Child poverty and government social spending in the European Union during the economic crisis

Abstract

Fighting child poverty is desirable to foster the sustainability of the social well-being for coming generations and, in addition, to ensure equality of opportunities for all children. Using panel data methodology, this work analyses the association between child poverty and government social spending in the 28 Member States of the European Union during the last economic crisis (2008-2014). We confirm that the government social spending as a whole, as well as the government spending on education and health negatively correlated with child poverty during the economic crisis, while government social protection spending did not it. That is to say, within the context of economic crisis in which European Union displayed policies to ensure sustainability of public finance, reductions in social spending and increases in child poverty could be associated.