• Family allowances
• Material deprivation
• Poverty
• Poverty indicators
• Social policies

The research focuses on the established correlation between social transfers and child poverty, employing a micro-econometric analysis to shed light on the role specifically played by family/children allowances in improving children’s well-being. Based on data from the EU-SILC surveys, discrete choice regression models are used to assess whether and to what extent such allowances influence the children's well-being a selection of European countries (Germany, Spain, France, and Italy), and how this correlation changed over time.
With the aim of examining the coverage and effectiveness of family allowances as a tool to alleviate poverty conditions in families with children, we use objective and subjective definitions of poverty to gain a comprehensive understanding of the effect of these social transfers.
The thesis then has the objective of significantly contributing to the understanding of the socioeconomic dynamics within families with children living in the analyzed countries. The empirical analysis, focused on the child rather than the family as unit of observation, stands as a potential ground for evaluating the role of social policies and may provide some policy suggestions for the future aimed at improving the effectiveness of family allowances in terms of child poverty reduction.