The beginning of 2017 marks Jamaica’s population of persons under 14 at 30.1 per cent of the population. In order to address high poverty among children, the Government of Jamaica began implementing the Programme of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) in 2000. PATH is a conditional cash transfer scheme for families designed specifically to meet the developmental needs of vulnerable boys and girls. PATH is implemented by the Ministry of Labour and Social Security, which operates the cash transfer and programme activities.
PATH provides conditional child assistance grants to boys and girls who are determined as poor. Those eligible can claim up to three types of cash transfers for health and education, as follows: 1) Eligible children, up to the age of 17, are entitled to receive a transfer of JMD 750, or USD 7.50, per month for health purposes, conditional upon health care visits for children under 6 years of age who are not enrolled in school. 2) Eligible children aged between 6 and 17 years are also entitled to a basic education transfer of JMD 400, or USD 4, per month, conditional upon educational enrolment and the maintenance of 85 per cent attendance. The overall monthly amount of the transfer varies between JMD 750 and JMD 1,265 according to the characteristics of the beneficiaries. 3) Beneficiaries who complete secondary education and enroll in higher education are entitled to receive a transfer of JMD 15,000, or USD 15. PATH also provides basic non-conditional cash transfers of USD 4 to families who enroll in the programme, but fail to meet the conditions. Eligible children are identified according to a proxy means test, an interview and a home visit. Beneficiaries of PATH almost doubled from 178,869 children in 2005 to 307,000 in 2009.
The Government of Jamaica embarked on social security reforms in the 1990s in an effort to improve the quality of life for vulnerable groups. These reforms resulted in the restructuring of Jamaica’s former Food Stamp Programme, Poor Relief Programme and Public Assistance Programme into one less fragmented approach, known as PATH. The merger of these programmes resulted in administrative challenges that were necessary to overcome in order to provide social security for children with reduced implementation costs. These important investments allow Jamaica’s poorest children to attend school and access healthcare and represent a fundamental move toward basic social protection for children in Jamaica.
Further Reading:
Milena Levigne, Luis Hernan Vargas (2012). Social Protection Systems in Latin America and the Carribean: Jamaica. United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Carribean, Santiago. Accessed from http://www.cepal.org/en/publications/social-protection-systems-latin-america-and-caribbean-jamaica on December 2016.