The Impact of the Great Recession on Child Poverty

The duration and depth of the crisis in Italy were largely a consequence of long-term structural features of the Italian economy and of its weak and fragmented social safety net, together with an over-reliance on the capability of family solidarity. The crisis most affected those children that also before showed higher poverty rates: children living in large, often single earner households, particularly in the South, in lone parent and in migrant households. Poor children were also most affected by financial cuts in education, social, and health services implemented under the austerity measures. Poverty, and particularly children’s poverty entered the policy agenda only very recently, with the design of a minimum income benefit targeted specifically to households with children suffering absolute poverty. The main drivers of children’s poverty—low household work intensity, inadequate and inefficient child-linked benefits, scarcity of work-family conciliating policies to support mothers’ labour force participation—remain unaddressed.

Austerity · Child poverty · Demographic economics · Development economics · Economic growth · Economics · Great recession · Labour economics · Political science · Poverty · Recession · Safety net · Scarcity · Social policy · Social protection · Solidarity · Work (physics) · Employment and Welfare Studies · Youth Education and Societal Dynamics

• Children against parents? The politics of intergenerational recalibration in Southern Europe

  Open Access•Marcello Natili, Matteo Jessoula•Social Policy and Administration•2019

  Add to list