The Inter-Country Comparison of the Cost of Children Maintenance Using Housing Expenditure¹

Abstract

It is interesting to compare maintenance costs of children between countries with similar yet different family policy regimes because this could yield valuable lessons for researchers and policy-makers and also for the sake of methodological development. In this study, we aim to conduct a comparative analysis of the equivalence scales in Austria, Italy, Poland and France taking into account the age of children. To this end, we use data from the European Income and Living Condition (EU-SILC) to calculate equivalence scales for mono-and duo-parental households for the first and second child. The four countries share common European cultural context, yet differ with respect to social environment, in particular to family policy. We apply the Engel estimation method proposing the share of housing spending in total expenditures as a tool to obtain commodity-specific equivalence scales. Our results are consistent with other studies showing that the cost of a first child is higher than that of a later child. The scale values are not the same across all the countries concerned, with the highest cost observed in Italy and the lowest in Poland.