Minimum Income Protection Research Articles

Non‐standard employment, low standard of living? The role of labour market and social policy measures in preventing material deprivation in different employment trajectories in Europe

AbstractWhile the poverty risks of non‐standard employment have been explored extensively, this study focuses on the role of activation‐oriented social policy in alleviating material deprivation for persons with non‐standard employment histories. Using EU‐SILC data, individuals over a four‐year period were analysed. I focused on substantial earners and distinguished between six non‐standard employment histories expected to benefit from activation measures. Multi‐level models revealed that compared to standard employment histories, all non‐standard employment histories had higher material deprivation risks but to substantially different extents. At the macro level, participation in activation measures, expenditures in formal childcare and minimum income protection reduced material deprivation. Participation in training can be interpreted as an equaliser, as the deprivation gap between standard and most non‐standard employment history types diminished. As expenditure‐ and participation‐based measures differed significantly, evaluating the success of activation strategies in reducing inequalities and alleviating poverty highly depends on the measurement of activation.

Shifts at the margin of European welfare states: How important is food aid in complementing inadequate minimum incomes?

In recent decades, disappointing poverty trends and welfare state limitations in many European countries – including constraints on minimum income benefits – have paved the way for a larger role of the third sector. An interesting but controversial form of third-sector in-kind support is food aid provision. In Europe, food aid is, so far, a non-rights-based practice displaying worrisome discretionary and stigmatizing characteristics. Yet, the phenomenon of food aid in Europe has spread, professionalized, and penetrated the institutions of the welfare state. This raises the question if, how and to what extent food aid plays a role in bypassing structural constraints on minimum income protection. This article applies an exploratory case study approach to estimate the monetary value of food aid in relation to statutory minimum incomes in four EU-countries. We use cross-nationally comparable food reference budgets to price food aid packages in Belgium, Finland, Hungary and Spain. The results show that food aid, although not sufficient to close the at-risk-of-poverty gap, is non-trivial for some European households. In Spain and Belgium food aid packages can reach up to €100 a month (expressing 7% to 11% of respective minimum income benefit levels). Importantly, we perceive (formalized) cooperation and interaction between local welfare agencies and food charities in all countries, suggesting that welfare state actors use non-rights-based food aid for filling gaps in the social safety net. The large between- and within-country variation of the monetary values of food aid packages points, however, to food aid as a problematic discretionary practice.

Health Statuses of People in Poverty Receiving Public Assistance in Japan: A Scoping Review.

Promoting health and well-being is essential to ensure dignified lives of the entire population, including those living in poverty. Guaranteeing the human right to health is a critical responsibility of social security policies. To address emerging issues associated with poverty, the Japanese government has implemented a welfare program known as public assistance-seikatsu-hogo. However, financial welfare programs may not fully mitigate health risks due to the complex impact of poverty on health. Although a global systematic review of the health status of public and social assistance recipients has been conducted, it did not include any studies from Japan. Furthermore, evidence for the development of health support strategies for Japanese recipients remains scarce. This scoping review aims to identify the current situation and potential issues concerning the health of recipients. PubMed was searched for articles published before November 2023. Of the 357 articles identified, 56 were included. Among those included, 35 used the individual status of receiving public assistance as an exposure variable, 13 considered public assistance recipients as the study population, and 8 used the prefectural proportion of the population receiving public assistance as an environmental predictor. We found that public assistance recipients tend to have more disadvantageous health and well-being statuses than the general population, as reported in the global systematic review. Health inequalities were also observed among recipients based on their sociodemographic characteristics. In Japan, public assistance recipients face several health risks and are at a disadvantage compared with the general population. The distribution of risks is heterogeneous among recipients, despite the minimum income protection and financial benefits in health and long-term care use. Further studies to identify the effects of public assistance policy on the health of the impoverished population, evidence-based discussions, and reform of social security policies are warranted.

성인으로 이행하는 청년에 대한 한국 사회정책의 특성

This study was conducted by using international comparison approach to explore characteristics of social policy for youth transitioning into adulthood in South Korea. The analytical framework was established in terms of ‘minimum income protection’(‘redistribution of income’) and ‘enabling’ (‘redistribution of opportunity’), based on review of international literature. Looking at South Korea’s position at the international level, The minimum income protection indicators, the accessibility and Adequacy of social assistance benefits, is low, while the vocational schools and training rate and the inactive NEET rate, which are the indicators of ‘enabling’, are at a moderate level and very high, respectively. The‘enabling’ means the low comprehensiveness of youth employment policy. Given that youth in South Korean tend to delay the period of independence, being mostly economically dependent on their parents under strong familialism, it is concluded that their familialization are related to South Korea’s insufficient social policy measures in the institutional context. It is hoped that the results provide a clue to understand the characteristics of social policies for youth in South Korea at a preliminary level, while helping to seek policy alternatives.

Minimum income in the Western Balkans: From socialism to the European Pillar of Social Rights

AbstractIn this article, we examine the evolution of minimum income programmes in the Western Balkans (comprising Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Serbia). During socialism, Yugoslavia developed a rudimentary minimum income protection programme, while Albania did not have one. As countries moved towards a market economy, socialism's legacy remained relevant, but especially since 2000, governments have taken more direct responsibility for the minimum income schemes—typically under the influence of the World Bank. The attention was paid to strict targeting accuracy rather than to adequacy or sufficient coverage of the lowest deciles. In essence, neither socialist nor neoliberal policymakers ever recognised anything but the poverty relief function of the minimum income. Both ideologies were hostile, or at best indifferent, to increasing the adequacy and generosity of minimum income programmes, perceiving them as impediments and distractions that slowed socialist and neoliberal transformations. Despite some reform initiatives supported by the World Bank and, more recently, the European Union, the generosity and adequacy of minimum income programmes remain low, and coverage keeps declining. There have been very few efforts to develop inclusion function of the minimum income, while the activation aspect has achieved very little, sometimes degrading into punitive programmes of unpaid community work. In this dismal picture, the European Pillar of Social Rights action framework could serve as a guide for a long overdue third phase in the Western Balkans' minimum income policy evolution.

Income Support Policies for Single Parents in Europe and the United States: What Works Best?

Poverty rates among single parents vary considerably across countries, in part reflecting differences in the generosity and design of minimum income protections. We ask what the optimal ways are to target income support to single parents, if the prime objective of policy is to shelter those households from poverty. We map minimum income provisions for working and nonworking single-parent households across Europe and the United States, showing that three things matter for adequate minimum income protection. First, minimum wage levels matter, obviously for working single parents, but also for jobless ones since they effectively set the ‘glass ceiling’ for out-of-work benefits. Second, the overall generosity of the child benefit package is crucial to shelter both working and jobless single parents from poverty. Third, countries that employ a strategy of “targeting within universalism” (that is directing extra support to vulnerable groups such as single parents within the context of a universal benefit program) tend to do best.

Sociodemographic inequities in dental care utilisation among governmental welfare recipients in Japan: a retrospective cohort study

BackgroundMaintaining oral health is one of the global public health challenges. Income and out-of-pocket payments for dental care services are predictors of dental care utilisation. Although public assistance programmes guarantee income security for impoverished people, access barriers other than financial costs may cause unmet dental care needs. We aimed to explore the potential sociodemographic factors determining dental care utilisation among recipients of public assistance in Japan using linkage data of public assistance database and medical assistance claim data administered by municipalities.MethodsThis was a retrospective cohort study involving a sample of public assistance recipients. We extracted the recipients’ sociodemographic data (age, sex, household number, employment status, nationality, disability certificates, and long-term care status) in January 2016 and observed them until December 2016 to identify incidences of dental care utilisation as outcomes. We performed a multivariable modified Poisson regression analysis with a robust standard error estimator to calculate the incidence ratio (IR) of dental care utilisation in each variable.ResultsWe identified a total of 4497 recipients at risk. Among them, 839 recipients used dental care services. Younger age was associated with a higher incidence of dental care utilisation. The female recipients had a higher incidence of dental care utilisation when compared to the male ones (adjusted IR, 1.22; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.08–1.38). Immigrant recipients had a higher incidence of dental care utilisation than the Japanese ones (IR, 1.53; 95% CI, 1.16–2.01). Recipients with mental disabilities had higher incidences than those without disability certificates (IR, 1.30; 95% CI, 1.08–1.56).ConclusionsNon-financial sociodemographic inequities in dental care utilisation stemming from age, sex, nationality, and presence of mental disability were found despite minimum income protection and equitable financial dental service access amongst public assistance recipients in Japan. Providing targeted preventive care and treatments for dental care among underserved populations is required to tackle oral health inequities.

But what about that nice house you own? The impact of asset tests in minimum income schemes in Europe: An empirical exploration

Means-tested transfer schemes in Europe and elsewhere tend to include not only income tests but also asset tests of various sorts. The role of asset tests in minimum income protection provisions has been extensively researched in the Anglo-Saxon context. Far fewer authors have assessed the role of asset tests on social policy in a continental European context. Although asset tests may be useful in singling out the more deserving of the poor, we know relatively little of their actual impact on eligibility and social outcomes in European welfare states. This paper looks at the prevalence and design of asset tests in European minimum income protection schemes. We distinguish between two main types of asset tests: outright disqualification when assets reach a certain value, versus a more gradual tapering at a fictional rate of return. We then analyse in greater detail how asset tests in Belgium and Germany, as representatives of these two types, affect minimum income protection eligibility and poverty outcomes. We use the EUROMOD microsimulation model on the Household Finance and Consumption Survey data in order to assess the effects of asset tests. This survey was explicitly designed to more realistically reflect assets and capital incomes.

To fight poverty and social exclusion, EU law must buttress basic nuts and bolts of the welfare edifice

This article provides a conclusion to the EJSS Special Issue ‘Discussing strategies for Social Europe: The potential role of EU law in contributing to the Union’s policy objective of fighting poverty and social exclusion’. The contributions to this Special Issue raise a fundamental question: why did European governments fail to deliver on their promise, proclaimed with so much emphasis twenty years ago, to reduce poverty in Europe? It is too easy to say that the one and only problem was the non-binding nature of the social objectives of Lisbon and the antipoverty targets of Europe 2020. There is a broader challenge at the EU level, which goes beyond minimum income protection and directly involves crucial nuts and bolts of the whole welfare edifice: when confronted with severe economic and social shocks, welfare states need an adequate stabilization capacity. This implies that the European Monetary Union becomes a true ‘insurance union’. I argue that one should understand the relevance of the European Pillar of Social Rights from this perspective, and I relate that argument to the contributions to the Special Issue.

Explaining Italian “exceptionalism” and its end: Minimum income from neglect to hyper‐politicization

AbstractTraditionally at the margins of the political debate, minimum income protection has recently become a key issue in Italian politics. After decades of social and political “neglect” letting Italy the only European country (with Greece) still lacking an anti‐poverty minimum income safety net in the 2010s, finally a national programme called Inclusion Income was introduced in 2018, then replaced by a more robustly financed scheme, the Citizenship Income in 2019. The introduction of these new programmes was the object of an intense political debate, which raises two main puzzles. Why a policy field characterized by the low political resources of would be beneficiaries and low incidence on the overall welfare budget has become so important in the political debate? How did it occur in Italy, where minimum income protection had been absent in political discourses for at least five decades after World War II? To answer these questions, this article first elaborates a novel theoretical framework which combines the main properties of socio‐political demand and political supply in order to explain the scope and direction of minimum income reforms. Second, it provides an analytically oriented reconstruction of MIS policy trajectory in Italy in the three different phases: the phase of MIS “neglect” (1948–1992) characterized by inertia; the period of political “contentiousness” (1993–2012), marked by attempts of path departure followed by policy reversals; the more recent phase leading to the introduction and institutionalization of a MIS. Third, the article provides a theoretically framed interpretation of the overall MIS trajectory in Italy.

The Politics of Minimum Income Protection in the Canadian Provinces

AbstractThis article compares social assistance incomes, or minimum income protection, for four household types in the 10 Canadian provinces between 1990 and 2017 and relates these incomes to a number of factors, including partisan dominance over time, trade union density, the presence or absence of poverty reduction strategies, provincial social expenditures, overall redistribution efforts, debt service costs and social assistance recipiency rates. In line with findings for the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) welfare states, partisan politics does not play a strong role but, as power resources theory predicts, union density and a province's overall redistribution efforts do. Social assistance recipiency rates, which capture the salience of social assistance incomes in a province, also have a significant, positive impact on welfare incomes, confirming the “welfare paradox” identified by Ivar Lødemel. Poverty reduction strategies, however, do not, and they even have a negative influence on welfare incomes.

Health inequalities in Europe: Does minimum income protection make a difference?

Poverty, a risk factor for ill health, could be alleviated by generous welfare states. However, do generous social policies also reduce the health implications of socio-economic inequalities? This study investigates how minimum income protection is associated with socio-economic health inequalities. The author hypothesises that higher benefit levels are associated with lower health inequalities between income groups. Minimum income benefits support the people most in need, and therefore should improve the health of the lowest income groups, which in turn would reduce overall health inequalities. This hypothesis is tested with the European Social Survey (2002–2012) and the SaMip dataset using three-level multilevel models, covering 26 countries. The results show a robust relationship between benefit levels and individual self-rated health. However, the hypothesis of reduced health inequalities is not completely supported, since the findings for the cross-level interactions between income quintiles and benefit levels differ for each quintile.

All we need is\u2026

The right to adequate minimum income protection is one of the key principles included in the European Pillar of Social Rights (EPSR). The EPSR takes a right-based and normative approach, aiming specifically at fulfilling people’s essential needs, not only by guaranteeing sufficiently high income levels, but also by promoting labour market inclusion and access to affordable goods and services of good quality. This paper takes the EPSR as a starting point to propose a needs-based indicator that assesses the adequacy of minimum income protection including these three dimensions in a comprehensive way. We argue that Reference Budgets (RBs), priced baskets of goods and services that represent an adequate living standard, are well-suited to construct such an indicator. To illustrate this empirically, we use RBs for adequate social participation in Belgium which have been constructed for the first time in 2008 and have been regularly updated since then. Through a combination of hypothetical household simulations of essential out-of-pocket costs and designated tax-benefits for families living on different minimum income schemes, we are able to assess the adequacy of minimum income protection for a range of household types over the period 2008–2017. The paper shows that, the proposed indicator is a useful policy tool for both ex-ante and ex-post evaluations of the adequacy of social policy measures in light of the social protection and inclusion rights included in the Pillar.

Between welfare state and (state-organised) charity

PurposeOver the last four decades, Turkey has built an elaborate social assistance regime, which provides extensive coverage of the poor but lacks some of the key characteristics of European minimum income protection systems. The purpose of this paper is to explore what ideational roots underlie the regime and how these ideas and paradigms historically shaped the structure of the regime. The paper focuses on two central social assistance legislations: the social pensions law of 1976 and the Law that established the Fund for the Encouragement of Social Cooperation and Solidarity in 1986.Design/methodology/approachBased on a discursive institutionalist approach, the paper combines a qualitative content analysis of parliamentary debates and official reports with a policy analysis of social assistance legislations in Turkey.FindingsThe paper shows that two competing policy paradigms shaped the ambivalent structure and design of Turkey social assistance regime: a welfare state paradigm and a state-organised charity paradigm. The welfare state paradigm, which perceives social assistance as a social right, was dominant in the 1970s and is embodied in the social pension programme. The state-organised charity paradigm, which aims to reinvigorate the Islamic tradition of charitable foundations (waqf), was dominant in the 1980s and is embodied in the Fund for the Encouragement of Social Cooperation and Solidarity. Today’s social assistance regime combines both elements in a curious synthesis.Originality/valueThe paper contributes to comparative social policy research and discursive institutionalism by uncovering the historical and ideational foundations of a largely neglected case, social assistance in Turkey.

Minimum income protection schemes in the Central and Eastern European countries

This paper aims to introduce the characteristics of minimum income protection schemes in Poland, Hungary, Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Minimum social incomes incorporate all non-contributory, mostly means-tested social allowances, family supports and housing benefits which are available even to the poorest layers of society. The study first introduces the structure of minimum social protection systems in the selected countries, then assesses the amount of the related social transfers regarding three household types – single adult households, as well as single- and two-parent households with two children aged 7 and 14 years – showing the maximum amount of subsidies these households can receive. The categorization of households and social transfers was based on the 2013 SAMIP (Social Assistance and Minimum Income Protection Interim) dataset, which was revised for the 2016 MISSOC database to incorporate the newest social allowances that have been introduced since 2013 (e.g. Family 500+ in Poland and some provisions of the 2014 Hungarian welfare reform).

Is social investment inimical to the poor?

AbstractIn the last two decades, the social investment strategy has been the main approach to welfare state reform. Concretely, two spending programs have dominated the agenda: the expansion of active labor market programs and the development of childcare services. Many authors have suspected, however, that these social investments were realized at the expense of income protection for the poor. This article assesses this potential trade-off with time-series cross-sectional models of the determinants of active labor market policies expenditures, childcare spending and the adequacy of minimum income protection (MIP), for 18 OECD countries between 1990 and 2009. It turns out that social investments are rather akin to traditional welfare state programs, and are explained by similar institutional, political and economic factors. More importantly, they do not develop at the expense of income protection. Social investment initiatives are consistent with the usual politics of the welfare state and, overall, they are not inimical to the poor.

Minimum income protection and EU coordination

A number of studies suggest that the Europeanisation process is having a profound impact on national labour market policies. Nevertheless, rather little research has been devoted to the development of social assistance schemes across countries and over time. Relying on two new indicators, benefit levels and replacement rates, we examined the relationship between the Lisbon Strategy and changes in national social assistance benefits. We found no robust results for the first years of the Lisbon Strategy. However, after its re-launch in 2005, there was a positive association between the Lisbon Strategy and social assistance benefit levels. In addition to the Lisbon Strategy, domestic political, institutional and several economic factors were significantly associated with social assistance benefits.

Welfare States’ Social Investment Strategies and the Emergence of Dutch Experiments on a Minimum Income Guarantee

The focus in welfare state support in the Netherlands has been shifted from workfare and activation policies to social investment strategies. The discourse on basic income and the related municipal experiments highlights this shift. We address the inspiration found in basic income and behavioural economic and motivational psychological theoretical insights for the design of the experiments and for new avenues of minimum income protection and providing participation opportunities for the disadvantaged. The emerging new paradigm also implies a shift in the cultural values and principles on which welfare state policies are implicitly founded. This means that in these endeavours particular social values are put more upfront, such as personal autonomy (capacitating people by providing opportunities and therewith ‘free choice’) and trust (activating people by putting trust in their self-management capacities) which in day-to-day policy practice means more tailor-made, demand-oriented integrated mediation and coaching while rewarding people instead of penalising them.

The Politics of Minimum Income Protection in OECD Countries

AbstractMinimum income protection (MIP) determines the disposable income a person obtains when she has no market or social insurance income, few assets and no family support. This last-recourse income, usually social assistance benefits plus associated transfers, constitutes a significant indicator of a country's commitment to social justice. Yet, we know little about the politics of MIP, in part because welfare state scholars have focused on more encompassing social insurance programmes, and in part because of a lack of good comparative data. This article takes the measure of MIP adequacy in 18 OECD countries for the 1990–2010 period, for single, able-to-work individuals, tracks its comparative evolution, and proposes an explanation of its determinants, with a times-series cross-sectional model. The main positive determinant of adequacy is a generous welfare state; the main negative force is the importance of the public debt. Overall, the politics of MIP appears consistent with that of the welfare state.

Privatisierung und Vermarktlichung der Altersvorsorge: Eingetrübte Aussichten des deutschen Mehrsäulenmodells

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