Improving poverty reduction in Europe: What works best where?

an article by Chrysa Leventi, Holly Sutherland and Iva Valentinova Tasseva (University of Essex, UK) published in Journal of European Social Policy Volume 29 Issue 1 (February 2019)

Abstract

This article examines how income poverty is affected by changes to the scale of tax-benefit policies and which are the most cost-effective policies in reducing poverty or limiting its increase in seven diverse EU countries.

We do that by measuring the implications of increasing/reducing the scale of each policy instrument, using microsimulation methods while holding constant the policy design and national context.

We consider commonly applied policy instruments with a direct effect on household income: child benefits, social assistance, income tax lower thresholds and a benchmark case of rescaling the whole tax-benefit system.

We find that the assessment of the most cost-effective instrument may depend on the measure of poverty used and the direction and scale of the change. Nevertheless, our results indicate that the options that reduce poverty most cost-effectively in most countries are increasing child benefits and social assistance, while reducing the former is a particularly poverty-increasing way of making budgetary cuts.

Full text (PDF 15pp)

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