The government has published an annual progress report on implementation of the European Union’s strategy for inclusive economic growth – including the target of lifting at least 20 million people out of the risk of poverty and exclusion by 2020. The government says it ‘remains committed to eradicating child poverty, increasing social mobility and ensuring social justice’. It aims to do this by:
Researchers in the Czech Republic have found high levels of material deprivation in UK households compared with a representative sample of four European countries.
The paper compares material deprivation in households in the UK, Czech Republic, Finland, France and Spain, drawing on official (EU-SILC) data. Material deprivation criteria are divided into four groups: financial stress, housing conditions, availability of consumer durables and basic needs.
Anti-poverty campaigners in Europe have raised concerns over whether national governments are planning to ignore poverty reduction targets when they take decisions on the next round of EU Structural Funds (2014–2020).
The European Anti-Poverty Network (EAPN) has written to all 26 Prime Ministers in advance of the General Affairs Council meeting on 24 April 2012. The letter makes the following demands:
A paper by the OECD in Paris has highlighted growing income inequality in European countries – with large income gains among the top 10 per cent of earners as the main cause. The paper’s author constructs an aggregate measure of EU-wide inequality that takes into account inequality both within and between countries.
Researchers in Dublin have proposed a novel ‘multi-dimensional’ way to measure poverty in European countries. They say this approach offers more consistent results than using income poverty alone and improves on the ‘ad hoc’ basis used by the European Union for setting its poverty reduction target. The researchers base their analysis on newly available household data from the 2009 round of European Union Statistics on Income and Living Standards (EU-SILC). They identify four dimensions of poverty, apart from the conventional relative income poverty measure. They then define as multi-dimensionally poor those individuals who are above a specified threshold on at least two dimensions out of the four – in contrast to other approaches that count those above the threshold in either just one dimension or in all dimensions. In addition, they adopt an ‘adjusted headcount’ technique that excludes data relating to households that are not deprived.
Two researchers in Italy have published a paper that provides an updated analysis of income poverty in European Union (EU) countries up to 2007 and covers the newest member states. The analysis focuses on the main determinants of households falling into or rising out of income poverty, and finds that events related to the labour market are the most influential because of both their frequency and their impact.
The paper provides a broad-brush picture of poverty dynamics for individuals living in the enlarged EU, using data from the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. Previous studies had examined only the ‘old’ EU 15 member states, and were more than 10 years old.
The analysis identifies which types of event are associated with the probability of entering – and exiting from – poverty.
UNICEF researchers have estimated the degree to which deprivation is experienced by children in 29 European countries, using a child-specific scale. Their paper highlights the considerable differences between countries, suggesting that specific policy measures can be effective in combating child deprivation.
The researchers argue that studying deprivation – alongside the overlapping situation of children living in families poor in monetary terms – is imperative for understanding the scope and nature of poverty among children. Deprivation analyses are especially useful when studying the situation of children because children do not have equal access to the household’s income, and are more dependent on social goods and services (especially education and health).
A well-designed child benefits system can play a crucial role in tackling poverty among lone mothers – and in strengthening women’s autonomy – according to researchers in Antwerp studying the impact of child benefits on the poverty risk of lone mothers in 15 European countries.
The 2011 Assessment of Social Inclusion Policy Developments in the EU concludes that during 2011 the financial and economic crisis, together with associated austerity measures, led to an increase in poverty and social exclusion in more than half the member states. The report is the summary of the findings of national reports written by members of the European Union Network of Independent Experts on Social Inclusion assessing the policy developments in their countries during 2011. In the countries where the situation has worsened over the past year, the most frequently cited factors for the worsening situation is a fall in employment rates and a rise in unemployment, or the persistence of an already high level of unemployment. Many experts particularly highlight the poor situation of the young unemployed and the growing proportion of long-term unemployed.
Social safety nets across the European Union remain far below widely accepted poverty thresholds, including the European Union’s own official measure, finds a new paper from the Institute for the Study of Labour in Bonn, Do Europe’s Minimum Income Schemes Provide Adequate Shelter Against the Economic Crisis and How, If at All, Have Governments Responded?
The discussion paper examines whether European Union governments improved the capacity of social safety nets during the first phase of the global economic crisis. Many countries had introduced supportive measures, in particular in the form of additional increases in gross minimum income benefits; more generous child benefits had helped to increase the net disposable incomes of families on minimum incomes; and, in a limited number of countries, activation efforts aimed at minimum income recipients had been intensified. But, despite some improvements, the schemes did not provide adequate protection against poverty.