Welfare, labour market deregulation and households’ poverty risks: An analysis of the risk of entering poverty at childbirth in different European welfare clusters

Abstract

This article deals with families' risk of entering poverty as a consequence of childbirth in four European Union (EU) welfare clusters. Poverty risks around childbirth are institutionally stratified according to specific characteristics of national welfare systems and the value they assign to family policies as well as the kind of labour market deregulation. While southern European countries are known for having welfare systems that make few provisions for 'the future generations of citizens', conservative and social-democratic countries differ significantly in the amount of their investments in family policies. We compare households' risks of entering poverty at childbirth between Southern Europe and the rest of Europe using pooled longitudinal European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data and applying panel models and propensity score matching. We show that childbirth is very poverty inducing only in southern Europe, especially for the less 'labour market-attached' households (precarious worker families, the unemployed) and traditional single-earner families, thereby pointing out the under-protectiveness of the Southern European systems of family and social policies. This situation is exacerbating additional inequality as families' well-being largely depends on the previous unequal social stratification of resources.

Persistent joblessness and fertility intentions

“…Since the introduction of these contracts, the traditional division between insiders and outsiders in the labour market has been reinforced among the young. The ample sociological literature on the topic, however, raises doubts about the effectiveness of the deregulation undergone in recent decades (Barbieri and Sestito 2008;Barbieri and Scherer 2009;Cutuli and Guetto 2013;Barbieri et al 2015; Barbieri and Bozzon 2016). These authors demonstrated that the process of partial and targeted labour market deregulation, indeed, did not increase the (net) amount of occupation by creating additional jobs, but rather replaced secure, unionized labour with precarious, cheaper employment.…”

Social Effects of Economic Crisis: Risk of Exclusion. An Overview of the European Context

“…Social policies are a key matter for helping people overcome poverty and exclusion situations [40][41][42]. The social support variable was considered from the indicator [spr_exp_sum] from EUROSTAT Database [43].…”

The triple bind of single-parent families

“…But then again, it is striking that the 'market income poverty' -or poverty earnings, as we define it in this chapter -among single parents also varies so widely. In the absence of redistribution, single parents would be much more exposed to poverty in some countries than others (Barbieri & Bozzon, 2016). These cross-country differences relate to institutional and policy differences.…”

“…International studies do not draw straightforward conclusions when it comes to how the presence and generosity of benefits affect single mothers' employment (Destro & Brady, 2011). Barbieri and Bozzon (2016) show that pretransfer poverty risks of single parents are particularly high in social-democratic countries. Generous welfare provisions may play a role here, as they provide disincentives to work full time.…”