The Welfare State’s Effects on Marginalised Group Outcomes: Child Poverty, Single Parent Income, and Youth Unemployment Examined

Welfare states are witnessing increasing social stratification. The negative consequences of work-conditioned welfare are experienced most strongly by those on the periphery of the labor market: youth, single-parent families (especially single mothers), and by the children of those families, as witnessed by growing child poverty. In this paper, I analyze three dependent variables across sixteen OECD countries between 1990-2004 in a pooled time-series analysis: 1) child poverty rate, overall and within single mother families; 2) single parent income; and 3) youth unemployment rate. I examine the effects on outsiderness of such welfare state features as employment protection legislation; active and passive labor market policies; family policies and daycare; sick-pay and unemployment benefit generosity; and union density. I find that government measures aimed at increasing labor market activity are associated with less youth unemployment, and that passive tools both hinder youth employment and are detrimental for child- and single-parent poverty levels.