2023 - Full Presentation Schedule
Social Policy and Child Poverty in a Global Context
Abstract
Children make up one-third of the global population yet comprise half of the world's people that live in abject poverty, surviving on less than $1.90 a day. Although the total number of children living in relative poverty has plummeted in the last 25 years (down to 8.3% in 2019), “…the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out more than four years of progress on poverty eradication and pushed 93 million more people into extreme poverty in 2020”, according to the UN’s 2022 SDG report.
This, combined with rising inflation and 25% of the population residing in conflict-ridden countries, is estimated to add 75-95 million people living in extreme poverty in 2022 alone. No single variable is entirely responsible for the child poverty rate; however, it is beneficial for policymakers to be better informed on which variables have the greatest influence on poverty outcomes. Therefore, the focus of this research is to identify the relationship between social policy and child poverty.
To better understand the relationship between government policies and child poverty, I utilize data from the Quality of Government dataset which contains country-year data for 192 countries from 1945 to the present. Because my data is time series, I use a Prais-Winsten regression model that employs the generalized least-squares method to estimate the parameters in a linear regression model in which the standard errors are serially correlated.
My independent variable is social-family policies, and my dependent variables are the child poverty rates in single-mother families and the child poverty rate in two-parent families in the OECD countries. The data shows that social policies have a statistically significant relationship with reducing child poverty in two-parent households, but not in single-mother households.
The findings show that while government aid does help reduce child poverty in two-parent households, more targeted aid and policies are needed to keep children of single-mother homes out of poverty.
Social Policy and Child Poverty in a Global Context
CASB 108 - History, Politics, and Sociology
Children make up one-third of the global population yet comprise half of the world's people that live in abject poverty, surviving on less than $1.90 a day. Although the total number of children living in relative poverty has plummeted in the last 25 years (down to 8.3% in 2019), “…the COVID-19 pandemic wiped out more than four years of progress on poverty eradication and pushed 93 million more people into extreme poverty in 2020”, according to the UN’s 2022 SDG report.
This, combined with rising inflation and 25% of the population residing in conflict-ridden countries, is estimated to add 75-95 million people living in extreme poverty in 2022 alone. No single variable is entirely responsible for the child poverty rate; however, it is beneficial for policymakers to be better informed on which variables have the greatest influence on poverty outcomes. Therefore, the focus of this research is to identify the relationship between social policy and child poverty.
To better understand the relationship between government policies and child poverty, I utilize data from the Quality of Government dataset which contains country-year data for 192 countries from 1945 to the present. Because my data is time series, I use a Prais-Winsten regression model that employs the generalized least-squares method to estimate the parameters in a linear regression model in which the standard errors are serially correlated.
My independent variable is social-family policies, and my dependent variables are the child poverty rates in single-mother families and the child poverty rate in two-parent families in the OECD countries. The data shows that social policies have a statistically significant relationship with reducing child poverty in two-parent households, but not in single-mother households.
The findings show that while government aid does help reduce child poverty in two-parent households, more targeted aid and policies are needed to keep children of single-mother homes out of poverty.