The effectiveness of social protection benefits in reducing child poverty The primary objective of social protection for children is to shield them from the immediate and long-term effects of income poverty. Whether programmes and systems can achieve these goals depends on a combination of factors: the amount of money countries spend on them, the way resources are distributed, the extent to which resources reach children, and the pre-transfer patterns of poverty and inequality. The performance of social protection across different countries can be assessed by comparing poverty after cash benefits to a hypothetical scenario without them. This information is available only for members of the EU’s Eurostat data infrastructure and is presented in Figure 23. Figure 23. The child poverty reduction effect of cash benefits in 33 OECD and EU countries (2021) Source: See Technical Appendix 40 30 25 20 15 10 5 Spain Türkiye Romania Italy Bulgaria United Kingdom Greece Luxembourg Slovakia Malta France Austria Portugal Sweden Lithuania Latvia Switzerland Croatia Ireland Republic of Korea (the) Cyprus Poland Germany Norway Estonia Belgium Iceland Czechia Netherlands (Kingdom of the) Denmark Finland After transfers Before transfers Hungary 0 Slovenia Child relative income poverty (%) 35 Social protection has had remarkable effects on child poverty rates in countries with comparable data, showcasing the importance of such programmes and policies in protecting children’s rights and well-being. In 2021, the average income transfer system reduced child poverty by 42.4 per cent.44 Figure 23 shows Report Card countries in order of the level of child poverty. The difference between poverty with (dark blue bars) and a hypothetical scenario without cash benefits (light blue bars) is the reduction in child poverty achieved by transfers. 46 In the absence of transfers, the United Kingdom would have the highest prevalence of child poverty (40 per cent), followed by Türkiye (38.6 per cent) and France (38.2 per cent). In both the United Kingdom and France, transfers achieve a nearly 17 percentage point reduction in the income poverty rate of children. Transfers have the sharpest effect in Finland, where child poverty would be three times as high in the absence of transfers (28.6 per cent rather than 9.5 per cent). Cash benefits at least halved the proportion of poor children in 10 out of the 33 41 Child Poverty in the Midst of Wealth Innocenti Report Card 18