The analyses and conclusions presented in the article are based on the results of qualitative panel surveys conducted among large indigent families in the years 2013 to 2014 and in 2017. The survey attempted to answer the questions of whether and to what extent the implementation of a pro-family policy in Poland in 2016 influenced the situation of large families receiving institutional social aid. On what do these families spend the payments received from the Family 500+ programme? Has their new economic situation favoured their activation or increased their ability to manage? Could the programme, in consequence, hinder or limit the intergenerational transmission of poverty? The author concludes that in fact the effects of financing large families differ from those that were intended. The programme, which was intended to be pro-natal, has acquired the nature of social aid payments. It has improved the material situation of many families, but it has not sufficiently contributed to changing ways of thinking about the children’s futures, which would contribute to limiting the processes of inheriting poverty.
