Successful policy mixes to tackle the impact of rising inequality on children

- an EU-wide comparison -

András GábosTÁRKI Social Research Institute

Changing Inequalities: How Do They Affect Societies?Opening Conference of the GINI project19-20 March 2010 at the London School of Economics

The discussion paper

Provides an input for the Policy Analysis report

Examines the effect of policies ON inequalities

Concentrates on the lower end of the income distribution a specific sub-population (but mostly characterised by

household level parameters)

Timeliness: the economic crisis might strongly affect both the public and private investments in children and therefore their risk of poverty as well as their well-being in general

Why tackling child poverty?

Risk of poverty of children: higher than average in most of the MSs and increasing trend seems to be dominant over the last decadesEquity reasons children have no direct influence on their situation, but have the same rights

Efficiency reasons their risk of poverty is strongly related to their development and coming

performance as adults, further determining the future outcomes of the society:

socially and financially sustainable economic growth quality and quantity of employment social cohesion and maintainable welfare systems

Dilemmas to improve short-term or long-term outcomes? overall inequalities determine child poverty or present inequalities among

children has an influence on future patterns?

Starting point

EU: child mainstreaming since 2005 within the Social OMCTÁRKI - Applica (2010): Child poverty and child well-being in the European Union (commissioned by the DG EMPL) Follow-up of EU Task-Force on Child Poverty and Child Well-Being

report (2008) – methodological framework

International benchmarking covering the EU Member States: to assess the performance of countries in the field of child povertyDimensions: (i) child poverty risk outcomes, (ii) joblessness, (iii) in-work poverty, (iv) impact of social transfers

Country clusters

Group A: good performers in all dimensions DK, FR, CY, NL, AT, SI, SE, FI adequate income support, high levels of activity, extensive

childcare provisions

Group B: joblessness is key challenge BE, CZ, DE, EE, IE, HU, SK, UK large number of children living with lone parents (exc. HU, SK)

Group C: relatively bad performance in all dimensions LV, LT (BG, MT, RO)

Group D: in-work poverty is key challenge EL, ES, IT, LU, PL, PT low levels of support, being also narrowly targeted

Tasks to be carried out

To further deepen the analysis on the household-level determinants of child poverty

To further deepen the analysis on the impact of social transfers withdrawal effects, EUROMOD, model family method

To identify succesful policy combinations income support LM policies childcare services

Main datasource: EU-SILC

Expected outcomes

Country clusters of EU MSs based on the most important and robust indicators on child poverty outcomes, household determinants and policy effectiveness to explicitely include

patterns of persistent poverty the role of household composition the role of childcare

to consider non-income indicators of poverty

Policy conclusionsInput for project-level recommendations on better social indicators