Child deprivation and social benefits: Europe in cross-national perspective

Abstract

In this paper, we examine the ability of social benefits to soften the level of child deprivation.We construct a dedicated child deprivation indicator which allows us to better capture children's circumstances and examine the effect on it of contextual and sociodemographic factors jointly through multilevel models. We contribute to the scarce literature on the effects of social spending on child-specific deprivation from a cross-national perspective. We separately estimate the effect of each social benefit function on child deprivation to evaluate the impact of those benefit functions directly targeted at children and those benefit functions with no explicit intention of child deprivation protection. Our findings suggest that in order to explain differences across European countries in the level of child deprivation, country-level determinants are crucial. Moreover, social benefits play a key role that remains even when controlling for country-level determinants. An additional finding is that the most effective social benefit functions are not necessarily those targeted at children.

The Role of Cash Benefit and In-Kind Benefit Spending for Child Poverty in Times of Austerity: An Analysis of 22 European Countries 2006–2015

“…However, child poverty is a complex phenomenon that can be defined and measured in several ways. One problem is whether we should see it merely as a monetary problem, or as a problem of deprivation, insufficient participation or social exclusion (Bárcena-Martín et al 2017;Gornick and Jäntti 2012;Chen and Corak 2008). The most common way of defining child poverty in high-income countries is to assess children's 'theoretical' incomes based on their parents' or the household's disposable incomes by using a relative poverty threshold, such as the EU at-risk-of-poverty threshold.…”

“…Accordingly, a growing literature stresses the importance of measuring child poverty multi-dimensionally, particularly in light of the UN Sustainable Development Goal 1, for example by using different indices on child deprivation (e.g. Bárcena-Martín et al 2017) or juxtaposing relative measures of child poverty to anchored ones (e.g. Chzhen 2017).…”

“…Social spending as a percent of GDP has been shown to protect families and children from poverty, even when controlling for household-level factors and other macro-level characteristics as the unemployment rate, affluence and the total level of welfare state generosity (Bárcena-Martín et al 2017;Chzhen 2017;Muffels and Fourage 2004). The international financial crisis in 2008-2009, which led to a period of sluggish growth and higher unemployment in Europe, became the ultimate test of welfare states' capacity to cushion families from economic hardship (Richardson 2010).…”

“…Chzhen 2017), and mostly used a cross-sectional approach (e.g. Bárcena-Martín et al 2017), this article analyses the role of different types of aggregate social spending to families, as well as their influence on child poverty over time and across European nations. By doing so, it helps to understand how the role and effectiveness of family policy to combat child poverty has changed during this period of economic turmoil and austerity.…”

Maternity Capital As A Tool For Reducing Child Poverty In Russia

“…Wietzke (2015) finds that countries with higher poverty reduction rates tend to pursue active redistributive policies. Bárcena-Martín et al (2017) conclude that social benefits play a key role in reducing child deprivation in Europe. Social security measures that do not explicitly intend to protect children from deprivation are the most effective.…”