What helps households with children in leaving poverty? Evidence from Spain⋆

Abstract

In this paper we analyse the distinct effectiveness of demographic, labour market and welfare state transfers events in promoting exits from deprivation for childbearing households in Spain, a Southern European Country with high and persistent child poverty and a familial welfare regime. We undertake a thorough analysis of outflow rates and of the effect of events on them by household types using a detailed descriptive approach and a multivariate analysis to control for household heterogeneity. We find that, contrary to the descriptive results, a multivariate approach to the estimation of the outflow rate shows that the presence of children robustly reduces household's chances to step out of poverty. In turn, both methodologies show that the effectiveness of labour market events is somewhat lower for childbearing households while their prevalence is particularly high. Also, both the prevalence and the effectiveness of events related to the beginning of state transfers are high for households without children.

Measurement and identification of asset-poor households: a cross-national comparison of Spain and the United Kingdom

“…16 This definition slightly differs from that used by these authors, given that we use a relative income poverty line instead of an absolute one. 17 We argue that our choice is consistent with the relative criterion adopted in the official estimation method of income poverty in the European Union. 18 Thus, given our interest in the capacity of Spanish and British households to overcome periods of income poverty, we claim that a relative approach is more suitable than an absolute one in this case.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, our work is the first attempt to analyze the extent of asset-poverty in Spain, provided that, until 2002, there was an absolute lack of adequate data for undertaking this type of research. Thus, our analysis complements previous research papers on poverty in Spain that use household income as welfare indicator [2,5,16,17], by focusing on the wealth dimension of welfare. In particular, the information on families' wealth holdings contributes to improve our knowledge about people's living conditions, and consequently, it allows us to identify and describe more accurately the situation of those households that are in greater need.…”

“…16 The poverty line in each country is set equal to 60% of the median monthly household equivalent income. 17 In particular, [14] identify as asset-poor those households that lack enough wealth resources to meet their basic needs over 3 months, where basic needs are measured using the family-size conditioned minimum consumption thresholds computed using the Consumer Expenditure Survey. 18 We refer to the so-called Laeken poverty indicators, which are aimed to monitor the progress in fighting against poverty and social exclusion in European Union countries.…”

Understanding poverty persistence in Spain

“…The inconvenience of this strategy is that the control is over observed heterogeneity only. Finally, Cantó et al (2007) estimate poverty exits using a Heckman selection model that controls for retention. With data from the ECPF for the 1985-1995 period, they find that retention and poverty exit equations are independent in most of their model specifications.…”

Un enfoque dinámico para el análisis de la pobreza e indigencia en Argentina

“…El análisis estático es útil para el monitoreo general, pero brinda información limitada, ya que sólo revela los niveles agregados de pobreza e indigencia. Aún cuando la trayectoria muestra una tendencia decreciente, existen hogares que entran y salen de la pobreza constantemente(Cantó et al 2006(Cantó et al , 2009.En este sentido, existe un enfoque dinámico que se basa en analizar las tasas de entrada y salida de la pobreza a partir de observar a un mismo hogar en diferentes momentos del tiempo. Algunos estudios como elde Jenkins y Schluter (2003), han complementado este enfoque asociando episodios a dichas transiciones, que permiten comprender si éstas están relacionadas con eventos del mercado laboral, cambios en la composición del hogar o con políticas públicas específicas.…”