Fighting Child Poverty in Spain by Moving Towards European Standards: A Microsimulation-Based Case Study

[EN] Poverty in Spain is widespread among children, and its incidence has recently shown a strong upward trend. The aim of this paper is twofold: to assess the impact of the Spanish tax and benefit system on current child poverty rates and, in that context, to simulate the potential distributive con...

Descripción completa

Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores: Ayala, Luis, Cantó, Olga, Romaguera-de-la-Cruz, Marina, Petrov, Dmitry
Tipo de recurso: artículo
Fecha de publicación:2026
País:España
Institución:Universitat Politècnica de València (UPV)
Repositorio:RiuNet. Repositorio Institucional de la Universitat Politécnica de Valéncia
Idioma:inglés
OAI Identifier:oai:dnet:riunet______::4f87e67422277f37bb899e6ee1ae7eda
Acceso en línea:https://riunet.upv.es/handle/10251/235328
Access Level:acceso abierto
Palabra clave:Child poverty
Spain
Microsimulation
Universal transfers
Descripción
Sumario:[EN] Poverty in Spain is widespread among children, and its incidence has recently shown a strong upward trend. The aim of this paper is twofold: to assess the impact of the Spanish tax and benefit system on current child poverty rates and, in that context, to simulate the potential distributive consequences of implementing a variety of family transfer schemes using an EU-wide static microsimulation tool (EUROMOD). We simulate and study the effects of choosing different policies: a redesign of the current means-tested child benefit in terms of amount and age distribution, a reform of the existing income tax relief making it refundable and the addition of a taxable Universal Child Benefit (UCB) to the system. Our results indicate that several of the proposed reforms could generate substantial reductions in child poverty.