Cash Transfers and Guaranteed Minimum Income Programs:
Research, Evaluation, and Policy
Prague, Czech Republic
September 9-10, 2024
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“Adequacy of Minimum Income Scheme in Slovakia: Power Resources Theory and Historical Institutionalism Perspectives”
Daniel Gerbery, Comenius University in Bratislava
Design of the minimum income scheme in Slovakia has been a subject of academic and policy debates for long time. In the past, attention was predominately paid to disincentives and opportunistic behaviour because guaranteed minimum income was perceived as producing poverty trap and intergenerational transmission of poverty. Very often, these arguments were implicitly based on anti-Roma sentiments, using deprived living conditions of marginalised Roma communities as a source of “blame the victims” approach. Adequacy – as a core aspect of the programme – has been often left aside. As result, the most minimum income scheme’s reforms have focused on tightening rules and increasing conditionality. Currently, the minimum income scheme takes the form of poor support for poor people, accompanied by several strict conditions (Kusá 2014, Gerbery – Miklošovič 2018).
The paper focuses on three main challenges in terms of cash minimum income transfers: low level of minimum income benefits, low sensitivity of benefits to number of children in household, low sensitivity of the overall minimum income scheme to housing-related expenses amid growing housing and energy prices. The paper offers empirically- and theoretically-driven synthesis of the findings on minimum income scheme in Slovakia, based on two strands of arguments. First, it explains current lack of adequacy, referring to the latest available comparative empirical evidence as well as the findings produced by the actors at the national level. Secondly, it discusses development of the minimum income scheme and its current state in terms of two theoretical perspectives: institutional theory (historical institutionalism) and power-resources theory. These two theories are sometimes viewed as competing perspectives as they put emphasis on different aspects of changes/stability of the policy programme. We understand and use them as complementary theoretical views that can contribute to our understanding of critical points in forming workfare-based, residual minimum income scheme. While historical institutionalism allows to identify critical junctures and their impact on available policy alternatives, power resources approach turns attention to the effects of policy coalitions building and use of poverty as an issue for policy mobilisation. Both theoretical perspectives will be employed to explain why suspicious approach to poor people (expressed in emphasis on workfare and in lack of adequacy) became common across the political spectrum.