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

1. Changing Inequalities: How Do They Affect Societies? Opening Conference of the GINI project 19-20 March 2010 at the London School of Economics Successful policy mixes to tackle the impact of rising inequality on children - an EU-wide comparison - András Gábos TÁRKISocial Research Institute

2. 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

3. 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 decades • Equity 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?

4. Starting point • EU: child mainstreaming since 2005 within the Social OMC • TÁRKI - 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 poverty • Dimensions: (i) child poverty risk outcomes, (ii) joblessness, (iii) in-work poverty, (iv) impact of social transfers

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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 conclusions • Input for project-level recommendations on better social indicators