Families, labour market and social risks. Childbirth and the risk of poverty among Italian households

Child poverty and intergenerational transmission of social risks arefeatures of the increase of social inequality occurred in the last two decades. Inthis paper, we study how in a sub-protective welfare model, as the Italian one, thehouseholds may enter poverty in concomitance with a child birth. Italian welfarestate plays a reduced role in protecting families and their children against poverty,with limited money transfers and scarce childcare services. Furthermore, the processof labour market flexibilization «at the margins» produced a strong labour marketsegmentation, which hits again young people and young, newly formed families. Inthis regard, we ask firstly whether a child birth increase the probabilities of enteringpoverty; secondly, if the risk of being poor in concomitance of the birth of achild is higher among temporary workers' households. Using longitudinal IT-Silcdata (2004-2007) and applying Random Effects logit models and statistical matching,we show that families with new-born babies face higher poverty risks (threshold at60% of median income) than their counterpart, with possibly negative consequenceson future children's life chances. Our empirical evidence shows that in Italy labourmarker precariousness and economic poverty represent quite often two sides of thesame coin: the Italian welfare state provides young households with no sufficientresources to cope with the child birth event, thus failing to prevent the risk ofentering poverty with the parallel deepening in intergenerational transmission of socialand economic risks.