it also looks at changes in families income that are not explained by changes in family and work characteristics but may be due to changes in the association between these characteristics and the place of children in the income distribution these latter changes may reflect the evolution of the institutional contexts where children live and grow up in simple terms the decomposition helps to measure the portion of changes in child poverty due to changes in the characteristics of child population and those due to changes in the association between these characteristics and poverty rates the decomposition is carried out for market incomes before taxes and transfers they correspond to labour income in their vast majority capital income being generally low for poor households and for disposable income after social transfers by comparing the changes in income before and after taxes and transfers one can infer what role transfers have played in responding to changes in labour income and how this role has varied across the income distribution