Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

In Catalonia, the risk of child poverty is among the highest in the European environment, with 24.0% of children and adolescents living below the poverty threshold. The risk of child poverty is remarkably higher than that of the population aged 18 to 64 (19.0%). And the rate of poverty among single parent homes reaches up to 40.4%. In the city of Barcelona, 31.2% of children under 16 are at risk of poverty, and 14.1% at risk of severe poverty (65,833 and 29,728 children, respectively).

Against this, the Barcelona City Council approved in December 2014 a social emergency aid fund for children in poverty. Despite the occasional dimension of these grants, due to the magnitude of the problem in recent years, this fund was been convened four consecutive years, 2015, 2016, 2017 and 2018.

Using a combination of administrative data from different sources and survey data, we analyze the implementation and impact of the fund. Among the most relevant results, we saw that the coverage ratio of the fund is between 37%-44%. That is, although being conditionally universal, a lot of low-income families do not require it. Moreover, we find a great variability in the coverage ratio between neighborhoods, even after controlling for the mean income of the place. Among neighborhoods with similar income the percentage of children living in those areas and receiving the fund goes from 7,3% to 45%. Finally, although we find a negligible reduction in the poverty rate, the poverty gap is reduced in more than 10%.