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Minimum Income as the Safety
Net of Last Resort: Safety Net, Trap and/or Springboard
This project, which was undertaken in collaboration
with HIVA
at the University
of Leuven in Belgium, uses longitudinal panel data and policy
analysis to investigate access to and exclusion from social security
and employment in thirteen 'old' EU member countries. It asks:
- How effective are the existing safety nets
of guaranteed minimum income and, more generally, social security
systems in the EU?
- What proportion of the active population actually
has/has no access to minimum income protection?
- What structural mechanisms determine the probability
of exclusion from/inclusion into social protection?
The project builds on a previous study 'Traps and
springboards in minimum income standards' which covered four countries
- Belgium, Denmark, Greece and the UK - which was also carried out
by CRSP and HIVA. The framework fits with the current conceptual
approach to social inclusion, where structural and dynamic processes
are emphasised rather than static individual characteristics. Data
are drawn from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP).
The study produces indicators of movements between
insufficient protection, minimum income, social security and work
and contributes to debates about measuring poverty and social exclusion.
It finds a serious lack of effective access to minimum protection
in almost all countries. (Finland seems to be the only exception).
On a yearly basis, between 2 and 13% of the population have at some
point lived below the national minimum income level. Between 50
and 80% of the group affected by insufficient protection suffered
severe deprivation (i.e. their income was less than three-quarters
of the minimum income threshold. Two-thirds of the group were affected
in two or more years.
The study identifies measures:
- To strengthen the safety net. These include:
- relaxing legal restrictions on access to Guaranteed Minimum
Incomes (GMI),
- raising benefits of mainstream social security above GMI level,
- detecting potentially entitled households,
- encouraging take-up, and
- avoiding deductions from benefits.
- To remove 'traps'. These include:
- strengthening mainstream social security, and
- relieving sanctions and duration limits on benefits.
- To improve inclusion. These include:
- removing unemployment and poverty traps in benefit schemes,
- activation of benefits,
- provision of in-work benefits, and
- building bridges between GMI and other rights.
Sponsor
European Commission and Belgian
Miinistry for Social Integration
Project team
Dr Simon Roberts, Laura Adelman,
Sue Middleton
Dates
Dec 2001-Dec 2003
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