Break Poverty study on families’ ability to provide food and hygiene for their babies: focus on worrying results.

A successful emergency operation

In the first half of 2021, the Break Poverty Institute piloted the Urgence Premiers Pas operation. The aim was to distribute essential infant goods to families unable to provide for their babies. Millions of essential infantile products (diapers, cans of milk, baby food, etc.) were distributed to over 50,000 babies across France. They were transported via the network of food aid associations and the Agence du Don en Nature, the operation’s logistical partner. The operation was made possible thanks to the support of the French Secretary of State for Children and Families, as well as numerous manufacturers in the sector. With more than 53,000 young people reached, compared with the initial target of 30,000, an increase of 77%, the impact was real :

Structural shortcomings in the face of crying need

Over and above its strong one-off impact, this emergency operation has revealed real structural shortcomings in public aid and charitable actions. They are unable to meet the needs of these families in difficulty. Basic infant products such as diapers and tins of milk are very expensive and difficult to obtain through food aid channels. In fact, they are rarely over-produced (and therefore rarely donated in kind) by manufacturers. As a result, 89% of associations claim to have had little or no access to these goods prior to the operation. The absence of these essential goods from food aid distribution channels prevents the most vulnerable groups from meeting the primary needs of their babies :

The situation is all the more alarming given that proper hygiene and nutrition are essential to a child’s development. Much of this takes place in the first three years of life.

Break Poverty’s analysis [1]

Break Poverty’s approach is to identify and define new strategies to reduce poverty. With this in mind, our teams naturally turned their attention to the root causes of the problem. We tried to model the situation on a large scale, and the results were overwhelming :

A couple with 1 child needs almost 20 € a month. More than 50 € for a couple with 2 children. It’s even more difficult for single-parent families : a shortfall of 75 € when there is one child, and over 90 € for two dependent children. There are almost 110,000 babies living below the 40% poverty line in France.

It is absolutely urgent to ensure that babies have lasting access to essential goods. The aim is to correct the structural disparities between children from precarious families and children from well-off families. In the long term, this will prevent poverty from becoming transmissible. This is a major challenge for France, and one of Break Poverty’s battles.

To establish the household’s “reste à vivre”, expenses often referred to as “constrained” or “incompressible” (rent, heating, water, etc.) were subtracted from the household’s disposable income. Estimated food and hygiene expenses for babies were deducted from this balance. This gave us a final balance, and enabled us to count the number of households in real difficulty in providing for their families.

To obtain disposable income, the method of calculation per consumption unit was used (1 for 1 person in the household, + 0.5 for any other person >14 years, + 0.3 for <14 years) and applied to the poverty threshold of 40, 50 and 60% of the current median income. It was then replicated on several household categories (1 couple with 1 to 3 children, 1 single person with 1 to 3 children).

Data from the CNLE (2012) were used to estimate the expenses incurred by a household. For each household configuration, the CNLE data are used to sum up constrained expenses (rent, energy, heating, water) and flexible expenses (food and clothing), as well as the cost of any debts incurred. In addition, the inflation rate from 2010 to the present (15.6%) was added to provide an up-to-date estimate of the cost of these items.

Photo credit : Barbara Ribeiro