Photo: Save the Children
The Diplomat. 26/06/2016
One out of every four homes with children is below the poverty line, according to a report of the Alternativas Foundation, which has been given to the political parties running in the general election of 26 June.
The study, elaborated by two professors of Applied Economy of the Rey Juan Carlos University, Jesús Ruiz Huertas and Luis Ayala, points out that 27.3% of the homes with minors are below the poverty line, a percentage that is “only overcome among the countries of the European Union by Romania, Greece and Bulgaria”. The Gini index, which is the most usual measure of inequality, shows that poverty is much higher in homes with children (0.368) than in homes with no minors.
The crisis, according to Alternativas, has had “an especially strong impact in large families”, since one-parent families are usually “less sensitive to the changes of economic cycle”. “The destruction of employment meant that in an increasing number of homes salaries were more and more insufficient to take care of the family load”, adds the report.
The study reveals that, in Spain, the weight of family public policies has been traditionally very low when compared to other countries around it and, in fact, before the crisis “it did not even mean half of the resources dedicated by other countries of the Eurozone”.
Public investment in favour of infancy is 40% lower than the European average, according to Alternativas
With the crisis, this spending meant, in 2013, only 1.3% of the Spanish GDP, which is almost 40% lower than the EU average. “This is almost half of what France spends, 40% of what Germany spends and barely a third of what, in relative terms, Denmark invests”, warns the study.
Along the same lines, the NGO Save the Children warned on Tuesday that one of every three children lives in a situation of poverty in our country, despite of which, according to the last data of Eurostat, Spain “only invests 1.3% of its GDP in social protection for families and infancy, far from the European average of 2.4% and very far from the investment made by neighbouring countries”.
