Relationships between poverty and the number of children of various ages: An interpretation in terms of family policies.

The number of children in a household could affect the poverty status of the household because of the financial burden children represent, holding constant labour supply and income. Studies on poverty usually do take into account some family characteristics, and they do often include the presence or the number of children as control variables, but they rarely consider these factors as variables of specific interest. Our goal in this chapter is to estimate the effect of the number of children of different ages in the household on the risk of entering poverty. This estimation takes into account to what extent families may be at risk of poverty, allowing therefore to distinguish the effects of the children's characteristics across categories of families defined in terms of economic vulnerability. These effects of children's characteristics are interpreted here as consequences of family policy measures, both monetary and non monetary, which encompass especially the various schemes designed to help families reconcile work and family life.