IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ise/isegwp/wp92004.html

The Redistributive Impact of the Guaranteed Minimum Income Programme in Portugal

Author

Listed:
  • Carlos Farinha Rodrigues

Abstract

In this paper we evaluate the impact of the Portuguese Guaranteed Minimum Income Programme (GMI) on the income distribution in Portugal, and discuss its effectiveness and efficiency in fighting poverty and social exclusion in the country. We measure its impact on the distribution of household incomes and poverty, as well as the amount of government expenditure required to finance it. Our results show that 5.3% of households and 6.5% of the population are eligible to receive GMI. The programme has a small but positive impact on reducing inequality. Furthermore, the analysis of the effectiveness of the GMI shows that it has a positive impact on reducing the poverty rate. However, the most important consequence of the GMI is the sharp improvements in the measures of poverty intensity and severity. The efficiency indicators associated with the programme show that 92% of the transfers are awarded to poor people and that 89% of the transfers effectively contribute towards reducing the poverty gap. A very preliminary assessment of the take-up associated with the program shows that only 72 per cent of the families entitled to receive benefits from the programme are actually receiving it.

Suggested Citation

  • Carlos Farinha Rodrigues, 2004. "The Redistributive Impact of the Guaranteed Minimum Income Programme in Portugal," Working Papers Department of Economics 2004/09, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    • Handle: RePEc:ise:isegwp:wp92004
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://depeco.iseg.ulisboa.pt/wp/wp092004.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    2. Beckerman, W, 1979. "The Impact of Income Maintenance Payments on Poverty in Britain, 1975," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 89(354), pages 261-279, June.
    3. Atkinson, Anthony B., 1970. "On the measurement of inequality," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 2(3), pages 244-263, September.
    4. repec:bla:revinw:v:30:y:1984:i:3:p:351-75 is not listed on IDEAS
    5. Frank A. Cowell, 1984. "The Structure Of American Income Inequality," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 30(3), pages 351-375, September.
    6. Miguel Gouveia & Carlos Farinha Rodrigues, "undated". "The impact of a "Minimum Guaranteed Income Program" in Portugal," Working Papers Department of Economics 1999/03, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Blog mentions

    As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
    1. Portuguese drug policy shows that decriminalisation can work, but only with other policies.
      by Blog Admin in EUROPP European Politics and Policy on 2012-12-10 13:30:22

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Lucía Gorjón García & Antonio Villar, 2019. "The Minimum Income Scheme as a poverty reduction mechanism:the case of the Basque Country," Studies on the Spanish Economy eee2019-10, FEDEA.
    2. Vassiliki Koutsogeorgopoulou & Manos Matsaganis & Chrysa Leventi & Jan-David Schneider, 2014. "Fairly Sharing the Social Impact of the Crisis in Greece," OECD Economics Department Working Papers 1106, OECD Publishing.
    3. Anna Laura Mancini, 2007. "Labor supply responses of Italian women to minimum income policies," CHILD Working Papers wp14_07, CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY.
    4. Cláudia Costa & Paula Santana, 2021. "Gender and Age Differences in Socio‐economic Inequalities in Total and Avoidable Mortality in Portugal: A Trend Analysis," Fiscal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 42(1), pages 123-145, March.
    5. Ayala, Luis & Rodriguez, Magdalena, 2006. "The latin model of welfare: Do `insertion contracts' reduce long-term dependence?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 13(6), pages 799-822, December.
    6. Marjan Petreski & Nikica Mojsoska-Blazevski, 2017. "Overhaul of the social assistance system in Macedonia: Simulating the effects of introducing Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) scheme," Finance Think Policy Studies 2017-11, Finance Think - Economic Research and Policy Institute.
    7. Marjan Petreski & Nikica Mojsoska Blazevski, 2017. "Overhaul of the social assistance system in Macedonia: Simulating the effects of introducing Guaranteed Minimum Income (GMI) scheme," Finance Think Policy Studies 2017-11/11, Finance Think - Economic Research and Policy Institute.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Carlos Farinha Rodrigues, 2001. "Anti-poverty effectiveness and efficiency of the Guaranteed Minimum Income Programme in Portugal," Working Papers Department of Economics 2001/08, ISEG - Lisbon School of Economics and Management, Department of Economics, Universidade de Lisboa.
    2. Lucía Gorjón García & Antonio Villar, 2019. "The Minimum Income Scheme as a poverty reduction mechanism:the case of the Basque Country," Studies on the Spanish Economy eee2019-10, FEDEA.
    3. James E. Foster & Joel Greer & Erik Thorbecke, 2010. "The Foster-Greer-Thorbecke (FGT) Poverty Measures: Twenty-Five Years Later," Working Papers 2010-14, The George Washington University, Institute for International Economic Policy.
    4. Sreenivasan Subramanian, 2004. "Indicators of Inequality and Poverty," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-25, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    5. Bibi, Sami & Duclos, Jean-Yves, 2007. "Equity and policy effectiveness with imperfect targeting," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 83(1), pages 109-140, May.
    6. James Foster & Joel Greer & Erik Thorbecke, 2010. "The Foster–Greer–Thorbecke (FGT) poverty measures: 25 years later," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 8(4), pages 491-524, December.
    7. B. Essama‐Nssah & Peter J. Lambert, 2009. "Measuring Pro‐Poorness: A Unifying Approach With New Results," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 55(3), pages 752-778, September.
    8. Frank Cowell & Udo Ebert, 2004. "Complaints and inequality," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 23(1), pages 71-89, August.
    9. Erik Thorbecke, 2004. "Conceptual and Measurement Issues in Poverty Analysis," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2004-04, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    10. Constantine Angyridis & Brennan Scott Thompson, 2016. "Negative income taxes, inequality and poverty," Canadian Journal of Economics, Canadian Economics Association, vol. 49(3), pages 1016-1034, August.
    11. Ferreira , Francisco H. G., 2010. "Distributions in motion: economic growth, inequality, and poverty dynamics," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5424, The World Bank.
    12. Guillermo Cruces, 2005. "Income Fluctuations, Poverty and Well-Being Over Time: Theory and Application to Argentina," Labor and Demography 0502007, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Higgins, Sean & Lustig, Nora, 2016. "Can a poverty-reducing and progressive tax and transfer system hurt the poor?," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 122(C), pages 63-75.
    14. Mejía-Guerra, José Antonio & Vos, Rob, 1997. "Poverty in Latin America and the Caribbean: An Inventory: 1980-95," IDB Publications (Working Papers) 6197, Inter-American Development Bank.
    15. Gerhard Kockläuner, 2013. "Die neuen Indizes des Bericht über die menschliche Entwicklung 2010," AStA Wirtschafts- und Sozialstatistisches Archiv, Springer;Deutsche Statistische Gesellschaft - German Statistical Society, vol. 7(3), pages 121-133, December.
    16. Stéphane Mussard, 2007. "La décomposition des mesures d’inégalité en sources de revenu : méthodes et applications," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 83(3), pages 415-445.
    17. John Creedy, 1997. "Labour Supply and Social Welfare when Utility Depends on a Threshold Consumption Level," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 73(221), pages 159-168, June.
    18. Simshauser, Paul, 2021. "Vulnerable households and fuel poverty: Measuring the efficiency of policy targeting in Queensland," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 101(C).
    19. Riccardo Massari, 2005. "A Measure of Welfare Based on Permanent Income Hypothesis: An Application on Italian Households Budgets," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 64(1), pages 55-92, September.
    20. Kristof Bosmans & Lucio Esposito & Peter Lambert, 2011. "New perspectives on a more-or-less familiar poverty index," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 36(2), pages 241-247, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ise:isegwp:wp92004. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Vitor Escaria (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://aquila.iseg.ulisboa.pt/aquila/departamentos/EC .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.