Poverty and Social Exclusion: Which Relationship with Non-Traditional Household Models?

In this paper, we investigate how the changes in households-models affect family poverty in Europe. We ground the analysis on a multidimensional concept of household poverty that includes both relative income poverty and social deprivation that hampers social inclusion. Using a panel of 28 European countries over a fourteen-year period time (2005 to 2018), we implement both panel fixed- and random- effects models, and the system-GMM dynamic panel method. In this framework, we find that, while the break-ups of couples and single-parent families with children positively affects poverty, multigenerational (extended) families play an insurance role against poverty risk. Our results suggest that also family policies represent an effective tool to contrast social exclusion, there effect being more evident in a long-run perspective.