Social Benefits against Poverty of Single Parent for Social Investment

Compensatory welfare is less sensible for “new” social risks including single parent­ hood nowadays. Thus, social investment policy seeks to combine work and family responsibilities for single parents to enable them to avoid poverty. On the other hand, social investment can be perceived as the other pillar together with compensatory social protection, which is important for single parent families as a tool protecting against poverty. Among the three welfare sources, i.e. family, market and state, the state should support the single parents (Christopher, 2002; Nieuwenhuis and Maldonado (2016)). The aim of this research is to analyse the impact of social benefits on the poverty reduction of single parents in the Baltic States with a focus on social investment. The following objectives are set up for the implementation of the aim: to review discourse about social investment, its relation with traditional social protection and life course perspective; to analyse the income and the poverty, as well as to analyse the impact of social benefits on poverty reduction. The empirical data of the research are obtained from the EU­SILC microdata of the period of 2007–2015 aiming to evaluate the prevailing trend. The analysis of the impact of social benefits on poverty reduction was made using a sequential approach, when the impact on poverty reduction of each type of social benefit is measured separately step by step. The impact of social benefits on poverty reduction among single parents was evaluated over the life course because social investment is a life course policy. The findings of the research revealed that social benefits have quite a small impact on poverty reduction in single parent families. The poverty after social benefits among single parents remains high and stable during 2007–2015. Additionally, the poverty of single parents in Baltic States is feminized.