Welfare, labour market deregulation and households’ poverty risks: An analysis of the risk of entering poverty at childbirth in different European welfare clusters

Abstract

This article deals with families’ risk of entering poverty as a consequence of childbirth in four European Union (EU) welfare clusters. Poverty risks around childbirth are institutionally stratified according to specific characteristics of national welfare systems and the value they assign to family policies as well as the kind of labour market deregulation. While southern European countries are known for having welfare systems that make few provisions for ‘the future generations of citizens’, conservative and social-democratic countries differ significantly in the amount of their investments in family policies. We compare households’ risks of entering poverty at childbirth between Southern Europe and the rest of Europe using pooled longitudinal European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data and applying panel models and propensity score matching. We show that childbirth is very poverty inducing only in southern Europe, especially for the less ‘labour market–attached’ households (precarious worker families, the unemployed) and traditional single-earner families, thereby pointing out the under-protectiveness of the Southern European systems of family and social policies. This situation is exacerbating additional inequality as families’ well-being largely depends on the previous unequal social stratification of resources.