Varieties of Vulnerability: Do Private and Public Safety Nets Compensate for Asset Poverty?

Beschreibung

The outbreak of Covid-19 and its economic distortions test the resilience of families around the world. While conventional approaches consider either the buffering capacity of private assets or social insurance mechanisms to weather such shocks, we address and quantify their combined cushioning effect. Highlighting the importance of public safety nets and familial networks, this paper devises a modified concept of asset poverty that better reflects vulnerability of private households. Our results reveal how differences in social relations and institutional rules shape substantial cross-country variation in the vulnerability of private households, signalling different needs for additional policy measures. We find that, albeit asset poverty of US families is particularly low, households in most European countries are less vulnerable because generous social security systems compensate for low private assets. However, even in some European contexts, a prolonged shock can expose vulnerability due to the lack of both household savings and social protection.

Zeitraum	4 Sept. 2020
Ereignistitel	Annual ESPAnet Conference
Veranstaltungstyp	Keine Angaben
Bekanntheitsgrad	International