We show that exposure to child poverty is particularly high in groups of immigrants, which notably include refugees and families with background from countries in Africa and western parts of Asia. Moreover, risk of poverty is relatively high among families with a single parent, numerous children, or parents with a low or unreported level of educational attainment.
Based on Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition methods, the empirical results show that changes over time in the population shares of different sociodemographic groups explain about half of the increase in child poverty from 2010 to 2022 (compositional effects). Immigration contributes significantly to the increase, whilst increases in educational attainment has an offsetting effect on the increase in child poverty. The other half of the increase in child poverty is attributed to a higher proportion of poor families within various sociodemographic groups.
A rather strong association is found between low labor market participation and poverty. However, since labor market participation increases from 2010 to 2022 within most sociodemographic groups, the increase in child poverty is not explained by changes in labor market participation. On the other hand, transfers to households with low labor market incomes, with a high dependency on welfare transfers, grow relatively slowly in comparison to growth in market incomes.
The report also discusses how housing costs, inflation, and interest rates affect poor households.