The profile of income‐poor children

Amélia Bastos, Carla Machado and José Passos

International Journal of Social Economics, 2010, vol. 37, issue 12, 933-950

Abstract: Purpose - Child poverty has become an important issue in social and political agendas. In Portugal, almost 25 per cent of children are at risk of poverty and the most vulnerable age group. This paper seeks to investigate child poverty in Portugal, using European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions microdata for 2004‐2008. It explores the sociodemographic and economic attributes associated with child poverty in order to design the profile of income‐poor children. Furthermore, it analyses social policies efficiency in reducing child poverty. Design/methodology/approach - The paper uses descriptive methods as well as econometric tools to select the characteristics of income‐poor children and to evaluate social policy efficiency. The estimation of a discrete choice model allows inference purposes. Findings - Results obtained show that children included in large households and in lone‐parent households, are particularly at risk. Social policies undertaken had roughly impact on child poverty. Originality/value - This paper aims to contribute to the literature by establishing the profile of income‐poor children, which may contribute to design more efficient policies to tackle the problem of child poverty. The policy evaluation sheds light on the results obtained by the current policies suggesting the discussion of new programs.

Keywords: Children (age groups); Poverty; Income; Demographics; Social policy; Portugal (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (text/html)
https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.110 ... d&utm_campaign=repec (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

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:eme:ijsepp:v:37:y:2010:i:12:p:933-950

DOI: 10.1108/03068291011083017

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Social Economics is currently edited by Professor Terence Garrett

More articles in International Journal of Social Economics from Emerald Group Publishing Limited
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Emerald Support ().