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The Global Financial Crisis and Child Poverty: The Case of A ustralia 2006–10
Author(s) -
Redmond Gerry,
Patulny Roger,
Whiteford Peter
Publication year - 2013
Publication title -
social policy and administration
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.972
H-Index - 63
eISSN - 1467-9515
pISSN - 0144-5596
DOI - 10.1111/spol.12039
Subject(s) - poverty , financial crisis , stimulus (psychology) , economics , child poverty , context (archaeology) , development economics , economic growth , psychology , macroeconomics , geography , archaeology , psychotherapist
While events associated with the global financial crisis ( GFC ) had a profound impact on real family incomes and well‐being in many rich countries, impacts in A ustralia were relatively minor. One reason for this was the massive policy response by the Australian government at the outset of the GFC , which pumped billions of dollars into the pockets of low and middle income families. This article examines the impact of this stimulus on child poverty in A ustralia in the context of longer‐term policies on income support for families with children. We show that the emphasis of longer‐term policy has been to moderate support for families with children and that, since the mid‐1990s, rates of relative child poverty have not fallen. We find that while the impact of the stimulus was to reduce child poverty, the underlying trajectory of policies towards family assistance and child poverty in A ustralia has not changed, and therefore there is no expectation that child poverty will continue to fall in the future.