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examining the effects of household composition, the market
income poverty,
and social welfare on youth poverty. Following
the typologies of welfare regimes proposed by Esping Andersen
(1990, 1999) and other scholars (e.g., Ferrera, 1996; Holiday &
Wilding, 2003), the countries are grouped into six welfare regimes:
social democratic (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway),
conservative (Austria, France, Germany, Luxembourg, the
Netherlands, Switzerland), liberal (Australia, Canada, Ireland, the
UK, the US), Southern European (Spain), post-socialist (Czech
Republic, Poland, Slovenia), and East Asian (Japan, South Korea,
and Taiwan). As this study focuses on youth poverty, respondents
aged between 18 and 29 are selected. The respondents who did not
disclose information on gross income, taxes, compulsory
contributions, and social transfers, are excluded from the analysis.
More detailed information on missing data is shown in Appendix A.
Analytic samples are weighted to reflect the total population of
each country.
The unweighted sample size ranges from 1,279 in
Ireland to 75,700 in Norway.
A. Poverty Line and Equivalence Scale
Following the convention of international studies on poverty
(e.g., LIS, OECD), this study uses a relative poverty approach to
generate a specific poverty standard for each country. The poverty
line is defined as income below 50% of the net median equivalized
disposable household income. The net disposable income is the
total household income after taxes and after social transfers.
1
An
equivalence scale of power 0.5, or the square root of the number
of household members, is used to equate incomes for households
of different sizes, reflecting economies of scale and consumption
(OECD, 2012). Previous studies have used a wide range of
1
Net disposable income consists of household earnings, cash property income,
occupational pensions, social transfers, private transfers, and other cash income
and excludes taxes, compulsory contributions, and non-cash benefits.