Documents Marchal, Sarah 15 results

"There has not been much progress on the poverty front in Europe over recent decades, at least if we take it as a relative phenomenon in affluent societies. There is a lot of pessimism about the possibility of making any real progress at all. Some argue that adequate poverty relief is simply too expensive or that it would put too much of a redistributive burden on the electorally powerful, making it politically difficult, if not infeasible. Another prominent argument is that wage floors and thus out-of-work benefit levels are inexorably under pressure, making poverty relief both harder to achieve and more expensive in budgetary terms. This paper sets out these accounts and focuses on what has been happening to statutory, absolute and effective wage floors in Europe over the past decades. We ask whether progress on the poverty front through pushing up wage floors and subsequently out-of-work benefits is a realistic prospect. We see reasons for optimism."

"Im Widerspruch zu den ehrgeizigen sozialen Zielen von Lissabon und Europa 2020 erzielten die meisten EU-Mitgliedstaaten während der letzten Jahrzehnte keine Fortschritte im Kampf gegen die Armut. Seit der Krise hat sich das Bild sogar eindeutig ins Negative verkehrt und verdunkelt sich weiter angesichts zunehmender Unterschiede innerhalb der Union. Wir argumentieren, dass infolge allgemeiner gesellschaftlicher und wirtschaftlicher Entwicklungen die ehemals erfolgreichen Prinzipien von Subsidiarität und „soft governance“ an Wirkungskraft eingebüßt haben. Unser Vorschlag ist, den vorherrschenden Ansatz zu erweitern und durch transparentere Policy-Indikatoren zu ergänzen. Wir zeigen auf, dass ein breit angelegter Ansatz, der Maßnahmenindikatoren zur Bewertung von Grundsicherungsstrategien berücksichtigt, dazu beitragen würde, die große Bandbreite der von den EU-Mitgliedstaaten verfolgten Strategien sichtbar zu machen."

"Social Europe is under lingering construction. Not only does the EU indirectly (and increasingly) impact on national social policies, the Union itself is slowly evolving towards more social governance as has become apparent with the inclusion of social indicators in the European Semester. This notwithstanding, apart from the coordination of social security rights for mobile workers, anti-discrimination legislation, and health and safety standards at work, social policy remains an exclusive national competence. Moreover, it is guaranteed to remain so through the legal subsidiarity principle. As a consequence, EU social policy has to a large extent been limited to soft governance initiatives that aim to influence national policies in order to achieve commonly agreed social goals. These goals are defined as social outcomes, rather than the means through which they are achieved, a governance model known as “second order output governance” (Vandenbroucke, Cantillon, Van Mechelen, Goedemé, & Van Lancker, 2013). However, over the past decades, despite the ambitious Lisbon and EU2020 social targets, many EU Member States have failed to make progress in fighting poverty. Since the crisis the picture has become truly negative, not in the least due to strong diverging trends within the Union. Meanwhile, the indirect influence of the EU on national social policies has increased. This begs the question whether a more performant EU level involvement in the field of social policy is conceivable, within the constraints set by the European Treaties. In this paper, we argue that European minimum standards are the place to start. Thereby, a broad approach should be taken, including principles for minimum social security and minimum wages. To this end we believe that time has come for a modest shift to “second order input governance”. More in particular, we propose to include policy indicators regarding minimum income protection sensu lato, in the recently revised EU monitoring process of the European Semester. We assess the current (im)balances in national minimum income packages, and discuss in depth the potential value of including the indicators in a structured EU monitoring, as well as their main drawbacks and limitations."

"Governments across the EU have been striving to get more people into work while at the same time acknowledging that more needs to be done to ‘make work pay'. Yet this drive comes at a time when structural economic shifts are putting pressure on wages, especially of less skilled workers. This article focuses on trends in minimum wages, income taxes, and work-related benefits within a selection of 16 EU countries, for the period 2001-2012, with three US states included as reference cases. We find evidence for eroding relative minimum wages in various EU countries, yet combined with catch-up growth in the new Member States. We also find that governments counteracted eroding minimum wages through direct income support measures, especially for lone parents. Most prevalent among these were substantial declines in income tax liabilities. More generally we see a trend unfolding towards a fiscalization of income support policies."

"This paper assesses the current variation in activation strategies directed towards able-bodied persons of working age who rely on a minimum income guarantee in 20 EU Member states. First, we argue that the Active Inclusion notion developed by the European Commission in its 2008 Recommendation on the active inclusion of persons on a large distance of the labour market provides a useful device to categorize current activation strategies towards minimum income protection (MIP) recipients. Next we use this active inclusion concept in a fuzzy set ideal type analysis of purpose-collected institutional data to investigate to what extent current activation strategies reflect the Commission's concept of active inclusion. We find that there are few countries where the activation discourse has remained a dead letter. Most countries have implemented policy measures that aim to discourage benefit dependency among MIP recipients. Nevertheless, behind the realities of activation strategies towards minimum income recipients seldom lies the notion of active inclusion as defined by the European Commission. Particularly, many countries adopt predominantly negative incentives to increase labour market participation rates, rather than enabling measures. The majority of countries relies heavily on financial and non-financial incentives such as strong reasonable job definitions or severe sanctions for non-compliance with job availability requirements to encourage employment."

"This paper aims to contribute to the debate on whether or not European welfare states converge by assessing trends and patterns of convergence and divergence of European minimum income schemes in the period 1992/2001-2012. We expand on previous studies on convergence of social assistance schemes in at least three ways. First, this paper provides a recent and detailed overview of social assistance benefit trends – detailed, that is, country-by-country. The focus is on cross-country variations rather than on the variation among groups of countries that are deemed to represent different welfare regimes. In addition, our analyses are based on original data drawn from a large network of country experts comprising all EU Member States except for Croatia, Cyprus and Malta. The country-focus as well as the involvement of national informants allows to contextualize our findings with regard to convergence and to clarify the underlying policy measures. Finally this paper covers a long time series, starting in the early 1990s up to 2012. We find that despite a marked increase in the spread of minimum income schemes, cross-country variation in the level of minimum income benefits has remained markedly stable. This stability however hides starkly different country experiences, with some laggard countries showing marked increases, whereas others continue to fall short. Some of these pre-crisis gains have evaporated in recent years. In addition, a substantial number of countries have allowed a further erosion of their benefit levels, especially in the 1990s, but still evident in the 2000s."

"This working paper focuses on the role of minimum wages, in conjunction with tax and benefit policies, in protecting workers against financial poverty. It covers 20 European countries with a national minimum wage and three US States (New Jersey, Nebraska and Texas). It is shown that only for single persons and only in certain countries do net income packages at minimum wage level reach or exceed the EU's at-risk-of poverty threshold, which is set at 60 per cent of median equivalent household income in each country.

The authors also argue that there appear to be limits to what minimum wage policies alone can achieve in the fight against in-work poverty. The route of raising minimum wages to eliminate poverty among workers solely reliant on it seems to be inherently constrained, especially in countries where the distance between minimum and average wage levels is already comparatively small and where relative poverty thresholds are mostly a function of the dual earner living standards. In order to fight in-work poverty new policy routes need to be explored.

The paper offers a brief discussion of possible alternatives and cautions against ‘one size fits all' policy solutions. "

"The present economic crisis comes against the background of decades of policy changes that have generally weakened the capacity of social safety nets to offer citizens with adequate resources for financial survival when labour markets fail to do so. Building on data for 24 European Union countries, this paper asks whether EU governments implemented additional measures during the first phase of the crisis to improve safety nets. Our data, drawn from a large network of national experts, show that many countries introduced supportive measures, in particular in the form of additional increases in gross minimum income benefits. More generous child benefits have also helped to increase net disposable incomes of families on minimum income. Behavioral requirements imposed on minimum income recipients have been neither tightened nor relaxed. In a limited number of countries, activation efforts aimed at minimum income recipients have been intensified. Despite some improvements, social safety nets in Europe remain far below widely accepted poverty thresholds, including the EU's own official measure."

"This paper asks what governments in the EU Member States and some US states are doing to support workers on low wages. Using model family simulations, we assess the policy measures currently in place to guarantee an adequate disposable income to working families, taking into account minimum wages, social security contributions, taxes and cash benefits. We show that despite increased efforts over the past decade, disposable incomes of certain types of minimum wage workers still fall well below the EU at-risk-of-poverty thresholds in many countries. Single earners with dependent children are especially at risk of poverty. We discuss the options for making progress."

" Governments across the European Union (EU) have been striving to get more people into work while at the same time acknowledging that more needs to be done to ‘make work pay'. Yet this drive comes at a time when structural economic shifts are putting pressure on wages, especially of less skilled workers. This article focuses on trends in minimum wages, income taxes and work-related benefits within a selection of 15 EU countries, for the period 2001–2012, with three US states included as reference cases. We find evidence for eroding relative minimum wages in various EU countries, yet combined with catch-up growth in the new member states. We also find that governments counteracted eroding minimum wages through direct income support measures, especially for lone parents. Most prevalent among these were substantial declines in income tax liabilities."