Documents Hufkens, Tine 4 results

"An aspect that has only recently received attention in the study of policy measures aimed at supporting families with young children in their work-family life balance is its distributive impact. Are these measures used by poor and rich families alike, or is there a ‘Matthew effect' at play, in the sense that poor families are underrepresented in using such measures? In order to perform such an evaluation one needs to have a measure of both cash and in-kind benefits related to policies that help families cope with the care of young children and job expectations. In-kind benefits are offered mainly in the form of subsidized early childhood education and care (ECEC), for which an appropriate cash equivalent has to be derived. As the value of in-kind benefits from publicly provided services is not included in the EU-SILC data, we derive them for this paper in line with earlier studies (e.g. Matsaganis and Verbist, 2009; Vaalavuo, 2011; Förster and Verbist, 2012; Van Lancker, 2014; Van Lancker and Ghysels, 2014). In comparison to these earlier studies, however, our analysis is much more fine-grained as we use the microsimulation model EUROMOD to include more precise estimates of parental fees and related tax-benefit policies; thus, we will have a better estimate of the net in-kind benefit households derive from ECEC services. We focus on policy measures going to children under compulsory schooling age for a selection of seven EU-countries. These improved estimates allow us to analyze the work-family polices from three perspectives: 1) how do the distributive characteristics of cash and in-kind benefits compare to one another in this domain?; 2) how do countries compare to one another in their policy perspective in terms of supporting outsourcing or home-based care for young children?; 3) what is the balance between private and public efforts for outsourced childcare across countries? Our results show that including net fees in the analysis attenuates the Matthew effect, in the sense that net fees are relatively more heavy for richer households than for the poor. There is, however, considerable cross-country variation."

"In this paper, we investigate the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on German household income using a micro-level approach. We combine a microsimulation model with labour market transition techniques to simulate the COVID-19 shock on the German labour market. We find the consequences of the labour market shock to be highly regressive with a strong impact on the poorest households. However, this effect is nearly entirely offset by automatic stabilisers and discretionary policy measures. We explore the cushioning effect of these policies in detail, showing that short-time working schemes and especially the one-off payments for children are effective in cushioning the income loss of the poor."

"In order to alleviate child poverty, contemporary European welfare states have shifted their focus increasingly towards child-centred investment strategies. However, studies examining the generosity of welfare states to families with children focus mainly on cash benefit packages, or on government expenditure, while not taking into account the actual out-of-pocket costs families have to make to fulfil their needs. This article aims at contributing to existing studies by: (1) empirically assessing the needs and costs of children across welfare states by making use of cross-nationally comparable reference budgets, while taking into account publicly provided or subsidised services; (2) simulating the cash benefits and taxes that affect households with children through the tax–benefit system, by making use of the new Hypothetical Household Tool (HHoT) in EUROMOD; and (3) combining both types of information in order to compare the essential out-of-pocket costs for children between 6 and 18 years old with the simulated cash benefit packages. We propose a new indicator that can be used to assess welfare state generosity to families with children: the child cost compensation indicator. The use of the indicator is empirically illustrated by comparing six European welfare states: Belgium, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Italy and Spain. The article shows that, even though with important cross-national variation, cash transfers generally amount to less than 60 percent of the cost of children. Although in five out of six countries support for families is higher at the lower end of the income distribution, for households living on a low gross wage, the income of a family with children is less adequate compared to a similar childless family and is in many cases insufficient to participate adequately in society."

"Expanding childcare is often considered as a suitable way to enhance employment opportunities for mothers with young children as well as to reduce child poverty. In this study, the authors critically investigate this assertion by simulating a set of scenarios of increasing subsidized childcare slots and mothers' employment. For a variety of European welfare states, the impact on poverty and on the government's budget is estimated using the European microsimulation model EUROMOD. The findings suggest that to achieve significant poverty reductions among young children, both additional childcare slots and increased mothers' employment should be well targeted. The expenditures for additional childcare slots can to a large extent be recovered by the government receipts generated by the additional employment; however, there appears to be a trade-off between the extra revenue that can be generated and the extent of poverty reduction."