IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/vrs/bjeust/v9y2019i1p157-175n9.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Impact of Social Transfers on Poverty Reduction in EU Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Miežienė Rasa

    (Lithuanian Social Research Centre, Labour Market Research Institute, Goštauto str. 9, Vilnius01108, Lithuania)

  • Krutulienė Sandra

    (Lithuanian Social Research Centre, Labour Market Research Institute, Goštauto str. 9, Vilnius01108, Lithuania)

Abstract

Available studies indicate a strong negative correlation between poverty and social expenditures in EU countries. It means that the country’s at-risk-of-poverty rate tends to erode with increasing social expenditure. However, the studies have demonstrated that the impact of government spending on poverty may vary according to the sector of spending, how well it is targeted, and the way in which it is financed. Some countries manage to achieve a rather significant poverty rate reduction even with relatively low, in the context of other Member States, social expenditure (percentage of GDP). This suggests that in order to reduce poverty rates, it is important to consider not only the amount allocated to social spending, but also the areas the social transfers are channelled to. The article aims to analyse how the composition and the extent of social spending/transfers may affect poverty reduction in EU countries. The analysis showed that social protection transfers reduce the percentage of people at-risk-of-poverty in all countries, however, to a very different extent. Regression analysis demonstrated that social exclusion and family/children expenditure was found to be the most important predictor for a relative antipoverty effect of social transfers: even a small percentage increase in such expenditure allows quite a significant increase in the relative antipoverty effect of social transfers.

Suggested Citation

  • Miežienė Rasa & Krutulienė Sandra, 2019. "The Impact of Social Transfers on Poverty Reduction in EU Countries," TalTech Journal of European Studies, Sciendo, vol. 9(1), pages 157-175, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:vrs:bjeust:v:9:y:2019:i:1:p:157-175:n:9
    DOI: 10.1515/bjes-2019-0009
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1515/bjes-2019-0009
    Download Restriction: no

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1515/bjes-2019-0009?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. Chrysa Leventi & Holly Sutherland & Iva Valentinova Tasseva, 2016. "Improving poverty reduction in Europe: what works (best) where?," ImPRovE Working Papers 16/16, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    2. Anonymous, 2014. "Introduction to the Issue," Journal of Wine Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(1), pages 1-2, May.
    3. Geranda Notten & Anne-Catherine Guio, 2016. "The impact of social transfers on income poverty and material deprivation," ImPRovE Working Papers 16/17, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    4. Hwanjoon Kim, 2000. "Anti‐Poverty Effectiveness of Taxes and Income Transfers in Welfare States," International Social Security Review, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 53(4), pages 105-129, November.
    5. Nora Lustig & Carola Pessino & John Scott, 2014. "The Impact of Taxes and Social Spending on Inequality and Poverty in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay: Introduction to the Special Issue," Public Finance Review, , vol. 42(3), pages 287-303, May.
    6. Michael Förster & Marco Mira d'Ercole, 2005. "Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries in the Second Half of the 1990s," OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers 22, OECD Publishing.
    7. Hwanjoon Kim, 2000. "Anti-Poverty Effectiveness of Taxes and Income Transfers in Welfare States," LIS Working papers 228, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    8. Christopher Heady & Theodore Mitrakos & Panos Tsakloglou, 2001. "The distributional impact of social transfers in the European Union: evidence from the ECHP," Fiscal Studies, Institute for Fiscal Studies, vol. 22(4), pages 547-565., December.
    9. Ferdi Celikay & Erdal Gumus, 2017. "The effect of social spending on reducing poverty," International Journal of Social Economics, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 44(5), pages 620-632, May.
    10. Anderson, Edward & d'Orey, Maria Ana Jalles & Duvendack, Maren & Esposito, Lucio, 2018. "Does Government Spending Affect Income Poverty? A Meta-regression Analysis," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 60-71.
    11. Anonymous, 2014. "Introduction to the Issue," Journal of Wine Economics, Cambridge University Press, vol. 9(2), pages 109-110, August.
    12. Hulya Dagdeviren & Rolph Van Der Hoeven & John Weeks, 2002. "Poverty Reduction with Growth and Redistribution," Development and Change, International Institute of Social Studies, vol. 33(3), pages 383-413, June.
    13. Caminada, Koen & Goudswaard, Kees, 2009. "Social expenditure and poverty reduction in the EU15 and other OECD countries," MPRA Paper 20138, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    14. Narayan, Ambar & Saavedra-Chanduvi, Jaime & Tiwari, Sailesh, 2013. "Shared prosperity : links to growth, inequality and inequality of opportunity," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6649, The World Bank.
    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. Aleksy Kwilinski & Oleksandr Vyshnevskyi & Henryk Dzwigol, 2020. "Digitalization of the EU Economies and People at Risk of Poverty or Social Exclusion," JRFM, MDPI, vol. 13(7), pages 1-14, July.

    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. Cabrera, Maynor & Lustig, Nora & Morán, Hilcías E., 2015. "Fiscal Policy, Inequality, and the Ethnic Divide in Guatemala," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 76(C), pages 263-279.
    2. Ravallion, Martin & Chen, Shaohua, 2015. "Benefit incidence with incentive effects, measurement errors and latent heterogeneity: A case study for China," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 124-132.
    3. Campos, Luciano & Casas, Agustín, 2021. "Rara Avis: Latin American populism in the 21st century," European Journal of Political Economy, Elsevier, vol. 70(C).
    4. Linda Irene Llamas Rembao & Luis Huesca Reynoso & José Javier González, 2019. "Impact of Income Taxes on Wages. A Non Parametric Analysis of the Mexican Case," Remef - Revista Mexicana de Economía y Finanzas Nueva Época REMEF (The Mexican Journal of Economics and Finance), Instituto Mexicano de Ejecutivos de Finanzas, IMEF, vol. 14(1), pages 79-94, Enero-Mar.
    5. Luis Huesca & Linda Llamas, 2016. "Testing for Pro-Poorness of Growth through the Tax System: The Mexican Case," Journal of Reviews on Global Economics, Lifescience Global, vol. 5, pages 101-115.
    6. Luis Huesca Reynoso & Abdelkrim Araar, 2016. "Comparison of fiscal system progressivity over time: theory and application in Mexico," Estudios Económicos, El Colegio de México, Centro de Estudios Económicos, vol. 31(1), pages 3-45.
    7. Dora Benedek & Ruud A. Mooij & Michael Keen & Philippe Wingender, 2020. "Varieties of VAT pass through," International Tax and Public Finance, Springer;International Institute of Public Finance, vol. 27(4), pages 890-930, August.
    8. Yixia Cai & Martin Evans, 2018. "Informal Transfers in Comparisons of Income Distributions: Lessons from Rich and Middle-Income Countries," Journal of Income Distribution, Ad libros publications inc., vol. 26(2), pages 1-20, July.
    9. Gonzalo Gomez Bengoechea, 2021. "The impact of the COVID-19 crisis on income distribution under different protection schemes: the case of Spain," Public Sector Economics, Institute of Public Finance, vol. 45(4), pages 517-541.
    10. Pessino, Carola & Izquierdo, Alejandro & Vuletin, Guillermo, 2018. "Better Spending for Better Lives: How Latin America and the Caribbean Can Do More with Less," IDB Publications (Books), Inter-American Development Bank, number 9152, December.
    11. Abdelkrim Araar & Luis Huesca, 2014. "Comparison of the Tax System Progressivity Over Time: Theory and Application with Mexican Data," Cahiers de recherche 1419, CIRPEE.
    12. Bird, Richard M. & Zolt, Eric M., 2015. "Fiscal Contracting in Latin America," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 323-335.
    13. Birdsall, Nancy & Lustig, Nora & Meyer, Christian J., 2014. "The Strugglers: The New Poor in Latin America?," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 60(C), pages 132-146.
    14. Luis Huesca, 2017. "Income redistribution and inequality in the Mexican tax-benefit system," Revista Cuadernos de Economia, Universidad Nacional de Colombia, FCE, CID, vol. 36(72), October.
    15. CHEN, Helen S.Y., 2020. "Designing Sustainable Humanitarian Supply Chains," OSF Preprints m82ar, Center for Open Science.
    16. Eunae Yoo & Elliot Rabinovich & Bin Gu, 2020. "The Growth of Follower Networks on Social Media Platforms for Humanitarian Operations," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(12), pages 2696-2715, December.
    17. Ya Sun & Gongyuan Wang & Haiying Feng, 2021. "Linguistic Studies on Social Media: A Bibliometric Analysis," SAGE Open, , vol. 11(3), pages 21582440211, September.
    18. Winskell, Kate & Sabben, Gaëlle, 2016. "Sexual stigma and symbolic violence experienced, enacted, and counteracted in young Africans’ writing about same-sex attraction," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 161(C), pages 143-150.
    19. Shisong Jiang, 2021. "“When Paradigms Are Out of Place”: Embracing Eclecticism in Legal Scholarship by Academic Turns," Laws, MDPI, vol. 10(4), pages 1-16, October.
    20. Houshmand Masoumi, 2021. "Residential Location Choice in Istanbul, Tehran, and Cairo: The Importance of Commuting to Work," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 13(10), pages 1-18, May.

    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:vrs:bjeust:v:9:y:2019:i:1:p:157-175:n:9. 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: Peter Golla (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.sciendo.com .

    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.