Book Reviews

2011 ◽  
Vol 49 (2) ◽  
pp. 453-455
Keyword(s):  
Financial Support ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
War On Poverty ◽  
University Of Kentucky ◽  
Families With Children

James P. Ziliak of University of Kentucky reviews “Britain?€?s War on Poverty” by Jane Waldfogel. The EconLit Abstract of the reviewed work begins “Explores the story of Britain's war on child poverty and considers lessons for future antipoverty efforts both in Britain and elsewhere. Discusses one in four children living in poverty in 1999; promoting work and making work pay; increasing financial support for families with children; investing i….”

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.

Child Poverty in Britain: Past Lessons and Future Prospects

2011 ◽  
Vol 218 ◽  
pp. R7-R19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard Dickens
Keyword(s):  
Child Poverty ◽  
Poverty Line ◽  
Coalition Government ◽  
Future Prospects ◽  
Labour Government ◽  
The Past ◽  
Families With Children ◽  
Government Benefits ◽  
Welfare Reforms

The previous Labour government pledged to abolish child poverty and introduced a range of welfare reforms that emphasised the role of work as the primary route out of poverty. This culminated in the Child Poverty Act (2010) which commits all future governments to the abolition of child poverty. This paper examines New Labour's record on child poverty and examines the factors responsible for its change. While the welfare reforms of the late 1990s did increase work among families with children, this didn't translate into large falls in child poverty. Those entering work still relied on substantial increases in government benefits to lift them over the poverty line. The current coalition government has reaffirmed its commitment to the Child Poverty Act and is also emphasising the role of work. The lessons of the past decade cast severe doubt on whether the current coalition government strategy of promoting work will be any more successful in reducing child poverty. With planned benefit cuts in the pipeline we could well experience some substantial increases in child poverty over the coming years.

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.

The Great Divergence

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joshua T. McCabe
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Child Poverty ◽  
Postwar Reconstruction ◽  
The Us ◽  
Great Divergence ◽  
Cash Benefits ◽  
The Uk ◽  
Families With Children ◽  
First Time ◽  
Family Allowances

Chapter 2 looks at the “great divergence,” when logics of appropriateness were institutionalized in public policies. It shows just how similar all three countries were in the interwar period. Prior to World War II, American, British, and Canadian policymakers held similar views on when it was appropriate to provide direct cash benefits to families with children. Nascent projects for postwar reconstruction changed this in Canada and the UK as each country introduced family allowances in the mid-1940s. Children were recognized for the first time ever as deserving of direct cash benefits according to a new logic of income supplementation. The US on the other hand never introduced family allowances. The unintended result was the noninstitutionalization of the logic of income supplementation for families. The policy legacies established during this period were crucial for shaping later responses to inflation and child poverty.

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