European Anti-Poverty Policies in the 1990s: Toward a Common Safety Net?

Sainsbury, Diane; Morissens, Ann

doi:10.2139/ssrn.324881

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 22 publications

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“…Moreover, we did a sensitivity 32 Cf. Sainsbury and Morissens (2002). 33 See Förster (1993), Kenworthy (1999), Kangas and Palme (2000), Kim (2000a), Sainsbury and Morissens (2002), Cantillon et al (2002), Behrendt (2002), Förster and Pearson (2002), Brady (2004), Scruggs and Allen (2005), Smeeding (2005), Förster andMira d'Ercole (2005), and Pestieau (2006, pp.16-17).…”

Section: Welfare State Effort and The Alleviation Of Poverty: An Empimentioning

confidence: 99%

Effectiveness of Poverty Reduction in the EU: A Descriptive Analysis

Caminada

Goudswaard

2009

Poverty & Public Policy

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The European Union coordinates and encourages Member State actions to combat poverty, and to reform their social protection systems on the basis of policy exchanges and mutual learning ('best practices'). This paper analyses the effectiveness of welfare state policies and especially social transfers in EU-countries in alleviating poverty. To indicate whether European economic integration may have had any impact on poverty reduction, we also include several non-EU15 countries as a benchmark into our analysis. We analyze on a cross-country basis the relationship between poverty rates and social effort, as measured by social expenditure ratios. We also correct these expenditure ratios for the impact of the tax system and for private social arrangements, using OECD methodology. Next, we compare poverty rates at the levels of market and disposable incomes; that is, before and after transfers, in order to analyze the effect of tax and transfer policies in reducing poverty, i.e., to determine the target efficiency of social transfers. We perform several tests with the most recent data.Our results are less clear cut than earlier findings. We still find a quite strong negative relationship between the level of social expenditure and poverty among OECD countries. However, for EU-countries this relationship is weaker and there are substantial differences within the EU15. After correcting for the impact of taxes and for private social arrangements, the linkage between social effort and poverty levels becomes even weaker. Also, we do not find a strong relationship between levels of social spending and antipoverty effects of social transfers and taxes. At the program level, family programs and child support alleviate poverty to a large extent.

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Section: Welfare State Effort and The Alleviation Of Poverty: An Empimentioning

confidence: 99%

Effectiveness of Poverty Reduction in the EU: A Descriptive Analysis

Caminada

Goudswaard

2009

Poverty & Public Policy

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The European Union coordinates and encourages Member State actions to combat poverty, and to reform their social protection systems on the basis of policy exchanges and mutual learning ('best practices'). This paper analyses the effectiveness of welfare state policies and especially social transfers in EU-countries in alleviating poverty. To indicate whether European economic integration may have had any impact on poverty reduction, we also include several non-EU15 countries as a benchmark into our analysis. We analyze on a cross-country basis the relationship between poverty rates and social effort, as measured by social expenditure ratios. We also correct these expenditure ratios for the impact of the tax system and for private social arrangements, using OECD methodology. Next, we compare poverty rates at the levels of market and disposable incomes; that is, before and after transfers, in order to analyze the effect of tax and transfer policies in reducing poverty, i.e., to determine the target efficiency of social transfers. We perform several tests with the most recent data.Our results are less clear cut than earlier findings. We still find a quite strong negative relationship between the level of social expenditure and poverty among OECD countries. However, for EU-countries this relationship is weaker and there are substantial differences within the EU15. After correcting for the impact of taxes and for private social arrangements, the linkage between social effort and poverty levels becomes even weaker. Also, we do not find a strong relationship between levels of social spending and antipoverty effects of social transfers and taxes. At the program level, family programs and child support alleviate poverty to a large extent.

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“…3 3 See Behrendt (2002), Brady (2004), Cantillon, Marx and Van den Bosch (2003), Förster (1993), Förster and Mira d'Ercole (2005), Förster and Pearson (2002), Kangas and Palme (2000), Kenworthy (1999), Kim (2000), Pestieau (2006), Sainsbury and Morissens (2002), Scruggs and Allan (2006) and Smeeding (2005, 2006). …”

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confidence: 99%

Social income transfers and poverty: A cross‐country analysis for OECD countries

2011

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Caminada K, Goudswaard K, Koster F. Social income transfers and poverty: a cross‐country analysis for OECD countries Poverty alleviation is an important policy objective in developed welfare states. This article reports on a study of the association between social transfer policies and poverty. It has been claimed in several studies that based on a simple bivariate approach, high social effort goes along with low poverty levels. Empirical studies have also found that factors such as demographic and economic conditions may also have an influence on poverty, affecting the relationship between social spending and poverty. In the present study, we empirically analysed the impact of social expenditure on poverty for the period 1985–2005, and in contrast to previous research, demographic and macroeconomic differences across countries were controlled for. Quite a strong negative relationship was still found between the level of social expenditure and poverty. Ageing and unemployment rates were found to have some explanatory power but without affecting the association between social transfers and poverty. Thus, the multivariate approach chosen in this study confirms the results of earlier research.

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“…As a result, post-tax-transfer poverty has also -more or less -increased in these countries (cf. Sainsbury and Morissens, 2002;Kim, 2000a;Smeeding, 2005). Changes in government redistribution dampened the rise in poverty in the decade from the mid-1980s to the mid-1990s, but reinforced it in the following one (cf.…”

Section: Benchmarking With Non-eu15 Countriesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In some member states the safety net offers little assistance to vulnerable groups (cf. Sainsbury and Morissens, 2002). On average, child poverty is a lesser problem than is the poverty of elderly in these nations.…”

Section: Vulnerable Groups: Decomposition Of Poverty By Age Groupsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social Expenditure and Poverty Reduction in the Eu15 and Other OECD Countries

Caminada¹,

Goudswaard²

2009

SSRN Journal

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The European Union coordinates and encourages Member State actions to combat poverty, and to reform their social protection systems on the basis of policy exchanges and mutual learning ('best practices'). Some EU countries are more effective in poverty reduction than others. What can explain these variations in effectiveness? This paper analyzes the effectiveness of social transfers in alleviating poverty. We focus on EU15 countries, but also include other OECD countries in our analysis. We compare poverty rates at the levels of market and disposable incomes, that is before and after transfers, in order to analyze the effect of tax and transfer policies in reducing poverty, i.e. to determine the target efficiency of social transfers. We perform several tests with the most recent data (LIS, OECD, SOCX, and Eurostat: ECHP/EU-SILC). Finally, we perform several partial analyses by disaggregating poverty rates to socioeconomic and demographic conditions in order to investigate to what extent variations at the social program level (such as old age pensions, child benefits) affect the measured effectiveness of the welfare state in alleviating poverty. Empirical results draw heavily on how pensions are treated -as primary income or as transfer. We find a strong relationship between levels of social spending and antipoverty effects of social transfers and taxes across EU15 countries. Social spending seems to be an important determinant of a country's poverty outcome, especially among the elderly, when pensions are considered as transfers. Our analysis highlights some cross-country differences in targeting of social expenditures on poverty alleviation in EU15 and non-EU15 countries around 2005. We introduce an indicator of Public Policy Effectiveness on Poverty Alleviation across countries. Each percentage point of social expenditure alleviates poverty in both EU15 and non-EU15 countries by .7 percentage points on average. Relatively high scores in EU15 countries are found for Ireland and Scandinavian countries, while Italy, Greece and Spain score lowest. Outside Europe the poorest scores are reported for Korea and the USA. Country ranking appears to be rather stable over time when outcomes for 1995 and 2005 are compared, although some of our results may be sensitive to cyclical factors. Finally, we analyzed poverty among vulnerable age groups. Our results show that family programs and child support alleviate poverty among children to a large extent, especially in non-EU15 countries. For public and private old age pension and survivors schemes we find no effect on poverty in case pensions are considered as transfers (both in EU15 and non-EU15 countries). However, this picture changes completely when pensions are counted as transfers. In that case the poverty rate among elderly in EU15 falls from 90 to 21 percent through taxes and social transfers! JEL-codes: H53, H55, I32

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European Anti-Poverty Policies in the 1990s: Toward a Common Safety Net?

Cited by 6 publications

References 22 publications

Effectiveness of Poverty Reduction in the EU: A Descriptive Analysis

Effectiveness of Poverty Reduction in the EU: A Descriptive Analysis

Social income transfers and poverty: A cross‐country analysis for OECD countries

Social Expenditure and Poverty Reduction in the Eu15 and Other OECD Countries

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