IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/sae/reorpe/v53y2021i1p58-76.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Introducing a Safety Net: The Effects of Neoliberal Policy on Welfare, Poverty, and the Net Social Wage during the Greek Crisis

Author

Listed:
  • Vlassis Missos

Abstract

The combined effects of internal devaluation and fiscal consolidation policies implemented in Greece between 2010 and 2019 are reflected in substantial levels of income contraction and unequal distribution of the financial burden. Neoliberal policy responses are examined through a safety net that allocates scarce fiscal resources to persons in extreme need, subject to high primary budget surplus targets. The safety net operates in this manner when social pressure upon the worker class intensifies. Further, the essay explores two supplementary aspects. First, a modified measure of poverty using the conventional approach of differentiated income poverty lines is considered. Second, net social wage variations are examined. Results indicate Greek workers have suffered substantially and that neoliberal policies have placed disproportionate burdens on persons most in need.

Suggested Citation

  • Vlassis Missos, 2021. "Introducing a Safety Net: The Effects of Neoliberal Policy on Welfare, Poverty, and the Net Social Wage during the Greek Crisis," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 53(1), pages 58-76, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:53:y:2021:i:1:p:58-76
    DOI: 10.1177/0486613420930830
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0486613420930830
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1177/0486613420930830?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Achim Truger, 2013. "Austerity in the euro area: the sad state of economic policy in Germany and the EU," European Journal of Economics and Economic Policies: Intervention, Edward Elgar Publishing, vol. 10(2), pages 158-174.
    2. Charles Wyplosz, 2012. "Fiscal Rules: Theoretical Issues and Historical Experiences," NBER Chapters, in: Fiscal Policy after the Financial Crisis, pages 495-525, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    3. Giuseppe Bertola, 2010. "Inequality, integration, and policy: issues and evidence from EMU," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(3), pages 345-365, September.
    4. Sotiria Theodoropoulou, 2014. "Has the EU become more intrusive in shaping national welfare state reforms? Evidence from Greece and Portugal," Working Papers 11243, European Trade Union Institute (ETUI).
    5. Matteo F. Ghilardi & Raffaele Rossi, 2014. "Aggregate Stability and Balanced‐Budget Rules," Journal of Money, Credit and Banking, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 46(8), pages 1787-1809, December.
    6. Olivier J. Blanchard & Daniel Leigh, 2013. "Growth Forecast Errors and Fiscal Multipliers," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 117-120, May.
    7. Alberto Alesina & Roberto Perotti, 1995. "Fiscal Expansions and Fiscal Adjustments in OECD Countries," NBER Working Papers 5214, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Davide Gualerzi, 2017. "Crisis in the Eurozone: Austerity and Economic Transformation," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 49(3), pages 394-409, September.
    9. Thanasis Maniatis, 2003. "The net social wage in greece 1958-95," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 377-398.
    10. Boris Cournède & Antoine Goujard & Álvaro Pina & Alain de Serres, 2013. "Choosing Fiscal Consolidation Instruments Compatible with Growth and Equity," OECD Economic Policy Papers 7, OECD Publishing.
    11. Alberto Botta & Daniele Tori, 2018. "The theoretical and empirical fragilities of the expansionary austerity theory," Journal of Post Keynesian Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 41(3), pages 364-398, July.
    12. Georgios Argitis & Maria Nikolaidi, 2014. "The financial fragility and the crisis of the Greek government sector," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 28(3), pages 274-292, May.
    13. Samuel Bowles & Herbert Gintis, 1982. "The Crisis of Liberal Democratic Capitalism: The Case of the United States," Politics & Society, , vol. 11(1), pages 51-93, March.
    14. Steven Panageotou, 2017. "Disciplining Greece: Crisis Management and Its Discontents," Review of Radical Political Economics, Union for Radical Political Economics, vol. 49(3), pages 358-374, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Kaplanoglou, Georgia, 2022. "Consumption inequality and poverty in Greece: Evidence and lessons from a decade-long crisis," Economic Analysis and Policy, Elsevier, vol. 75(C), pages 244-261.
    2. Missos, Vlassis & Domenikos, Charalampos & Pontis, Nikos, 2024. "Hardening the EU core-periphery lines, 2009–2019: Dependency, neoliberalism, welfare reformation and poverty in Greece," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 171-182.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Missos, Vlassis & Domenikos, Charalampos & Pontis, Nikos, 2024. "Hardening the EU core-periphery lines, 2009–2019: Dependency, neoliberalism, welfare reformation and poverty in Greece," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 69(C), pages 171-182.
    2. Walter Paternesi Meloni, 2017. "Austerity & Competitiveness in the Eurozone: a misleading linkage," Departmental Working Papers of Economics - University 'Roma Tre' 0223, Department of Economics - University Roma Tre.
    3. Alari PaulusBy & Francesco Figari & Holly Sutherland, 2017. "The design of fiscal consolidation measures in the European Union: distributional effects and implications for macro-economic recovery," Oxford Economic Papers, Oxford University Press, vol. 69(3), pages 632-654.
    4. Vybhavi Balasundharam & Olivier Basdevant & Dalmacio Benicio & Andrew Ceber & Yujin Kim & Luca Mazzone & Hoda Selim & Yongzheng Yang, 2023. "Fiscal Consolidation: Taking Stock of Success Factors, Impact, and Design," IMF Working Papers 2023/063, International Monetary Fund.
    5. Dell'Erba, Salvatore & Koloskova, Ksenia & Poplawski-Ribeiro, Marcos, 2018. "Medium-term fiscal multipliers during protracted economic contractions," Journal of Macroeconomics, Elsevier, vol. 56(C), pages 35-52.
    6. Branimir Jovanovic, 2017. "Growth forecast errors and government investment and consumption multipliers," International Review of Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(1), pages 83-107, January.
    7. Ramey, V.A., 2016. "Macroeconomic Shocks and Their Propagation," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 71-162, Elsevier.
    8. Georgia Kaplanoglou & Vassilis T. Rapanos & Ioanna C. Bardakas, 2015. "Does Fairness Matter for the Success of Fiscal Consolidation?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 68(2), pages 197-219, May.
    9. Nicolas Carnot & Francisco de Castro, 2015. "The Discretionary Fiscal Effort: An Assessment of Fiscal Policy and Its Output Effect," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 215(4), pages 63-94, December.
    10. Gonzales, Ivonne & Martner Fanta, Ricardo & Podestá, Andrea, 2013. "Políticas fiscales para el crecimiento y la igualdad," Macroeconomía del Desarrollo 5372, Naciones Unidas Comisión Económica para América Latina y el Caribe (CEPAL).
    11. repec:ilo:ilowps:488131 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Alfredo Arahuetes García & Gonzalo Gómez Bengoechea, 2022. "Back to the Future: Lessons from the 2009–2012 austerity policies for the aftermath of the COVID crisis," Global Policy, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 13(5), pages 751-766, November.
    13. Achim Truger, 2014. "Austerity, cyclical adjustment and the remaining leeway for expansionary fiscal policies in the Euro area," IMK Working Paper 140-2014, IMK at the Hans Boeckler Foundation, Macroeconomic Policy Institute.
    14. Elie Ndemba Tshilambu, 2022. "Politique budgétaire, Investissement privé et performance macroéconomique en République démocratique du Congo ," Post-Print hal-03627267, HAL.
    15. Karim Triki, 2016. "Expenditure-based Consolidation: Experiences and Outcomes – Workshop proceedings," European Economy - Discussion Papers 026, Directorate General Economic and Financial Affairs (DG ECFIN), European Commission.
    16. Francesco Saraceno, 2017. "Rethinking fiscal policy : lessons from the european monetary union," SciencePo Working papers Main hal-03457591, HAL.
    17. Thomas Warmedinger & Cristina Checherita-Westphal & Pablo Hernández de Cos, 2015. "Fiscal Multipliers and Beyond," Hacienda Pública Española / Review of Public Economics, IEF, vol. 215(4), pages 139-168, December.
    18. Joep Lustenhouwer & Kostas Mavromatis, 2021. "The Effects of Fiscal Policy when Planning Horizons are Finite," Working Papers 717, DNB.
    19. Canale, Rosaria Rita & De Simone, Elina & Spagnolo, Nicola, 2021. "Financial markets and fiscal discipline in the Eurozone," Structural Change and Economic Dynamics, Elsevier, vol. 58(C), pages 490-499.
    20. Thierry Betti & Thomas Coudert, 2022. "How harmful are cuts in public employment and wage in times of high unemployment?," Bulletin of Economic Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 74(1), pages 247-277, January.
    21. Luca Agnello & Ricardo M. Sousa, 2014. "How Does Fiscal Consolidation Impact on Income Inequality?," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(4), pages 702-726, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    safety net; poverty rate; net social wage;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I30 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - General
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:sae:reorpe:v:53:y:2021:i:1:p:58-76. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: SAGE Publications (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.urpe.org/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.