A new child poverty : housing as a cause and consequence of family poverty in a conditional welfare state
Facts
- Contact person:
- Martin Grander
- Financer:
-
- Majblomman
- Responsible at MaU:
- Martin Grander
- Project members at MaU:
- Time frame:
- 28 January 2025 - 31 August 2030
- Faculty/department:
- Research environment :
- Research subject:
About the project
This research project studies whether and how poverty among families with children has changed over time, with a particular focus on the intersection between the welfare state's social safety net and housing provision. The project aims to investigate and analyse how changes in child poverty can be understood as a result of a welfare state in transformation where housing is becoming increasingly exclusionary and thus disconnected from the welfare state. The aim is also to investigate and analyse how adequate, safe and long-term housing can provide a route out of poverty for children and their parents. The project will employ a doctoral student who will carry out most of the work in the framework of their doctoral education. The doctoral student will take their point of departure in the extensive material that families' applications for financial support from Majblomman constitute. The PhD project will, therefore, start with an in-depth study of applications to Majblomman over a 20-year period.
The study seeks answers to how applications to Mayflower have changed in terms of
- who the families are, who apply, for example, in terms of socio-economic status and place of residence,
- what do the families apply for grants for and
- how housing costs and other housing-related issues are made visible in the material.
Based on this material, which is supplemented with, e.g., document studies and interviews, the doctoral student will analyse the changing child poverty and relate it to an increasingly conditional welfare state where housing can be understood as both a cause and a consequence of poverty and social vulnerability. The PhD project is also solution-oriented. Based on the analysis of families' applications for financial support from Majblomman and other collected material, the doctoral student will study preventive and reactive initiatives that are made to help families with children move from precarious and costly housing situations to permanent housing and a secure economy.