ABSTRACT
This chapter elaborates the changes in United Nations International Children's Emergency Fund's (UNICEF) focus and programs over the 1960s and then traces the contributions economists have made to UNICEF's thinking, advocacy and actions, over much of organization's life. The UNICEF country program involved three steps: first, an analysis of the needs of children in each country, building on the broad nature of the Bellagio perspectives; second, an assessment of what that country and other groups within the country needed to do in response to these needs; and third, but only later and separate, an analysis of what UNICEF could do to help get these country actions underway. Economists played an influential role in UNICEF from its earliest days. Interestingly, most of involvements, especially the early ones, were less about what UNICEF could learn from economics and more about how UNICEF could use some outstanding and distinguished economists to advise on how best to bring concern for children into economic planning.
