Poverty has many different facets. It can affect people of any age, for a wide variety of reasons, and the effects can be far-reaching. Poverty and hardship often impact on the personal circumstances and relationships of affected individuals and can also take a significant toll on their mental health.
Basic income support is an important tool for mitigating the impact of poverty. However, in the case of people seeking employment this tool always has certain repercussions for the individual and for society that need to be examined. To explain why these particular effects occur, we have to analyse the interdependencies and connections between the different circumstances in people’s lives.
Using comprehensive data sets, the ‘Labour market and social security’ panel of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB) is able to identify structural, inadvertent side effects of the introduction of basic income support. As well as addressing questions of multi-generational poverty, the IAB research examines which paths lead into dependence on government transfer payments and what the long-term consequences are for the individual and their household.
When poverty is linked with the loss of a job, this can have social and psychological repercussions in addition to more direct financial ones. The IAB is conducting research in this area, as well as into the effects of a mother’s threatened or actual job loss on the early development of children, and also the prevention of poverty in old age due to insufficient provision for retirement.
This special feature provides a link to publications by the IAB on the topic of poverty.