Download or read book Poverty and Social Transfers in Poland written by Christiaan Grootaert and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: March 1995 How well did Poland's system of social transfers help alleviate poverty in 1993, and what changes in the allocation of social transfer funds would improve the distribution of income? Since January 1990, Poland's social safety net has changed greatly. Unemployment benefits were introduced, for example, because of escalating unemployment (about 15 percent of the labor force at the end of 1993). The cost of the social safety net has risen sharply since the transition began, both absolutely and as a fraction of GDP. In 1993, social transfers accounted for 18.7 percent of GDP, as follows: (1) pensions=14.9 percent, (2) unemployment benefits=1.9 percent, (3) family allowance and other social insurance=1.4 percent, and (4) social assistance=0.5 percent. To investigate the present system's impact on income distribution, Grootaert uses the household budget survey data for January-June 1993, the first complete survey of the Polish population. The conventional benchmark for measuring poverty in Poland, the social minimum, has become largely irrelevant, as 55 percent of the people fall below that spending level. Using two other measures, Grootaert finds that in 1993 26.3 percent of the population had an expenditure level (per adult equivalent) below the minimum wage, and 14.4 percent were spending at a level below the minimum pension. He discusses four proposals for improving the ability of social transfers (other than pensions) to reduce poverty. These proposals are either budget-neutral or imply only modest increases in the total amount of transfers: * Income-testing the family allowance and doubling the amount for large households. This would reduce poverty from 14.4 to 13.2 percent -- and, among large households, from 43 to 28 percent. * Reducing eligibility for the family allowance from 20 to 18 years and taxing the allowance; providing income-tested daycare vouchers for young children. This would make the family allowance more progressive. Reducing eligibility and taxing the allowance would raise poverty about 1 percentage point, which would be largely offset by the daycare vouchers. * Improving income testing for social assistance. More than half of current beneficiaries are not poor. A 20 percent improvement in targeting would reduce poverty by about 0.3 percentage points. * Extending eligibility for unemployment benefits for low-skilled unemployed members of the labor force in large households. This would increase benefits by about 7 percent, but reduce poverty about 0.4 percentage points -- benefiting especially the poorest part of the population. This paper -- a product of the Country Operations Division, Europe and Central Asia, Country Department II -- is part of a larger effort in the department to undertake poverty assessments in the region. The author may be contacted at [email protected].
Download or read book Poverty and Social Transfers in Poland written by Christiaan Grootaert and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1995 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Poverty and Social Transfers in Poland written by Christian Grootaert and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 92 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How well did Poland's sys ...
Download or read book Inequality Transfers and Growth written by Eswar Prasad and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2000-06 with total page 58 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper challenges the conventional wisdom that inequality in Poland increased markedly during the economic transition. Income and consumption inequality actually declined in 1990-92 and rose only moderately above pre-transition levels by 1997. However, inequality in labor earnings increased markedly and consistently during 1990-97. Social transfer mechanisms, including pensions, helped mitigate increases in overall inequality and poverty. More importantly, these transfer mechanisms were well-designed to reduce political resistance to market-oriented reforms in the early years of transition, paving the way for rapid growth. Cross-country evidence from transition economies is consistent with this interpretation and with recent literature suggesting that inequality-reducing redistribution can enhance growth.
Download or read book Economic Growth Income Distribution and Poverty in Poland During Transition written by and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2004 with total page 18 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Economic Growth Income Distribution and Poverty in Poland During Transition written by Pierella Paci and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 24 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "Paci, Sasin, and Verbeek attempt to analyze the linkages between macroeconomic policies and economic growth variables, their movement over time, and their impact on poverty in the case of Poland. Poland, a middle-income country, is of particular interest because its data sources allow for a relatively detailed analysis of such developments, and the macroeconomic environment and the economic growth variables show a relatively sizable degree of variance. In addition, Poland has struggled in the past few years to reduce poverty while still experiencing positive economic growth. The authors show that in Poland, poverty-reducing growth depends heavily on the ability of the economy to generate jobs. During the early years of transition, net job growth was positive, while after the Russian crisis of 1998, productivity gains were accomplished mostly through labor shedding, henceforth, increasing poverty in Poland. In addition, the authors identify how fiscal and social protection policies affect income distribution and poverty in Poland. This paper-- a product of the Poverty Reduction and Economic Management Sector Unit, Europe and Central Asia Region-- is part of a larger effort in the region to analyze the links between post-transition economic growth and poverty reduction"-- World Bank web site.
Download or read book Welfare and the Labor Market in Poland written by Jan J. Rutkowski and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1998-01-01 with total page 116 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This report assesses the changes in social welfare and policy that have taken place in Poland during the economic transition. It tests the main hypotheses concerning changes in the role of the welfare state, workings of the labor market, the distributional consequences of transition, and more generally about the winners and losers in transition. Chapter one examines trends in social expenditure during economic transition. Chapter two focuses on changes in the labor market, including emerging risks and opportunities. Chapter three explores distributional consequences of transition.
Download or read book Trends in Child Poverty and Social Transfers in the Czech Republic Hungary and Poland written by Michael F. Förster and published by . This book was released on 2000 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Poverty Dynamics in Poland Selected Quantitative Analyses written by Miriam Beblo and published by . This book was released on 2014 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The present report summarises the outcome of a research project carried out jointly by researchers of the Polish Center for Social and Economic Research Foundation (CASE) and the German Centre for European Economic Research (ZEW) and funded by the Volkswagen foundation. The objective of this project is to analyse the mechanisms at work in the rise and persistence of poverty during transition in Poland, as well as its consequences for selected groups of the population. The transition process from a centralised to a market economy in Poland has been accompanied by an unprecedented increase in poverty and a deepening of inequality across households - not only in terms of income but also in terms of socio-economic status. Although a small number of studies describing the economic situation of the poor in Poland have been undertaken, our understanding of the mechanisms that make poverty persist in the household context is considerably limited. The interaction of a number of factors may for example, result in individuals being trapped in a vicious circle of poverty. Low household income may lead to social exclusion and family distress, which is likely to have far-reaching consequences for all household members. Social exclusion may contribute to foster alcoholism, impede the human capital investment in children, and thus jeopardise the socioeconomic situation of the next generation. Socially excluded people experience severe difficulties in finding re-employment. Social transfers might even worsen the situation by providing a disincentive to seek work. We need to understand the causes underlying the developments in social and economic hardship of Polish families during the course of the transition process. The introductory chapter therefore offers a general look at the picture of poverty in Poland; trends and new research results are described. In order to improve our understanding of the causes of social exclusion and to contribute to filling the gap in research we do not, however, restrict our attention solely to the analysis of the extent and nature of poverty in general but rather focus our analysis on issues that have been somewhat overlooked. This project contributes to the literature by investigating empirically different dimensions of the poverty debate in Poland - ranging from social exclusion through the relationship between transfers and labour supply to the transmission of poverty across generations. The empirical analyses are carried out on the basis of individual and household histories which are observed in the Polish Labour Force Survey and of administrative data on social assistance beneficiaries.
Download or read book Conditional Cash Transfers written by Ariel Fiszbein and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 2009-02-09 with total page 384 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs aim to reduce poverty by making welfare programs conditional upon the receivers' actions. That is, the government only transfers the money to persons who meet certain criteria. These criteria may include enrolling children into public schools, getting regular check-ups at the doctor's office, receiving vaccinations, or the like. They have been hailed as a way of reducing inequality and helping households break out of a vicious cycle whereby poverty is transmitted from one generation to another. Do these and other claims make sense? Are they supported by the available empirical evidence? This volume seeks to answer these and other related questions. Specifically, it lays out a conceptual framework for thinking about the economic rationale for CCTs; it reviews the very rich evidence that has accumulated on CCTs; it discusses how the conceptual framework and the evidence on impacts should inform the design of CCT programs in practice; and it discusses how CCTs fit in the context of broader social policies. The authors show that there is considerable evidence that CCTs have improved the lives of poor people and argue that conditional cash transfers have been an effective way of redistributing income to the poor. They also recognize that even the best-designed and managed CCT cannot fulfill all of the needs of a comprehensive social protection system. They therefore need to be complemented with other interventions, such as workfare or employment programs, and social pensions.
Download or read book Understanding Poverty in Poland written by World Bank and published by World Bank Publications. This book was released on 1995 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Poland written by Mr.Xavier Maret and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 1993-05-01 with total page 62 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper argues that the brunt of the reform-induced increase in Polish social expenditures has been borne by social insurance arrangements (mainly pensions and unemployment compensation) rather than by social assistance schemes targeted to the poor or more temporary social safety net schemes. This is largely due to ease of access to social security and its more attractive benefit structure. Much of recent social expenditure reform had an ad-hoc nature and was driven by the need to alleviate looming financial distress. A major policy challenge is to avoid a further burdening of social security by needs that should be addressed by basic income support and emergency assistance policies or by general transfers (e.g., family allowances). Current reform needs are illustrated by using unemployment benefits and pensions as examples.
Download or read book Poverty and Social Assistance in Transition Countries written by NA NA and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-04-30 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Declining incomes and growing income inequality have led to a rise in poverty in the transition economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. This study examines poverty and social assistance in six countries - Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Russia, and Kyrgyz Republic - to compare the poverty profiles and the correlates of poverty between the two regions. The study finds that the profile of poverty is more sharply defined in Eastern Europe than in the former Soviet Union, where poverty is more widespread. This holds the potential for better targeting of social assistance in Eastern Europe, and the study proposes a novel two-step approach to identify the poor.
Download or read book Poverty and Social Assistance in Transition Countries written by J. Braithwaite and published by Springer. This book was released on 2016-02-10 with total page 199 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Declining incomes and growing income inequality have led to a rise in poverty in the transition economies of Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. This study examines poverty and social assistance in six countries - Bulgaria, Hungary, Poland, Estonia, Russia, and the Kyrgyz Republic - comparing the poverty profiles and the correlates of poverty between the two regions. The study finds that the profile of poverty is more sharply defined in Eastern Europe than in the former Soviet Union, where poverty is more widespread. This holds the potential for better targeting of social assistance in Eastern Europe, and the study proposes a novel two-step approach to identify the poor.
Download or read book The Distributional Impact of Taxes and Transfers in Poland written by Karolina Goraus and published by . This book was released on 2016 with total page 52 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This paper assesses the impact of fiscal policy on the incidence, depth, and severity of poverty, and examines whether there is room for an increased role for fiscal policy in improving the wellbeing of the poor. The results show that the combined effect of taxes and social spending helped substantially to reduce poverty and inequality in Poland in 2014, in line with other European Union countries, with most of the reduction largely being achieved by pensions. However, in cash terms, households beginning in the second decile were net payers to the treasury in 2014, as the share of taxes paid exceeded the cash benefits received for all but the poorest 10 percent of the population. Although the Polish fiscal system in 2014 had the capacity to redistribute, it had a relatively weak capacity to reduce poverty given the resources at its disposal, and this was especially true for families with children. Microsimulations of the introduction of the Family 500+ program in 2016 show the redistributive and poverty reduction impacts of the new program, even after taking into account the potential increase in indirect taxes. Finally, alternative reforms of the tax-free allowance are considered, and estimates of their likely impact on poverty, inequality, and the potential fiscal cost are presented. The simulations show that there are potential efficiency gains from further targeting each of these new initiatives.
Download or read book Poverty and Social Exclusion During and After Poland s Transition to Capitalism written by Paulina Bunio-Mroczek and published by Jagiellonian University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book examines poverty in Poland during the transition to capitalism and in the decade that followed through the lives of women in disadvantaged post-industrial urban neighborhoods. It searches for the causes that drive and maintain poverty in changes in industrial relations, welfare regimes, and family structures and relations.
Download or read book The Dynamics of Poverty and the Effectiveness of Poland s Safety Net 1993 96 written by Włodzimierz Okrasa and published by . This book was released on 1999 with total page 88 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Changes in Poland's family allowances and unemployment benefits have significant but different effects on different groups of households. In deciding on strategies to address long-term poverty, policymakers must take such differences into account.
