The global crisis has strongly highlighted the need to strengthen social protection institutions in developing countries, and particularly in low-income countries. Before the crisis began in November 2008, a growing body of research had accumulated proving a comprehensive knowledge base demonstrating that social protection programs are effective instruments for reducing poverty and improving human development. A number of new social protection programs have emerged in the South that pay particular attention to children. Children constitute the largest group of poor people in the world and, by investing in their development, social transfers help enable them to escape poverty for good. The focus on children shows that social protection is as much about reducing current poverty as it is about investing in the future (Barrientos & DeJong, 2006). These programs exhibit considerable diversity in terms of objectives and program design. They can take the form of pure income transfers, as in the case of the Child Support Grant in South Africa, while other countries have taken a different approach of linking income transfers to the provision of basic services. For example, Oportunidades in Mexico (formerly Progresa) and Bolsa Familia in Brazil, which provides income transfers to poor households on the condition that they regularly send their children to school and that household members attend health centers. In a smaller number of countries, as in the case of Chile Solidario, income transfers are combined with a wide range of interventions in health, education, employment and housing. We focus on social protection programs directly focused on children...... middle of paper ...... from revenue collection to redistribution mechanisms, important as they are. An optimal financing mix should fulfill three objectives: (i) generate the resources needed to establish and strengthen appropriate social protection systems; (ii) ensure that the incentives generated by financing arrangements reduce child poverty and vulnerability; and (iii) guarantee the legitimacy of social protection institutions and policies. The third section examines key issues related to financing social protection in low-income countries, beginning with a discussion of trends in sub-Saharan Africa and the issues raised by the current global crisis; followed by a discussion of alternative political strategies adopted in three Latin American countries: the use of natural resources in Bolivia; budget surplus policies in Chile and borrowing in Mexico. The fourth section ends.