Inclusiveness and Flexibility of Income Support Policies
Authors: Daly Mary 
Published: October 2023

This report identifies key features of the income support systems in the six countries covered by the rEUsilience study - Belgium, Croatia, Poland, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom - as they relate to families with children. The underlying aim was to set out the institutional context – especially of the family benefits and minimum income benefits – for how they construct and support particular familial arrangements and influence behavioural pathways for parents and families. What the analysis shows, first, is that the presence of children motivates support through family policy in all of the six countries but to a differential degree and with different priorities. Four of the strongest points of variation are: whether a universal income benefit that supports all children regardless of their parents’ income or other situation exists; whether this is accompanied by a second tier of child-specific supports (usually means-tested); the criteria used to determine the amount of the benefit; which family situations or circumstances or needs are recognised for the purposes of child benefits. In the latter regard, the research established that the universe of coverage envisages three circumstances: children being reared by one parent; children with a disability; families with larger numbers of children. The countries that are most supportive of children in terms of the degree of inclusiveness of their child benefit system are Belgium and Poland, followed by Sweden. When it comes to the minimum income schemes, it is more difficult to identify the family-related components. These tend to be individual oriented in a way that child benefits are not, although in all six countries the benefit amount is calculated on the basis of the household, suggesting assumptions and practices relating to dependence among people who share a household or family. What matters also for MIS is engagement with the labour market on the part of the claimant. In a second set of findings, the report looked at family-related flexibility, interpreting this as the extent to which different family structures and work-family arrangements garner support across the different countries. Here, the focus was on the benefit system as a whole. The results again show variation across the countries but they also confirm some of the general findings on the two income support case studies in that Croatia and Spain make the least use of their income support systems to tailor the work-life balance or income situation of parents (except in the case of lone parents). They are the countries also least likely to vary benefit support according to the number of children in a family. The UK is similar in the latter regard but its benefit system is very finely tuned to encouraging employment on the part of benefit recipients. It is notably unsupportive of one-earner families, even when the earner is on a relatively low wage. Sweden and Belgium stand out as countries that offer generous support to families when wages are low. These, along with Poland, make strong use of their income support systems to incentivise particular family-based behaviours and structures.