Care and Minimum Income Policies: Between Social Rights and Social Monetary Benefits

Abstract

[eng] This paper proposes an exploratory analysis of five European Minimum Income Schemes (MIS). The aim is to understand to what extent unpaid care work, and care responsibilities more broadly, are taken into consideration in MIS’s conditionality criteria. To the best of our knowledge, no specific study has yet been carried out in this sense. MIS are means-tested monetary benefits for working-age individuals aimed at reducing poverty and social exclusion by promoting their active participation in the labour market. This approach has been questioned because of its inability to understand the reasons why people draw on social security. Women, for example, are increasingly exposed to poverty and social exclusion due to structural gender inequalities that affect their position regarding both unpaid care and paid work. For them, employment alone does not always ensure avoiding poverty while conditioned welfare support can negatively impact their long-term earnings and employability. For the analysis, we apply the framework elaborated by Yerkes et al. to rethink family policy from a Capabilities Perspective. In this way, we assess MIS conditionally under more subjective criteria and conceptualise the minimum income protection as an opportunity structure for working mothers to exit poverty and social exclusion.