Resumen de Differences in child poverty between European countries

Elena Bárcena Martín, M. Carmen Blanco Arana, Salvador Pérez Moreno

• Child poverty constitutes a serious problem in the European Union (EU) that has increased in recent years of recession. Nowadays, the poverty rate for children is higher than that for any other age group, though it widely varies across countries. Using the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) for the year 2012, as well as some significant macro socio-economic variables from Eurostat, we assess in a multi-level framework to what extent differences in households and contextual factors explain disparities in child poverty across the European countries. We pay special attention to social transfers, as they seem crucial to explain the differences in child poverty levels, in order to reach the EU poverty reduction target set out by the Europe 2020 strategy.