The youngest future of the Americas.

• Author: Hardman, Chris
• Position: Essay

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The future for children in the Americas looks brighter than ever due to an unprecedented effort to tackle the one condition that negatively impacts children in all areas of their lives: poverty. Since September 2000, Latin American and Caribbean heads of state have been part of a global initiative to reduce poverty and hunger by adopting the United Nations Millennium Declaration. A total of 189 countries from all regions of the planet agreed to share resources and work together to meet eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) by 2015. For each goal, they identified quantifiable statistical indicators to monitor and evaluate their progress.

Poverty denies children their most basic needs, decreases their life span, and prevents them from receiving an education. In poor regions, child mortality rates--the number of children who die before reaching the age of five--are extremely high. According to UNICEF, in 1960, 153 out of every 1,000 children born in Latin America and the Caribbean died before reaching five years of age. One of the MDGs is to reduce the mortality rate by two-thirds among children under five.

With less than five years left until the 2015 deadline, Latin American and the Caribbean countries have come a long way towards keeping their children alive. According to the United Nations Millennium Development Report 2009 , the child mortality rate in Latin America decreased from 54 deaths per 1,000 births in 2000 to 24 deaths per 1,000 births in 2007. Although progress has been made, the child mortality rate has not reached the same levels as developing countries, which have less than 8 deaths per 1,000 births.

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Several broad range initiatives have helped decrease the rate of child mortality in the region. Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs help families afford health care and ensure that parents visit medical professionals. Low-income families receive a monthly stipend from the government for health care and continue to receive the money only if they follow through on taking their children to health clinics. According to the World Bank, CCTs now benefit about 21 million families in Latin America each year. From 2005 to 2009, the bank approved sixteen Conditional Cash Transfer programs in ten countries, mostly in Latin America. In the Caribbean nation of Jamaica, a cash transfer program named PATH--funded by the World Bank and the government of Jamaica--has...