To What Extent Do Family Policy and Social Assistance Transfers Equitably Reduce the Intensity of Child Poverty? A Comparison between the US, France, Great Britain and Luxembourg

Children do not control their socio-economic situation; they benefit or suffer from their parents situation. In north European countries major social transfer schemes, depending on the presence of dependent children, answer to multiple objectives (birth rate support, reduced inequality in the standard of living of families, compensation towards the cost of the child, aid towards reconciling the family and professional lives of the parents, etc.), while in fact these contribute towards improving the standard of living of the family and therefore of the children. In parallel, social assistance transfers, not specifically targeted towards children, try to ensure a minimum guaranteed income for the most deprived households and can be situated more explicitly and strictly in terms of assistance to poorest families. To what extent do these schemes allow children to escape from poverty? This is the question we try to answer in this comparative study. The objective is therefore not so much to carry out a diagnosis of the financial poverty of children as to evaluate the effect, in terms of support towards the standard of monetary living, of the social transfer systems for the benefit of the children in the four countries of analysis: France, Luxembourg, Great Britain, and the United States.