Although there is considerable research evidence to show that children in lone parent families are at increased risk of poverty, there have been few comparative analyses of lone parents in Europe. Using the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) 2009, this paper compares the prevalence and characteristics of lone parent families, analyses the poverty and deprivation risks of children, and evaluates the potential impact of social transfer income packages on child poverty reduction. We use the unique personal identifiers of mothers, fathers and partners to define lone parent families with greater precision. Using a multi-level framework, we find lower child poverty rates in countries with more generous social transfers, even after controlling for the country standard of living. A reverse pattern is observed for material deprivation: the negative effect of social transfer income washes out when the GDP per capita is controlled for, which itself has a negative and significant effect on material deprivation.

The 2008 financial crisis triggered the first contraction of the world economy in the post-war era. This article investigates the effect of the Great Recession on child poverty across the EU-27 plus Iceland, Norway and Switzerland and studies the extent to which social protection spending may have softened the negative impact of the economic crisis on children. While the risks of child poverty are substantially higher in countries with higher rates of working-age unemployment, suggesting a significant impact of the Great Recession on household incomes via the labour market, the study finds evidence for social protection spending cushioning the blow of the crisis at least to some extent. Children were significantly less likely to be poor in countries with higher levels of social protection spending in 2008–2013, even after controlling for the socio-demographic structure of the population, per capita gross domestic product (GDP) and the working-age unemployment rate. The poverty-dampening contextual effect of social spending was greater for the poverty risks of children in very low work intensity families and large families. The study uses two complementary thresholds of income poverty, both based on 60 percent of the national median: a relative poverty line and a threshold anchored in 2008. Although the choice of a poverty line makes a difference to aggregate child poverty rates, individual-level risks of a child being poor associated with a range of household-level characteristics are similar for the two poverty lines.

In spite of many positive trends that have emerged in the health of young people, adolescents from more affluent groups continue to experience more favourable health outcomes. There are no groups that are more vulnerable than those who report very poor (‘bottom-end’) indicators of health behaviour. The present study investigated the role of socio-economic factors as potential determinants of bottom-end health behaviours pertaining to physical activity and diet. Our analysis incorporated health data for some 700 000 15-year-old adolescents in 34 countries. The data source was four cycles of the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) study (2001/2002, 2005/2006, 2009/2010 and 2013/2014). As per UNICEF precedents, adolescents whose health behaviour scores were below the mean of the lower half of the distribution fell into the ‘bottom-end’ on this indicator. Adolescents from less affluent families were much more likely to report being in the bottom-end of the distribution of these health indicators. Large, persistent and widespread socio-economic gradients existed for physical activity and healthy eating, while the findings were mixed for unhealthy eating. Such socio-economic inequalities were largely stable or widened for physical activity and healthy eating, while inequalities in unhealthy eating narrowed. Although it is important to continue monitoring average levels of adolescent health, national and international policies need to pay attention to the concentration of poor health outcomes among adolescents from less affluent families and to redress social inequalities in adolescent health behaviour.

(1) Background: The World Health Organization (WHO)-5 Well-Being Index has been used in many epidemiological studies to assess adolescent mental well-being. However, cross-country comparisons of this instrument among adolescents are scarce and, so far, no good-fitting, common invariant measurement model across countries has been reported. The present study aims to evaluate and establish a version of the WHO-5 Well-Being Index that allows for a valid cross-country comparison of adolescent self-reported mental well-being. (2) Methods: Using data from the 2018 Health Behaviour in School-aged Children study, we evaluated the measurement model and measurement invariance of the five items of the WHO-5 Well-Being Index. We used nationally representative samples of 11-, 13-, and 15-year-old adolescents (N = 74,071) from fifteen countries and regions in Europe. Measurement invariance of the WHO-5 was assessed using a series (country, gender, and age) of multi-group confirmatory factor analyses. In addition, we evaluated the convergent validity of the measure by testing its correlations with psychosomatic complaints, life satisfaction, and self-rated health. (3) Results: We found that WHO-5 does not show good psychometric properties or good measurement invariance fit. However, by excluding the first item of the scale (“I have felt cheerful and in good spirits”), the WHO-4, consisting of the other four original items, had good psychometric properties, and demonstrated good suitability for cross-national comparisons (as well as age and gender) in adolescent mental well-being. (4) Conclusions: The present study introduces the WHO-4—a revised version of the WHO-5—, that allows for a valid comparison of mental well-being across fifteen countries and regions in Europe. The WHO-4 proved to be a reliable and valid instrument to assess mental well-being in the adolescent population.