Work

The large family penalty in Italy: Poverty and eligibility to minimum incomes

Year: 2024

Type: article

Abstract: This paper argues that public policies, including minimum income schemes (MIS), should devote specific attention to large families, in terms of both benefits' generosity and targeting, to avoid unfair penalizations. Adopting a child‐centered approach to the definition of family size, and using a unique administrative‐survey linked database, this study provides two main contributions for the Italian case. First, it documents the consumption‐based absolute poverty outcomes according to sibling size, highlighting that large families are overexposed to this specific type of economic deprivation. Second, it investigates to what extent the household size and the number of children tend to be a penalizing factor for social benefit receipt. A key finding is that large families in absolute poverty are penalized in terms of both entitlement and generosity of MIS with the peculiar equivalence scale adopted by the scheme playing a crucial role.

Source: International Journal of Social Welfare

DOI: 10.1111/ijsw.12668

Authors: Massimo Aprea, Giovanni Gallo, Michele Raitano

Institutions: Sapienza University of Rome, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia

Language: English

Topic: Income, Poverty, and Inequality

Subfield: Sociology and Political Science

Field: Social Sciences

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: No poverty, Reduced inequalities

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: Sapienza Università di Roma