Belgium: Creeping Vulnerability of Children

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julie Vinck ◽  
Wim Van Lancker
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
Important Lesson ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Poverty Risk ◽  
Poor Households ◽  
Families With Children ◽  
The Impact

Belgium has been plagued by comparatively high levels of child poverty, and by a creeping, yet significant, increase that started in the good years before the crisis. This is related to the relatively high share of jobless households, the extremely high and increasing poverty risk of children growing up in these households, and benefits that are inadequate to shield jobless families with children from poverty. Although the impact of the Great Recession was limited in Belgium, the crisis seems to have had an impact on child poverty, by increasing the number of children living in work-poor households. Although the Belgian welfare state had an important cushioning impact, its poverty-reducing capacity was less strong than it used to be. The most important lesson from the crisis is that in order to make further headway in reducing child poverty, not only activation but also social protection should be improved.

Growing up in Poverty: Children and the Great Recession in Spain

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sara Ayllón
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Growing Up ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Business Cycle ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Economic Well Being

This chapter provides a diagnosis of the economic ill-fare of Spanish children since 2008 with the objective of assessing the impact that the Great Recession has had on them. The results show children’s great economic vulnerability to changes in the business cycle. The Great Recession has had important consequences on the economic well-being of many children—not only because of the sky-high unemployment rates of the adults that look after them, but also because of the lack of a generous and comprehensive social protection system that can be relied upon when the economy slows down. Notwithstanding this, it is important to remember that child poverty was a major social problem in Spain before this economic downturn.

Impact of a multidimensional child cash grant programme on water, sanitation and hygiene in Nepal

2018 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 520-532 ◽  
Author(s):  
Andre Renzaho ◽  
Stanley Chitekwe ◽  
Wen Chen ◽  
Sanjay Rijal ◽  
Thakur Dhakal ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Social Protection ◽  
Propensity Scores ◽  
Financial Incentive ◽  
Scale Up ◽  
Social Welfare Services ◽  
Sanitation And Hygiene ◽  
Families With Children ◽  
And Control ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Cash Grant

Abstract The study evaluated the impact of a multidimensional child cash grant (CCG) programme on safe water, sanitation and hygiene (WASH) outcomes. The intervention district received a CCG providing 200 Nepalese Rupee per month for up to two children for poor families with children under five, a capacity building component for effective child sensitive social protection, and behaviour change activities in addition to existing standard social welfare services in the form of targeted resource transfers (TRTs) for eligible families. The control district received only TRTs for eligible families. Propensity scores were used in difference-in-differences models to compare the changes over time between the intervention and control groups. The intervention resulted in a 5.5% (p < 0.01), 46.6% (p < 0.001) and 42.2% (p < 0.001) percentage points reduction in the proportion of households reporting drinking water from unimproved sources, having unimproved sanitation facilities, and practising unsanitary disposal of children's faeces, respectively. However, the prevalence of households practising inadequate water treatment methods did not differ between the intervention and comparison districts. In order to achieve WASH coverage in Nepal, strategies to scale up the intervention need to consider a social protection programme embedding different financial incentive and integrated capacity mechanisms.

USA Child Poverty: The Impact of the Great Recession

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christopher Wimer ◽  
Timothy M. Smeeding
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Economic Downturn ◽  
Median Income ◽  
Relative Poverty ◽  
Poverty Measure ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
The Usa ◽  
The Impact

The Great Recession (GR) was the most dramatic economic downturn the USA has experienced in more than six decades. But against this backdrop, the USA actually made some limited progress against child poverty over the Great Recession when one considers the new US Supplemental Poverty Measure which lies at about 40 per cent of median income. The main reason was the growth of a well-targeted near cash safety net, combined with earnings enhancements in the form of refundable tax credits. These enhancements helped the working poor, but not many parents of children who could not find jobs. However these improvements had little if any effect on relative poverty counted at a European or cross-national relative poverty standard set at 60 per cent of median income. Greater progress against child poverty in the US requires a continued strong job market coupled with a child allowance.

The Impact of the Great Recession on Child Poverty in Greece

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manos Matsaganis
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Professional Associations ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Policy Responses ◽  
The Status ◽  
Effects On Children ◽  
The Unemployed ◽  
The Impact

This chapter discusses the impact of the crisis (and of policy responses) on children in Greece. The Great Recession has been far more painful and protracted in that country than elsewhere. While some of its effects on children will take years to unfold, others are visible already. The very fact that the economic crisis was allowed to become a social emergency in the first place implies that policy responses failed to rise to the occasion. The reasons for that failure are to be found in the ‘politics of welfare retrenchment’. Defenders of the status quo, from trade unions to professional associations with good connections to the political establishment, have been relatively successful in resisting austerity cuts. As a result, the burden of fiscal consolidation has fallen on less powerful categories, leaving little space for policies aimed at protecting the real victims of the recession: the unemployed and the poor.

Impact of the Economic Crisis on Children in Rich Countries

2017 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Child Poverty ◽  
Material Deprivation ◽  
Social Spending ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Economic Output ◽  
Macroeconomic Impact ◽  
Market Trends ◽  
Key Indicators ◽  
Families With Children ◽  
Rich Countries

This chapter provides an overview of how the Great Recession affected the economies of the industrialized world and fed through to social spending and to key indicators of child poverty and material deprivation. This sets the context for the in-depth case studies of eleven countries presented in the rest of this volume. The chapter describes macro-economic and labour market trends across forty-one rich countries, reviews changes in child poverty and material deprivation rates from 2008 and analyses fluctuations in social spending and the value of cash transfers for families with children. In doing so, the overview demonstrates that the eleven countries studied in depth in this book cover a broad span in terms of the extent and nature of the macroeconomic impact of the crisis, their initial levels of economic output per head and of child poverty and deprivation, and the increases in child poverty observed during the recession.

Addressing the Multidimensional Impact of Child Poverty: A Model Programme in Pasay City, Philippines

2015 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 10-15 ◽  
Author(s):  
Margarita Frederico ◽  
Steven Muncy ◽  
Valdimir Hernandez ◽  
Efrenlito Cabbigat
Keyword(s):  
Youth Development ◽  
Child Protection ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Integrated Approach ◽  
Family Services ◽  
Poverty Risk ◽  
Multiple Risks ◽  
Park Avenue ◽  
Co Morbidity ◽  
The Impact

Living in poverty has lifelong consequences for children. In response to the obvious needs of highly vulnerable, impoverished children and youth in its neighbourhood, Community and Family Services International (CFSI) commenced the Park Avenue Initiative (PAI) which was aimed at addressing the impact of poverty through promoting and testing community-based initiatives in child protection, youth development, and opportunity-creation. Building upon research into the reproductive health (RH) practices of young people in the area, the PAI was expanded to include a new programme addressing RH and the high risk sexual behaviours engaged in by many youth. This article critically examines how poverty is impacting on children. It presents the PAI RH approach as an example of a programme which addresses many of the multiple risks poverty presents for children. The PAI RH programme takes a holistic perspective to address the co-morbidity of poverty risk factors. The programme works with children, their families and the community. The article concludes that programmes need to take an integrated approach to address the multidimensions of poverty and engage with children and their families in actions which are aimed at building individual resilience and strengthening communities.

Unemployment, social protection spending and child poverty in the European Union during the Great Recession

2016 ◽  
Vol 27 (2) ◽  
pp. 123-137 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yekaterina Chzhen
Keyword(s):  
Great Recession ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Negative Impact ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Contextual Effect ◽  
Income Poverty ◽  
Work Intensity ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Working Age

The 2008 financial crisis triggered the first contraction of the world economy in the post-war era. This article investigates the effect of the Great Recession on child poverty across the EU-27 plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland and studies the extent to which social protection spending may have softened the negative impact of the economic crisis on children. While the risks of child poverty are substantially higher in countries with higher rates of working-age unemployment, suggesting a significant impact of the Great Recession on household incomes via the labour market, the study finds evidence for social protection spending cushioning the blow of the crisis at least to some extent. Children were significantly less likely to be poor in countries with higher levels of social protection spending in 2008–2013, even after controlling for the socio-demographic structure of the population, per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and the working-age unemployment rate. The poverty-dampening contextual effect of social spending was greater for the poverty risks of children in very low work intensity families and large families. The study uses two complementary thresholds of income poverty, both based on 60 percent of the national median: a relative poverty line and a threshold anchored in 2008. Although the choice of a poverty line makes a difference to aggregate child poverty rates, individual-level risks of a child being poor associated with a range of household-level characteristics are similar for the two poverty lines.

Demand-Based Cost-of-Children Estimates and Child Poverty

2012 ◽  
Vol 12 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Rocio Garcia-Diaz
Keyword(s):  
Child Poverty ◽  
Single Equation ◽  
Demand System ◽  
Equivalence Scales ◽  
Number Of Children ◽  
Cost Of Children ◽  
Poor Households ◽  
Households With Children ◽  
System Equivalence ◽  
The Cost

Abstract This paper compares alternative demand-based equivalence scales for the cost of children to assess child poverty in Mexico. The models estimated here range from single-equation models, such as those of Engel and Rothbarth, to a complete demand system approach with fixed price effects. The results found in this study favor the generalization of the complete demand system equivalence scales over the other models. Despite the differences in the alternative models, the ranking of households with children and overall populations is insensitive to different equivalence scales and poverty lines used. However, variation in the composition of poor households with children has a different effect depending on the particular choice of equivalence scale. We found that, for households with more than the country's average number of children, poverty incidence is considerably higher than in the population as a whole.

The Great Recession Crosses the Atlantic

2020 ◽  
pp. 151-170
Author(s):  
Barbara Bennett Woodhouse
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Children And Youth ◽  
Fiscal Policies ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Great Recession ◽  
Northern League ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The U.S

Chapter eight follows the economic crisis as it spreads to Europe. While the U.S. was only moderately affected, between 2008 and 2012 the worst hit European countries suffered spikes in child poverty greater than in any political or economic crisis since World War II. Children experienced declines in nutrition, life satisfaction, while levels of stress and the percentage of youth not in education employment or training (NEETs) rose dramatically. The chapter explains how the financial crisis flowed through the transmission channels of banking, labor markets and the public sector, flooding downstream to create household impact, in rising joblessness and unravelling safety nets, producing direct impact on children and youth. Unlike the U.S., Eurozone countries could not deploy monetary and fiscal policies that might have mitigated the impact on children. Instead, the EU imposed drastic austerity measures, forcing cuts in welfare and pensions and increases in taxes. A backlash followed in both the U.S. and Europe, fuelling nationalist movements like Trump’s America First, U.K.’s Brexit, and Italy’s anti-immigrant Northern League. The continuing legacy of recession is captured in current statistics on five “childhood enders”—infant mortality, malnutrition, school leaving, violence and children having children.

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