Cash Transfers and Child Wellbeing in Pakistan: A Critical Assessment of Poverty Reduction Programs

This study is located in the broader field of social protection explicitly looking at cash transfer programs in Pakistan. The study adopts the 3-D wellbeing approach of Andy Sumner as a lens to look at the cash transfer programs from the perspective of children, exploring their material, relational and subjective wellbeing. The analysis based on the findings of the research suggest that the narrow conceptualization of social protection culminating in cash transfer programs cannot be an appropriate arrangement for achieving the wellbeing of children in line with the 3-D model. Findings reveal that cash transfers have benefited households generally as income support; improving food consumption, attaining the school enrolments and to some extent helping them address health issues. However, the deep entrenched poverty, social and economic vulnerabilities and deprivations remain the same. Most importantly, the wellbeing of children which should fulfill the material and also relational and subjective domains remains a distant reality. Social policy in Pakistan to deal with the issues of children has taken narrow view of their needs through cash transfers and is limited to achieving school enrolments and improving livelihoods ignoring the distinct nature of child poverty, deprivations, vulnerabilities, and their rights as equal citizens. This study has brought to the fore conflicting and contested views on wellbeing of children by parents, children and the State indicating the deep rooted marginalization and deprivation, which has meant that poor parents and children cannot even imagine a ‘good life’ based on a multidimensional notion of wellbeing and are only able to either have a consumerist notion of wellbeing or a cynical defeatist view.