The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on households with immigrant children in Spain: how does it differ from the previous crisis?

Jacobo Muñoz-Comet, UNED, jmcomet@poli.uned.es

Albert F. Arcarons, UNED, albarcarons@madrid.uned.es

Abstract

Households with children are at a higher risk of poverty and social exclusion than households without children in Spain. This higher risk of poverty is more pronounced for households with immigrant children compared to their native counterparts, a comparatively adverse situation that is likely to worsen with the change of the economic cycle or with the advent of economic crises. This results in a widening of the gap between native and immigrant households with children, which coupled with a potential situation of chronification of poverty, perpetuates the cycle of disadvantage and ultimately increases the level of inequality in the country. On this basis, in this article we use data from the Spanish Labour Force Survey (2000 to 2022) to construct a sample of children aged 0 to 18 and describe the characteristics of their respective households previous to the two most recent economic crises, the Great Recession of 2008 and the one derived from the COVID-19 pandemic and the confinement measures, and evaluate the impact of each crisis by studying different labour market outcomes of the parents. To assess this impact we look at the effect of different protective factors that are likely to differ between the two populations. In our analysis we also disaggregate by migration status and region of origin to take into account the heterogeneity of the immigrant population.

Keywords: COVID-19, immigrant children, households, Great Recession.