The EU-SILC is the main source of information on living standards in the EU, collecting nationally representative and cross-country comparable statistics on income and social inclusion.6 Since income poverty and material deprivation estimates produced by Eurostat are derived from the EU-SILC, this paper uses published indicators for descriptive statistics wherever possible, while all multivariate analyses rely on the micro-data from the user database.7 The 2008 wave is used as the pre-crisis baseline in this study because the EU economy only slipped into recession in 2009. However, the income reference year in the EU-SILC is the calendar year before the interview (for all EU-SILC countries except the UK and Ireland). Thus, child poverty rates estimated using the 2008 wave of the survey refer to 2007 incomes, while the material deprivation indicator refers to 2008. Therefore, when it comes to the last year for which the survey data are available, i.e. 2012, the material deprivation indicator is more up to date.