The sins of the parents: conceptualising adult-oriented reforms to family policy

Kitty Stewart, Ruth Patrick and Aaron Reeves

LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library

Abstract: A core element of a welfare state is the support that is provided to families with children, in recognition of the additional needs that dependent children create. Variation in the design, generosity and implementation of this provision is significant, reflecting underpinning perspectives towards children, families, and the state’s role in supporting them. Recent work by Mary Daly developed a new typology of social policy towards children, differentiating between ‘childhood-oriented’, ‘child-oriented’ and ‘family-oriented’ policies. In this paper, we explore how far this typology enables us to classify recent significant changes to social security support for children within the UK, in particular the 2013 benefit cap and the 2017 two-child limit. We propose that an extension to Daly’s typology is needed to make sense of these changes. We develop a new category of ‘adult-behaviour-orientated’ child-contingent policy, encapsulating policies that are directed towards children but made conditional on the behaviour of the adults in their household. We go on to analyse support for children across Europe through the lens of this extended framework. Significantly, we find the UK’s approach to be unusual but not exceptional, with other examples across the continent of children being rendered invisible or semi-visible within social security systems that prioritise other goals than children’s needs. It is significant that across diverse national contexts, support for children is being withdrawn (or is simply absent) because of the behaviours and circumstances of the adults in their household.

Keywords: two-child limit; social security (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: E62 H2 H5 I10 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 41 pages
Date: 2023-04-26
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/121533/ Open access version. (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ehl:lserod:121533

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in LSE Research Online Documents on Economics from London School of Economics and Political Science, LSE Library LSE Library Portugal Street London, WC2A 2HD, U.K.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by LSERO Manager ().