In the decade since Report Card 12, several countries have introduced significant reforms to their child and family benefits. Some of these changes explain the drastic shifts in expenditure. The increase in spending on child benefits in Poland can be explained by a major expansion of social protection for children (discussed in more detail in the concluding section). In the Republic of Korea, an initially targeted Child Allowance was introduced in 2018 and expanded to cover all children under the age of 6 years in 2019, and to children under the age of 8 years in 2022.38 Although the budget available for social protection is to a great extent a matter of political will, it is useful to assess governments’ expenditure patterns while considering their budgetary circumstances. Figure 20 plots the changes in per-child family benefit expenditure against changes in governments’ fiscal balance.39 There is no relationship between the two variables, which implies that countries did not tend to adjust their investments in social protection up or down based on how much money they had available. Several countries that had more room for spending have also increased the amount of money they spend on child and family benefits (top right quadrant). However, many countries did not seize the opportunity for further investments presented by increasing wealth (bottom right quadrant). Figure 20. Changes in fiscal balance and social protection expenditure per child, 2012–2013 to 2018–2019 200% Less fiscal space, higer expenditure More fiscal space, higher expenditure KR 150% Source: see Technical Appendix. Note: For country codes see Technical Appendix. PL 100% Change in per child expenditure TR GR JP 50% CO CL NO LV -10% -8% -6% -4% -2% AU NZ CA EE CH IT IS DE IL BE SE FI FR 2%US HU SK AT MX LT NL 4%CZ SI 6%PT 8% ES DK 10% GB -50% Less fiscal space, lower expenditure More fiscal space, lower expenditure -100% -150% -200% Change in fiscal balance 37 Child Poverty in the Midst of Wealth Innocenti Report Card 18