Etudes par pays volume 2, PDF, 346 p., 1,4 Mo - Femise

11873_2002 Study D2: Poverty, Informal Sector, Health and Labour
secondary and tertiary education degree holders has substantially
deteriorated, while people with primary education have seen their poverty to
decline slightly. The intensity of poverty changes are inversely related with
age. For persons under 24, the incidence of poverty almost doubled,
whereas for ages 55-64 poverty has increased slightly and for persons over
65 declined a bit.
A distinctive and varied role in poverty has been played over time by
emigration from and immigration to Greece. First, the exodus of Greeks, in
the 1960s and early 1970s, reduced the number of poor, while the inflows of
migrant remittances raised the incomes of their poor families at home.
Second, the termination of the great emigration had on both counts a reverse
negative impact on poverty. Third, the great inflows of unskilled foreigners,
starting in the early 1990s and continued to the present time, raise both
inequality and poverty. Apart from adding to the cohorts of poor with their
presence, the illegal immigrants among them, working often for low wages,
displace to some extent unskilled Greek workers (see, for instance, Glytsos
and Katseli, 2003).
To answer the question whether the various government transfers to low
income people reduces poverty and to what extent, if any, consider the
following information. According to Eurostat data presented by ESSPROS,
Greece has increased social protection expenditure to 24.5 per cent of GDP
in 1998 (EU average is 27.7 per cent). More than half of social expenditure
goes to old age and survivors’ pensions (52.6 per cent, as against 45.7 per
cent in EU), leaving fewer resources for funding other social transfers. The
greater proportion of pensions in Greece, such as the minimum IKA pension
and the farmers’ (OGA) pensions, which are at or near the poverty line, are,
in fact, for their major part, social welfare payments. They are justified as a
means of reducing poverty for people over 65, which is the main age group
affected by poverty. It has been estimated that this kind of state
‘’intervention’’, including the EKAS, i.e. the allowance of social solidarity
for receivers of low pensions, has cut in half the 1999 proportion of poor (50
per cent definition), from 22.6 per cent without these transfers to 11.4 per
cent after they are counted in the relevant calculations. As a result, the
proportion of poor was kept stable in the face of an increasing poverty trend
(1988-1999) without these transfers (National Action Plan for Social
Inclusion, 2001). In absolute terms, on the basis of the 1994 poverty line,
the proportion of poor has been reduced by 34 per cent, the above transfers
having contributed to this reduction (ibid.). Let me note, in this context, the
government’s claim that the cost for Greece’s accession to the European
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