Talk:
\n\u201cVarieties of Child Social Citizenship: Family Income Support Configurations in 29 European Welfare States\u201d<\/p>\n
by
\nErtu\u011frul Polat
\nSocial Policy
\nUniversity of Oxford, UK
\npolatertugrul@gmail.com<\/p>\n
Date and Room Info
\nTuesday, March 3, 2026, 12:30 p.m.
\nA-129B<\/p>\n
Abstract<\/p>\n
In this research, I examine how European welfare states orient themselves toward children and childhood. Building on and extending existing child policy typologies, I use family and child income support as a case to analyse policy from a perspective that centres on age and children. Using \u2018Fuzzy-Set Ideal Type Analysis\u2019 (FSITA), I compare 29 European countries along three dimensions of benefit design: the inclusiveness of access, the adequacy of provision, and the degree to which benefits are individualised to the child and differentiated by developmental stage. Seven distinct configurations emerge, from systems that are generous yet condition entitlement on adult behaviour, to those that individualise benefits by age but fund them inadequately, to those where children are entirely absorbed into household-level calculations. A second step introduces social investment services on top of social security to complete the picture. Countries sharing identical benefit designs orient themselves toward childhood in opposite directions: the same architecture underpins social investment in one context and supported familialism in another. Only three of 29 countries achieve what I call \u2018enabling\u2019 child welfare citizenship, where individualised income support meets comprehensive services. The framework also discriminates among the current wave of reforms, registering structural overhauls while revealing that politically significant changes can leave a system\u2019s underlying orientation toward childhood intact.<\/p>\n
Bio<\/p>\n
Ertu\u011frul Polat is a Barnett Scholar and DPhil (PhD) candidate in Social Policy at the University of Oxford. His research interests span child wellbeing, family policy, and education, with a particular focus on how welfare states recognise children as policy subjects. His doctoral project uses configurational comparative methods to examine welfare state policies toward children, focusing on the conditions under which governments promote children\u2019s social rights. He holds a master\u2019s degree in Comparative Social Policy from Oxford and a bachelor\u2019s in Political Science with a minor in Economics from Bilkent University, Ankara. Prior to his PhD, he worked in civil society in Turkey in the field of education, conducting research on inequalities in access to quality education, education of children under temporary protection, early childhood education and care, and the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Talk: \u201cVarieties of Child Social Citizenship: Family Income Support Configurations in 29 European Welfare States\u201d by Ertu\u011frul Polat Social Policy University of Oxford, UK polatertugrul@gmail.com Date and Room Info Tuesday, March 3, 2026, 12:30 p.m. A-129B Abstract In this research, I examine how European welfare states orient themselves toward children [\u2026] <\/p>\n