Quarter of people at risk of poverty

The fed­er­a­tion En­ti­tats Cata­lanes d’Acció So­cial (ECAS) yes­ter­day pre­sented its 10th Inso­cat study into job se­cu­rity, liv­ing costs and so­cial spend­ing. The study by so­cial re­searcher Georgina Marín with doc­tor of eco­nom­ics, Júlia Montser­rat, shows that poverty and in­equal­ity have gone up in Cat­alo­nia, de­spite two years of cau­tious eco­nomic re­cov­ery.

The study’s re­sults show that 23.8% of the pop­u­la­tion is at risk of poverty and so­cial ex­clu­sion, with 20% with higher fi­nan­cial re­sources earn­ing 5.7 times more than the 20% who earn least. The study thus sug­gests in­equal­ity con­tin­ues to rise, par­tic­u­larly among mi­grants.

What’s more, half of house­holds have dif­fi­cul­ties get­ting to the end of the month. Teresa Cre­spo, spokes­woman for Po­bresa and for­mer ECAS pres­i­dent, pointed to a lack of trans­for­ma­tive pub­lic pol­icy and in­suf­fi­cient so­cial spend­ing as de­ter­min­ing fac­tors in en­sur­ing “the per­pet­u­a­tion of in­equal­i­ties and poverty.”

The re­port also shows that spend­ing on basic ser­vices has not re­cov­ered from the cuts made be­tween 2010 and 2014. In this pe­riod, spend­ing on basic ser­vices went down by four bil­lion and has only re­cov­ered by 1.8 bil­lion. In em­ploy­ment, the re­port fo­cuses on the tem­po­rary na­ture of jobs, with al­most 9 out of 10 new con­tracts being tem­po­rary. In wages, the re­port clearly re­veals gen­der dis­crim­i­na­tion, with al­most 20% of women earn­ing less than the min­i­mum wage every year, which for men is 7.8%.

As for hous­ing, the re­port shows that the rate of risk of poverty is higher among peo­ple who rent homes. Xavi Loza, di­rec­tor of La Vinya d’Acció So­cial, said it is poverty “linked to the rise in rents and a lack of pub­lic hous­ing.” Fi­nally, the study ques­tions the so­cial ben­e­fit sys­tem, with Fer­ran Bus­quets, from the Fun­dació Ar­rels, and Teresa Cre­spo, call­ing for greater in­vest­ment in the guar­an­teed min­i­mum in­come.