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The impact of child benefits on single mother poverty: Exploring the role of targeting in 15 E uropean countries
Author(s) -
Van Lancker Wim,
Ghysels Joris,
Cantillon Bea
Publication year - 2015
Publication title -
international journal of social welfare
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.664
H-Index - 47
eISSN - 1468-2397
pISSN - 1369-6866
DOI - 10.1111/ijsw.12140
Subject(s) - poverty , entitlement (fair division) , single mothers , child poverty , poverty reduction , context (archaeology) , statutory law , economics , development economics , economic growth , public economics , psychology , political science , developmental psychology , geography , mathematical economics , archaeology , law
Single mothers are vulnerable to living in poverty. The question of how to safeguard the economic status of single mothers in a context of increasing dual earnership is a crucial one. In the present study we addressed this issue by investigating the impact of child benefits on the poverty risk of single mothers in 15 E uropean countries. We focused in particular on the design of child benefits and investigated whether targeting towards single mothers was associated with better poverty reduction. In doing so, we combined information on statutory child benefit entitlement with an empirical analysis of poverty reduction using survey data. We found that: (i) both spending effort and targeting are important to explain the effectiveness of child benefits in reducing single mother poverty; (ii) targeting is related to higher levels of poverty reduction independent of spending effort; yet (iii) it matters how targeting is done.