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Financial transfers to families with children form a core element of welfare state provision. Variation in the design, generosity and implementation of this provision is significant, reflecting underlying perspectives towards children and families and the state's role in supporting them. Daly developed a new typology of social policy for children, differentiating between 'childhood-oriented', 'child-oriented' and 'family-oriented' policies. In this article, we propose an extension to this typology with financial transfers in mind. We divide the family-oriented category into two distinct types of policy – 'needs-oriented' and 'adult-behaviour-oriented', with the latter encapsulating support that is child-contingent but conditional on the behaviour of adults in the household. We argue that this new distinction is needed to make sense of recent significant changes to social security support for children in the UK, in particular the two-child limit and the benefit cap. We go on to analyse child benefits across Europe through the lens of this extended framework. Significantly, we find the UK's approach to be unusual but not exceptional, with other examples of children being rendered invisible or semi-visible within social security systems. Across diverse national contexts, support for children is being withdrawn (or is simply absent) because of the behaviours and circumstances of the adults in their household. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite its significance in determining poverty risk, family size has received little focus in recent social policy analysis. This paper provides a correction, focusing squarely on the changing poverty risk of larger families (those with three or more dependent children) in the UK over recent years. It argues that we need to pay much closer attention to how and why poverty risk differs according to family size. Our analysis of Family Resource Survey data reveals how far changes in child poverty rates since 1997 – both falling poverty risk to 2012/13 and increases since then – have been concentrated in larger families. Social security changes are identified as central: these have affected larger families most as they have greater need for support, due to both lower work intensity and higher household needs. By interrogating the way policy change has affected families of different sizes the paper seeks to increase understanding of the effects of different poverty reduction strategies, with implications for policy debates in the UK and beyond. In providing evidence about the socio-demographics of larger families and their changing poverty risk it also aims to inform contested debates about the state's role in providing financial support for children. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The benefit cap and the two‐child limit reduce entitlement for households claiming means‐tested benefits and disproportionately affect households with dependent children. This article explores the harms the policies are doing to children through drawing upon data collected from interviews with parents affected by the benefit cap and the two‐child limit. To investigate the impacts of these policies we draw on the Investment Model and the Family Stress Model, models principally developed by quantitative scholars seeking to understand how economic disadvantage adversely affects children over the longer‐term. While there has been frequent quantitative analysis of these models, there has been very little qualitative engagement with them: this article directly addresses this gap in the literature. We show that the benefit cap and the two‐child limit cause multiple and severe overlapping harms to children, principally by exacerbating and deepening financial economic disadvantage. Our research evidence illuminates causal processes underpinning both the Investment Model and the Family Stress Model, but also reveals additional harms that are not foregrounded by either model. We conclude by calling for the removal of both policies as a vital first step in reducing child poverty, and further reflect on the need for greater recognition of the harm child poverty does to experiences of childhood; as well as to their future selves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]