Living arrangements, intra-household inequality and children's deprivation: evidence from EU-SILC

Karagiannaki, Eleni and Burchardt, Tania ORCID: 0000-0003-4822-4954 (2022) Living arrangements, intra-household inequality and children's deprivation: evidence from EU-SILC. CASEpapers (CASE 227). Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, London School of Economics and Political Science, London, UK.

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Abstract

Evidence from the 2014 EU-SILC indicates that a non-negligible proportion of children in Europe live in multi-family households. Leaving aside more complex household types, around 4% of children live with their grandparents and a further 7% with their adult siblings. In this paper we investigate the extent to which living in these two types of households protects children against material deprivation and we provide direct tests of the relationship between the distribution of bargaining power within households and children’s deprivation outcomes. Our findings indicate that most groups of children in multi-family households face significantly higher deprivation than children in nuclear households. The exception is lone-parent children who live in multi-family households with their grandparents, who in many countries face a lower deprivation risk than their counterparts in nuclear households. To a large extent the higher deprivation risk of most children in multi-family households reflects selection into co-residence of families facing financial difficulties. Household income and household work intensity explains to a large extent the higher deprivation risk of children in multi-family households. By contrast neither mother’s nor parents’ income share within the household are significant predictors of children’s deprivation status, once other factors are controlled for, suggesting that the distribution of bargaining power within the household does not have any effect on children’s deprivation outcomes. Using a simulation exercise we further show that co-residence with grandparents protects a large share of children against deprivation while co-residence with adult siblings has more mixed effects across countries. Analysis of the within household differences in deprivation outcomes shows that differences in deprivation status between children and adults in multifamily households are common, with parents and grandparents apparently more likely to make sacrifices in their own living standards to protect both dependent and adult children in the household from deprivation.

Item Type:	Monograph (Discussion Paper)
Official URL:	https://sticerd.lse.ac.uk/CASE/_new/publications/
Additional Information:	© 2022 The Authors
Divisions:	Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion Social Policy
Subjects:	H Social Sciences > HC Economic History and Conditions H Social Sciences > HQ The family. Marriage. Woman
JEL classification:	D - Microeconomics > D1 - Household Behavior and Family Economics > D13 - Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation D - Microeconomics > D3 - Distribution > D31 - Personal Income, Wealth, and Their Distributions I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare and Poverty > I31 - General Welfare; Basic Needs; Living Standards; Quality of Life; Happiness I - Health, Education, and Welfare > I3 - Welfare and Poverty > I32 - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
Date Deposited:	08 Feb 2024 15:45
Last Modified:	01 Apr 2024 08:00
URI:	http://eprints.lse.ac.uk/id/eprint/121532

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