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Child poverty is impacted to a great extent by family demography, with large families and single parents having a greater risk of being poor. Using the EU‐SILC microdata, we examine the extent to which social transfers reduce the risk of poverty among large families compared with smaller families in 29 European countries. Large families are defined as families with three or more children. First, we look at the reduction of poverty rates before and after the social transfers for large and small families. Second, we examine which types of social benefits are of most importance in alleviating poverty of large families. Poverty threshold is set at 60% of the national equivalent disposable income. In addition to poverty rates, poverty gaps are analysed. Results show that European countries seem to have different kinds of profiles in terms of overall child poverty reduction and whether the reduction is stronger among large families. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The United Kingdom two‐child policy was announced in 2015 and began to operate from April 2017. A mother claiming a range of means‐tested benefits who had a third or subsequent child born after 6 April 2017 could not receive a child addition for them, while a new claimant with three or more children would now receive no more than a claimant with two children. Using data from nationally representative annual living conditions surveys for the period up to 2019/20, we find that larger families experienced substantial real income losses since the introduction of the two‐child limit, with proportionally greater losses among those on lower incomes. Income losses among larger families were driven primarily by changes in income penalties to family characteristics, such as the presence of children under three, rather than changes in the distribution of these characteristics. Although this is not a causal analysis, these findings are consistent with a negative impact of the policy change on larger families' incomes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Historically, researchers and policymakers alike recognized the risk of poverty among large families, but family size is often neglected in the contemporary literature. This article revives an examination of the connections between family size and poverty risk for children with a focus on Germany. We take a child‐centered perspective by analyzing a sample of 13–14 year‐old children from the National Educational Panel Study (NEPS). First, we provide a detailed overview of the welfare and tax policies aimed at large families in Germany. Next, we estimate the poverty risk and prevalence for children in large families (looking at families with 3+ and 4+ children). Finally, we discuss how the policy and socio‐economic context interacts with the risk of poverty. We identify that the means‐tested social assistance scheme penalizes large families, while the child benefit would only acknowledge higher need of middle‐income families with three or more children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to the global financial crisis, social policies in Europe and elsewhere incorporated a logic of social investment to reduce (child) poverty and social inequality. Several critiques, however, have been raised against the narrowness of this discourse. In order to introduce another way of seeing, an interview study was conducted inspired by the interpretative paradigm of lifeworld orientation. This has allowed us to acquire a critical, in‐depth understanding of the consequences of economic downturn and unemployment for families with young children (0–3 years old), from their point of view. Findings highlight the importance of listening to parents here and now, in order to be able to take account of their concrete, lived realities within the context of the broader society and critically assess these realities according to principles of human dignity and social justice. Implications for social work practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study analysed the multidimensional child poverty status in China between 1989 and 2009, using the China Health and Nutrition survey data. Based on the Alkire-Foster method for measuring poverty, a multidimensional poverty index was calculated and further decomposed into seven deprivation dimensions: nutrition, water, sanitation, health, education, shelter and information. The study has four main findings: (1) The multidimensional child poverty rate in China declined gradually where the sanitation facility was most severely deprived; (2) The poverty gap between rich and poor provinces remained over the years; (3) The urban-rural disparity was reduced in all seven dimensions; (4) The poorest of the poor climbed out of ultra-poverty and became the moderately poor or even the non-poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we focused on child poverty and examined the targeting performance of governmental cash benefits in Taiwan, and whether they successfully alleviate child poverty when budget constraints are imposed. We employed data from the cross-sectional Survey of Family Income and Expenditure 2010, which was conducted by the Directorate General of Budget, Accounting, and Statistics of the Executive Yuan in Taiwan. We investigated efficiency and effectiveness, using the IRIS, Beckerman, and Shapley approaches, to measure targeting performance. The results suggest that few transfer programmes perform well in terms of both target efficiency and effectiveness; this generates trade-offs and paradoxes between efficiency or effectiveness, undercoverage or leakage, vertical or horizontal efficiency, and universal or selective benefits. We conclude by suggesting social policy implications based on the findings. Key Practitioner Message: ● Using different approach (targeting performance) to analyse child poverty; ● Using targeting efficiency and effectiveness to analyse whether governmental cash benefits ameliorate child poverty given specific budget constraints. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Roelen K, Gassmann F, de Neubourg C. False positives or hidden dimensions: what can monetary and multidimensional measurement tell us about child poverty in Vietnam? A widely used division between poverty measures based on conceptual underpinnings and analytical outcomes is that of monetary versus multidimensional measures. Comparisons of the use and outcomes of the two methods have shown that they predominantly provide different pictures of poverty in terms of size, rank and group. This article contributes to the long-standing and ongoing debate on poverty measurement by comparing the use of monetary and multidimensional poverty approaches, with a special focus on children in Vietnam and extending the empirical analysis beyond conventional methods. In addition to investigating whether poverty outcomes or groups of identified poor children differ when using the two different poverty measures, we also investigated the drivers underlying these differences. Findings confirm a considerable degree of mismatch: both poverty measures proved to be inadequate proxies for the other and factors underlying the identification by either one or both of the measures differed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there is now a large body of literature on poverty in the countries of Eastern Europe and Central Asia, there remains a dearth of comparative analysis of child poverty and wellbeing. This article uses household survey microdata for the period 2001–2003 to compare absolute poverty, relative poverty, material deprivation and participation in schooling among children in five countries: Albania, Bulgaria, Moldova, Russia and Tajikistan. The analysis shows that low absolute levels of household consumption are associated with other deprivation indicators and with children's participation in schooling. The article also highlights the usefulness of relative poverty measures that effectively identify children at risk of exclusion in even the poorest countries in the region. The article concludes by arguing that household consumption is a good indicator of child poverty and deprivation in the region, and that relative poverty measures should be more widely used in monitoring global targets for poverty reduction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study we assess child poverty in South Africa by estimating multivariate models using household-survey microdata from 1995. The applied poverty line defines children as poor if they live in households with a disposable per capita income less than US$1 Purchasing Power Parity. In South Africa, people living under such income conditions must be considered extremely poor. The results show that children living in South Africa face a risk of being poor comparable to that of the average world inhabitant. Child poverty in South Africa is an issue with strong racial connotations. Large variations in child poverty rates across provinces are found and most of South Africa's poor children live in rural areas. The educational level of household head is a strong predictor of child poverty. The probability of child poverty is vigorously reduced if a household receives wage earnings, but is affected by households’ demographic structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents chapter 3 of the Social report 2006, the fourth national report on social conditions in Sweden, which was published in the July 2007 issue of the International Journal of Social Welfare. It focuses on financial poverty in Sweden during the early 1990s. It aims to give poverty a profile, to identify the social groups among which poverty is commonly found, but also to describe and discuss how this has changed over time.