Alberto Minujin

Born in Argentina, 21 October 1945

Minujin is a Mathematician with postgraduate studies in Applied Statistics and Demography.

Alberto Minujin is a professor at the Graduate Program in International Affairs, New School University, New York, and at the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, New York, conducting teaching and research on the topics of children, human rights, poverty, and monitoring, evaluation and social research methods. At the New School he also directs an International Summer Field Program in Argentina; coordinates international conferences co-sponsored by the graduate school (GPIA) and UNICEF; and authors books on the topics of social policy and children. He is director of the New School website equityforchildren.org. He provides consulting services on issues related to social policy, design and development of projects for child wellbeing, and statistical analysis and monitoring and evaluation.

Since 2006, Minujin has provided consulting services to UNICEF Iran, Tanzania, Egypt, Ecuador, Mexico, Argentina and New York and to the Government of Provincia de Buenos Aires, Argentina. He has wide experience supporting the development of programs and projects for children and family wellbeing in many countries around the world, including Egypt, Mali, Jordan, and most Latin American countries. He lived seven years in Mexico and five in Colombia.

Until October 2005 Minujin was Senior Programme Officer, Policy Analysis at the Global Policy Section in the Division of Policy and Planning of UNICEF Head Quarters (New York), working on social policy, policies for child poverty reduction and equity, budget analysis and human rights issues.

He is former Regional Advisor for Social Policy, Monitoring and Evaluation for Latin America and the Caribbean and Programme Coordinator of UNICEF Argentina. He was Deputy Director of the National Statistical Office of Argentina and professor of postgraduate studies of the School of Social Sciences, University of Buenos Aires. He was researcher at the Population Section of the Institute of Social Research, Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico

He has spent time as a visiting research fellow at the International Development Centre, Queen Elisabeth House, at the Latin American Centre, St. Anthony College, Oxford, England working on issues related to social policy and welfare. He has also served as a visiting research fellow at the Department de la Demographie, Universitè de Louvain, Bélgique.

Minujin was the editor and author of two recent books published by The New School: “Social Protection Initiatives for Children, Women, and Families: An Analysis of Recent Experiences” that focus in the experiences around the world on cash and in-kind transfers to poor families; and “Poverty and Children: Policies to Break the Vicious Cycle (2006)”, that discusses concepts, measurement and policies related to children living in poverty. His previous two books, on the historical social changes and the impoverishment of the middle class in Argentina, “The Middle Class: Seduced and Abandoned (2004)”, and on future alternatives for Argentine society, “The Future. Where Argentina is Headed (2205)”, have become nonfiction best sellers. He has published several other books including “Globalization and Human Rights,” Santillana Pub Co., “The New Poor,” Ed Planeta, “Proposal for Inclusive Societies,” Santillana Pub Co. and numerous articles and papers.


Most recent papers:

  • “Incidence, Depth and Severity of Children in Poverty” in Social Indicators Research (forthcoming)
  • “The Definition of Child Poverty: A Discussion on Concepts and Measurements” in Environment and Urbanization Vol. 18(2), Sage publications, 2006
  • “Pobreza Infantil: Conceptos, mediciones y recomendaciones de politicas publicas” Cuaderno de Ciencias Sociales 140, FLACSO, Costa Rica
  • “Human Rights and Social Policy for Children and Women: the multiple Indicator Cluster Survey in Practice” editor and author, The New School, New York.
  • “Setting the stage for equity-sensitive monitoring of the maternal and child health MDGs” in WHO Bulletin 2005
  • “Mind the Gap! Widening Child Mortality Disparities” (with Enrique Delamonica), in Journal of Human Development, volume 4 number 3, November 2003
  • “Equality Matters for a World Fit for Children. Lessons from the 1990s”, UNICEF Division of Policy and Planning, Working Paper, December 2003
  • "Social inequity indicators" in Desarrollo Economico N165, vol 42, 2002
  • "Economic Growth, Poverty and Children" (with Jan Vandermoortele and Enrique Delamonica), in Environment and Urbanization, 2002
  • "Facing the New Millennium: Children and rights in Latin America and the Caribbean" in The Child in Latin America, Ernest Bartell ed, University of Notredame Press, 2001
  • "Poverty reduction Start with Children", in Report of the Fourth Meeting of the Expert Group on Poverty, 2001

Areas of expertise:

  • Social policy development
  • Program design and execution
  • Research on public policy and population
  • Social statistics, monitoring and evaluation
  • Adolescents’ opinion poll
  • Poverty estimation and analysis
  • Programme development for the wellbeing of families and children
  • Teaching

Strengths:

  • Team builder/ leader for multidisciplinary groups
  • Familiarity with multicultural environments
  • Negotiation skills and partnership development
  • Advise policy makers

Languages:

  • Spanish, mother tongue
  • English, understand, speak and write fluently
  • French, understand and speak fluently
  • Portuguese, understand and speak