In South Africa, where the legacy of HIV and AIDS created a relatively high level of state social provisioning, the Child Support Grant, a means-tested but otherwise unconditional cash grant given to a child’s primary caregiver, is unique in that it targets caregivers of any sex (Budlender and Lund 2011, Razavi 2007,2011). Other programmes, such as those in Chile and Mexico, target early childhood education to encourage parental employment, particularly among mothers, via providing direct subsidies to private and quasi-public service providers on behalf of low-income households (Staab and Gerhard 2011). Its approach is built on the right to basic social citizenship and includes universal education and health care, as well as expanding the reach of social insurance by wideningthe scope of its contributors and providing protections for those unable to contribute (UNRISD 20io).Total spending on social insurance is high, family allowances have been around for more than 30 years and there is a lot of solidarity for redistribution (ibid). At the same time, there has been an increase in the proportion of poor households headed by women since the 1990s, a seemingly counter-intuitive outcome.