Childhood and housing: a binomial still pending

Abstract

Housing has usually occupied a secondary position in social welfare studies, including those referring to childhood, which has conditioned obtaining a global vision of it. Furthermore, within housing analyses, childhood has also received little attention. With the aim of reinforcing the relevance of the role that housing plays in the living conditions of children, the following article analyzes the residential conditions of childhood in Spain and its relationship with the way in which the home is articulated. To this end, a quantitative and comparative analysis is established with the European Union and with countries included in different residential provision systems, using the Living Conditions Survey (EU-SILC) as a source of secondary analysis. The results obtained reveal a situation of residential vulnerability in childhood that is especially intense among children in situations of poverty or risk of social exclusion. Furthermore, the degree of residential vulnerability differs and tends to be higher than that recorded not only for the European Union as a whole, but also with respect to those countries included in residential provision systems that are more decommodified and balanced in terms of tenure regime