Child Poverty in Spain: What Can Be Said? [antikvár]

Executive Summary During the last three decades Spain has undergone a major political and socioeconomic transformation. At the beginning of the 1970s the country was still under Franco's dictatorial regime; today Spain has a well-consolidated democracy and is part of the European Community. Over the same period, indicators such as average welfare levels as measured by real disposable per capita income or expenditure on social protection have shown a significant net rise; this growth has occurred in parallel with both an increasing flexibility in the labour market and a dramatic jump in unemployment. In contrast with many other European countries in which relative poverty has been tending to expand in recent decades, poverty in Spain has been slightly reduced. The effect of these changes on the economic welfare situation of children has not been explored. The aim of this paper is therefore to provide evidence on the static and dynamic aspects of relative poverty among children, namely, its extent, evolution and persistence. Static poverty, that is, the risk of poverty for children, is analysed using the available cross-sectional evidence which allows for the study of the extent (and evolution) of relative poverty among children at three moments in time: 1973-74, 1980-81 and 1990-91. Dynamic poverty, that is, the transitions of children into and out of poverty, is explored using the available longitudinal microdata for the more recent 1985-92 period. Poverty among children is studied from a comparative point of view with respect to that among other relevant demographic groups, mainly adults and the elderly, and an analysis of child poverty is also carried out according to various population breakdowns, chiefly according to household size and composition and the employment status of parents. In keeping with most recent national and intemational studies of poverty, the paper adopts a poverty line at half the median "equivalent household welfare" (as measured by income or expenditure), while a child is considered poor if the equivalent income or expenditure in the household in which he or she lives falls below the poverty line. Sensitivity analyses are also performed to check the robustness of the findings. The main findings are as follows. Concerning the static aspects of child poverty, the extent of child poverty barely changed during the two decades under study, despite the fact that the relative position of children worsened