Abstract
We use several family-based indicators of household poverty as well as child-reported economic resources and problems to unravel child poverty trends in Sweden. Our results show that absolute (bread-line) household income poverty, as well as economic deprivation, increased with the recession 1991–96, then reduced and has remained largely unchanged since 2006. Relative income poverty has however increased since the mid-1990s. When we measure child poverty by young people’s own reports, we find few trends between 2000 and 2011. The material conditions appear to have improved and relative poverty has changed very little if at all, contrasting the development of household relative poverty. This contradictory pattern may be a consequence of poor parents distributing relatively more of the household income to their children in times of economic duress, but future studies should scrutinze potentially delayed negative consequences as poor children are lagging behind their non-poor peers. Our methodological conclusion is that although parental and child reports are partly substitutable, they are also complementary, and the simultaneous reporting of different measures is crucial to get a full understanding of trends in child poverty.
Highlights
We use several family-based indicators of household poverty as well as child-reported economic resources and problems to unravel child poverty trends in Sweden
We use family-based indicators of household poverty as well as child-reported economic resources and problems to unravel child poverty trends in Sweden based on different measures
Our results show that absolute household income poverty increased with the recession from 1991 to 1996, and that increasing real incomes reduced poverty among families with children between 2000 and 2006, after which it has remained largely unchanged
Summary
We are constantly reminded by internationally comparative studies that child poverty is widespread in rich countries (EU 2008; UNICEF 2012). This is unfortunate because such studies can show how robust any trends are, and differences in trends across definitions can give valuable insights into the social forces behind them Motivated by these advantages, this article aims to study poverty trends in Sweden using both income and deprivation definitions, measured at both the family and the child level, and using reports from both parents, income registers and from children themselves. Based on the empirical study of the period 1980/2000–2012, we ask: (i) whether trends are as gloomy as the present political discussion suggests; (ii) whether and how child poverty varies with economic recession and growth; (iii) whether vulnerable groups – in particular children of lone parents and immigrants – bear the burden of increasing poverty, in case such trend could be proven; and (iv) whether household- or child-reported poverty is more strongly associated with non-economic outcomes for children, where we concentrate on here-and- outcomes, in other words outcomes when children are children. We conclude that future studies should closely follow the development of relative deprivation experienced by children themselves
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