School of Public Health, University of Montreal, Montreal, QC H3N 1X9, Canada.
School of Public Health, Université Libre de Bruxelles (ULB), 1070 Brussels, Belgium.
Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2021 Jul 27;18(15):7936. doi: 10.3390/ijerph18157936.
Variations in social policy between countries provide opportunities to assess the impact of these policies on health inequities. This study compares the risk of low birth weight in Brussels and Montreal, according to household composition, and discusses the impact of income support policies. For each context, we estimated the impact of income support policies on the extent of poverty of welfare recipients, using the model family method. Based on the differences found, we tested hypotheses on the association between low birth weight and household composition, using administrative data from the birth register and social security in each region. The extent of poverty of welfare families differs according to household composition. In Quebec, the combination of low welfare benefits and larger family allowances widens the gap between households with children and those without children. The risk of LBW also differs between these two contexts according to the number of children. Compared to children born into large welfare families, first-born children are more at risk in Montreal than in Brussels. In addition to the usual comparative studies on the topic, our study highlights the importance of an evaluative perspective that considers the combination of different types of income support measures to better identify the most vulnerable households.
国家间社会政策的差异为评估这些政策对健康不平等的影响提供了机会。本研究根据家庭构成比较了布鲁塞尔和蒙特利尔的低出生体重风险，并讨论了收入支持政策的影响。对于每种情况，我们都使用家庭模式法估计了收入支持政策对福利接受者贫困程度的影响。基于发现的差异，我们使用每个地区的出生登记处和社会保障的行政数据，测试了关于低出生体重与家庭构成之间关联的假设。福利家庭的贫困程度因家庭构成而异。在魁北克，低福利和更大的家庭津贴的结合扩大了有子女和无子女家庭之间的差距。根据儿童数量的不同，这两个地区的 LBW 风险也有所不同。与出生在大型福利家庭的儿童相比，蒙特利尔的第一个孩子比布鲁塞尔的风险更大。除了关于这个主题的常规比较研究外，我们的研究还强调了考虑不同类型的收入支持措施相结合的评估视角的重要性，以更好地确定最脆弱的家庭。
