The final years of the twentieth century and first decade of the twenty-first century saw unparalleled global interest in the survival and development of children. This interest reflects commitments made under the terms of the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child to support and protect all young people below the age of 18, as well as efforts in line with the Millennium Development Goals to reduce child mortality, eradicate poverty and hunger, and attain universal primary education and gender equity.

The Young Lives survey has been designed and implemented as a panel survey of 2,000 index children with a comparative cohort of 1,000 older children in each of the study countries. As part of the Round 3 data collection in 2009, information was collected on the next sibling down in three of the study countries, in the domains of anthropometrics, cognitive development, education and time-use. This note explores the potential for extending the sibling cross-section collected in 2009 to a panel in the next survey rounds.

Drawing on empirical data from a community-based study with children and adults in rural Peru, the paper analyses the everyday experiences of a conditional cash transfer programme, called Juntos. The findings show that social protection programmes like Juntos address certain child vulnerabilities by making eligibility for their cash transfers conditional on behaviour related to child protection-related such as health check-ups and school attendance. However, there are other aspects of children's well-being that are not being considered, such as experiences of violence and exclusion.

Child protection has focused on responding to interpersonal violence and abuse. This approach can detach children from the broader socio-economic and political structures which shape their life chances, by concentrating on the symptoms of risk rather than the underlying causes. Drawing on the Young Lives study of childhood poverty, this paper argues that poverty and inequalities are at the heart of childhood risk, shaping which children are at risk and access to sources of protection and therefore to children's life chances.