Disambiguating Lisbon. Growth, employment and social inclusion in practice Bea Cantillon Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp Liège, 7-8 september 2010

Lisbon: the assumption complementarity between: growth employment inclusion

Source: Eurostat Lisbon: in practice

Why? More in work poverty? More jobless households? Less social spending? Less social protection for the poor?

Poverty reduction by taxes and transfers vs. employment, Source: OECD, calculations by Koen Vleminckx.

At-risk-of-poverty rates among unemployed (most frequent activity status) Source: Eurostat, based on ECHP ( ) and EU-SILC ( )

Net minimum income benefits standardized for wage growth in 12 European Countries, /2009 Source: SaMip (Nelson, 2007) and SCIP (Korpi, 2001).

Distribution of child benefits, care services, leave benefits in Flanders Source: FFCS, authors’ calculations.

Summing up Poverty stand still despite growth of income and employment and little change in social spending Because:  social protection for jobless HH declined  employment related social spending increased

Lisbon: the ambiguities Tension/conflict between employment, growth and social inclusion The concept of social inclusion: low income, joblessness, low skills, bad health, material deprivation…

Lisbon: the ambiguities Priority: more jobs At the cost of less social protection

Disambiguating Lisbon: Active Inclusion “encourage all Member States to design and implement policies which should facilitate the integration into sustainable, quality employment of those who can work and provide resources which are sufficient to live in dignity, together with support for social participation for those who cannot” (European Commission, 2008).

Need for: More adequate social protection Indicators on adequacy of SP A tightened poverty reduction target

More adequate social protection ( 2008 ) Source: Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy (Van Mechelen et al., forthcoming).

Indicators on adequacy of social protection overarching indicator on overall replacement rates of pensions and of unemployment benefits indicator on the adequacy of minimum benefit levels primary overarching indicator on in work poverty and on poverty of the unemployed

the 2020 poverty reduction target reduction by 20 million of the number of people who are at-risk-of-poverty and/or materially deprived and/or living in jobless households

Back to the ambiguity of Lisbon growth (material deprivation) employment inclusion (jobless HH) (at-risk-of-poverty)

Tightening the poverty reduction target The poverty reduction target should be re- defined in such a way that member states should be forced to make progress on and at-risk-of-poverty and material deprivation and living in households with low work intensity

Conclusion: take stock of the failures of the Lisbon strategy develop a ‘road map on active inclusion’ (Frazer et al., 2010) make progress on and at-risk-of-poverty and material deprivation and living in households with low work intensity