo, Italy, during school closures due to the COVID-19 pandemic. Editorial production: Sarah Marchant, UNICEF Innocenti Graphic design: Alessandro Mannocchi, Rome Supporting Families and Children Beyond COVID-19 Social protection in high-income countries Dominic Richardson Alessandro Carraro Victor Cebotari Anna Gromada Gwyther Rees Dominic Richardson is Chief, Social and Economic Policy, UNICEF Innocenti Alessandro Carraro and Anna Gromada are Consultants, Social and Economic Policy, UNICEF Innocenti Victor Cebotari is Strategic Advisor – Research and Academic Affairs, University of Luxembourg and Gwyther Rees is Social and Economic Policy Research Manager, UNICEF Innocenti Supporting Families and Children Beyond COVID-19: Social protection in high-income countries KEYWORDS High-income countries, European Union; COVID-19; economic crisis; global financial crisis; health crisis; fiscal stimulus; social protection; child well-being; children’s outcomes; policy reform; austerity; ecological model ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS The authors would like to thank colleagues from the UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti and UNICEF National Committees for helpful comments on drafts and during early presentations of the concept and results, including: Gunilla Olsson, Director, UNICEF Office of Research – Innocenti; Mirella Huttunen (UNICEF Finland); Lisa Wolff (UNICEF Canada), Clara Gómez Hernández (UNICEF, Spain), and Ye-Lin Jung (UNICEF Korea). The authors would also like to thank the external reviewers for their input. 2 Supporting Families and Children Beyond COVID-19: Social protection in high-income countries CONTENTS EXECUTIVE SUMMARY ........................................................................................ 4 1. WHY LOOK AT HOW COVID-19 AFFECTS FAMILIES AND CHILDREN IN HIGH-INCOME COUNTRIES? ................................................................................................. 9 1.1 COVID-19 responses for families and children in high-income countries: Research questions ................................................................................................12 2. HOW IS COVID-19 AFFECTING CHILDREN? ..............................................................13 2.1 A conceptual framework for understanding how COVID-19 affects children ....................13 2.2 Evidence from the literature on crises and children ................................................14 2.3 COVID-19, the Sustainable Development Goals and children. 19 3. COVID-19 AND KEY ECONOMIC, SOCIAL AND POLICY TRENDS THAT MATTER FOR CHILDREN. 23 3.1 What economic conditions matter for children? ....................................................23 3.2 Which social and demographic conditions matter for children? ..................................29 3.3 How have COVID-19 caseloads affected high-income countries? .................................38 3.4 Public policy responses to COVID-19 in high-income countries ...................................44 4. MAKING SENSE OF MANY FACTORS: LINKING THE EVIDENCE TO UNDERSTAND THE EFFECTS ON CHILDREN ..............................................................................67 4.1 Predictors of child well-being in high-income countries before the COVID-19 crisis ............67 4.2 Economic impacts on child income poverty and child well-being outcomes in high-income countries .................................................................................97 5. DISCUSSION: ADDRESSING COVID-19 RISKS TO CHILD WELL-BEING IN THE SHORT AND MEDIUM TERM ......................................................................................103 5.1 What risks are children facing during the COVID-19 crisis? .......................................103 5.2 What do we expect to happen to children during and after the COVID-19 crisis? ..............106 5.3 What are governments doing for children in high-income countries, and what do we need to see?. .106 REFERENCES ..................................................................................................111 ANNEX 1: SUPPORTING CHARTS AND TABLES ...........................................................115 ANNEX 2: METHODOLOGICAL NOTES .....................................................................119 A2.1. Notes for fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis ...............................................119 A2.2. Methodology for child income poverty projections ................................................121 A3.3. Methodology for elasticity of child well-being measures ..........................................123 ANNEX 3: FULL STATISTICAL TABLES FOR ELASTICITY ANALYSIS AND REGRESSION ANALYSIS ...............................................................................125 3 Supporting Families and Children Beyond COVID-19: Social protection in high-income countries EXECUTIVE SUMMARY COVID-19 constitutes the greatest crisis that high-income countries have seen in many generations. While many high-income countries experienced the global financial crisis of 2007–2008, or have had national recessions, the COVID-19 pandemic is much more than that. COVID-19 is a social and economic crisis, sparked by a protracted health crisis. High-income countries have very limited experience of dealing with health crises, having their health and human services stretched beyond capacity, restricting the travel of their populations or having to close workplaces and schools – let alone experience of all of these things combined. These unique conditions create new and serious challenges for the economies and societies of all high-income countries. As these challenges evolve, children – as dependants – are among those at greatest risk of seeing their living standards fall and their personal well-being decline. To put COVID-19 in context, around the time of the global financial crisis, economic growth in high-income countries averaged 1.3 per cent in 2008 and -4.4 per cent in 2009 (World Bank, 2020). Today, analysis by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) predicts a contraction of 7.6 per cent of gross domestic product (GDP) on average in the OECD area under a ‘single-wave’ scenario. Under a ‘double-wave’ scenario, the same analysis predicts a contraction of 9.5 per cent of GDP on average – with France, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom all seeing contractions of more than 14 per cent of GDP (OECD, 2020b). At the time of writing, countries in Europe are experiencing a ‘second wave’ of COVID-19 and lockdown strategies are being revisited.1 As the economic and social concerns related to COVID-19 become ever more pressing day by day, countries are struggling with the difficult decisions around reopening their schools and businesses, amid the need to maintain low rates of infection. Over the first period of social lockdown, from February to 31 July 2020, high-income countries together spent an estimated $10.8 trillion purchasing power parity (PPP) on the COVID-19 response, to address the limited supply of and demand for goods and services during lockdowns, which left businesses and families struggling, and wages unpaid.2 This combined sum of high-income countries’ massive financial packages to