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Decomposing Youth Poverty in 22 Countries
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percentage points.
In social democratic countries, rates of youth poverty are 6 to
18 percentage points higher than in Taiwan. This is attributable to
much higher BTST income poverty and the lesser prevalence of
intergenerational coresidence in these countries. Although the
social transfers of social democratic countries reduce Taiwan’s
youth poverty percentage by 7 to 9 percentage points, living
arrangements and BTST income poverty add much more. Together,
these factors lead to very high percentages of youth poverty in
Scandinavian social democratic countries.
Compared to Taiwanese youth, young adults in some
conservative countries are generally more likely to fall below the
poverty line. Similar to the decomposition patterns revealed in
social democratic countries, higher poverty levels come from more
independent living arrangements and higher BTST income poverty
levels in conservative countries. In addition, conservative welfare
regimes are more effective than the Taiwanese welfare state in
reducing youth poverty. For example, adopting the living
arrangements and BTST income poverty levels of the Netherlands
would add 4 and 11 percentage points to the poverty of Taiwanese
young adults, respectively. By contrast, Dutch social provisions
would subtract 8 percentage points.
The poverty differences between post-socialist countries and
Taiwan are more modest, ranging from 0.93 to 3.77 percentage
points. As intergenerational coresidence is also common among
Eastern Europeans, the living arrangements do not contribute
much to differences in poverty. The difference in BTST income
poverty is still the most significant driver of the disparities in
poverty between post-socialist countries and Taiwan.
As expected, because intergenerational coresidence is also
common in Southern Europe, the differences in household
composition patterns do not contribute to the poverty disparity
between Spain and Taiwan. Spanish BTST income poverty would
add 12.49 percentage points of poverty to Taiwanese young adults
although the welfare systems would subtract 2.44 percentage