Family benefit reform in Lithuania: microsimulation of its distributional impacts

Šiame straipsnyje pristatoma mikrosimuliacinė 2004 m. pradėtos ir 2008 m. baigtos šeimos išmokų reformos poveikio pajamų pasiskirstymui analizė. Be tiesioginio reformos poveikio pradiniu ir galutiniu reformos etapais tiriama ir kaip pasikeitė šeimos išmokų gavėjų teisės į socialinės paramos išmokas. Tyrimui atlikti naudojama statinė mikrosimuliacinė analizė, paremta ES-PGS tyrimo 2005 m. mikroduomenimis. Remiantis pateikta analize galima teigti, kad įgyvendintos reformos galimybės sumažinti skurdą yra labai ribotos. Be to, tyrimas parodė kad, vienišų tėvų namų ūkių pajamos žymiau padidėjo tik iki galo įgyvendinus reformą ir santykinė šių namų ūkių gaunama nauda yra vidutiniškai mažesnė negu kitų namų ūkių dėl dažniau prarandamos socialinės paramos. Atitinkama situacija pastebima ir kaimų namų ūkiuose su vaikais.The paper explores to what extent the Lithuanian family benefit system is able to reduce inequality and poverty among families with children, with poverty reduction being one of the major aims. Family benefits underwent a major reform in 2004, which entailed a shift from means-tested benefits to a more universal system. Due to budget constraints, the implementation of the full reform design has been postponed until 2008. No distributional impact analysis of this reform, either of its initial or of its final designs, has been implemented yet. Furthermore, we analyse whether the gains from the newly designed system of family benefits are not outweighed by respective losses in social assistance benefits. To conduct such an analysis, we develop a partial static microsimulation model based on the EU-SILC (household income and living conditions) survey. The model is programmed in STATA statistical software. Our findings show that, despite small income improvements brought by the reform, its overall child poverty reduction effectiveness is limited. Moreover, the interaction of a family benefit with the social assistance system implies that some household types are relatively “bigger” winners compared to others. For example, our research reveals that single-parent households would obtain income gains comparable to those of large families only when the full reform scenario is implemented. If considering indirect effects (i.e. the loss of social assistance benefits), their relative gains become even smaller