Adequacy of Social Minimums: Workfare, Gender and Poverty in Welfare Democracies. Working paper. Swedish Institute for Social Research

Abstract: In Western countries poverty has increased along with the resurgence of low-income targeting and the increased conditionality of social assistance. This paper provides new evidence about the relationship between social minimums and income adequacy by examining the extent to which social benefits distribute income at levels necessary to escape poverty. The empirical analyses combine macro-level institutional data and micro-level income data for 17 industrialized welfare democracies. It is shown that the period 1990-1995 was characterized primarily by a stagnation in social assistance adequacy, while in the latter half of the 1990s it declined. In most countries, social assistance fails to provide income above the poverty threshold, something that makes it difficult to see these benefits as just redistributive instruments. 1 It is widely recognized that receipt of social assistance has become conditional on work-related activities. It is less well acknowledged that the increased conditionality of social assistance has been accompanied by benefit curtailments, either deliberately induced by governments or due to the insufficient updating of benefits. Workfare is therefore not onl