One of the most surprising data revealed by the study by the Independent Authority for Fiscal Responsibility (Airef) is that there are 400,000 households that are entitled to the Minimum Vital Income (IMV) benefit that do not request it. It is a shocking fact but it also occurs in the countries around us. The causes are varied. They range from the difficulties that this population may encounter in applying, in the waiting time for processing, and in the stigma and loss of anonymity that formulating the request entails.
It must be taken into account that to formulate the IMV application, you must present the income tax return and also register as a job seeker. In any case, at Airef they do not want to comment on whether behind these requests not formulated by people who would be entitled to obtain the aid, a phenomenon known as non take-up, there is also an underground economy. “Unreported income is not seen in the administrative data. If this is a cause, we cannot prove it with data”, said José María Casado, director of Evaluation of Airef.
Most of these potential applicants who do not exercise their right are households that have income, although they fall below the thresholds to benefit from complementary help from the IMV. Specifically, 53% receive unemployment benefits. They represent an income of around 430 euros, which could be increased if they made the request.
Another noteworthy fact of Airef's opinion on the Minimum Vital Income is that this aid only reaches 40% of the potential beneficiaries. Specifically, to 284,000 homes, when it could cover 700,000 homes if it were fully implemented.
Therefore, the balance that Airef makes of this benefit is ambivalent. It is an instrument that has made progress, but has only deployed part of its potential, and has more to go to become a more powerful instrument in the fight against poverty. “Has the IMV contributed to the fight against poverty? Without a doubt, yes”, the president told Airef, Cristina Herrero, although she criticized the fact that a specific objective of the measure has not been set, a certain percentage of poverty reduction, which makes it more difficult to give a rating to its effectiveness.
Regarding whether reaching only 40% of the potential beneficiaries is a failure, Herrero replied that “we do not put qualifications, we put data on the table. Qualifying as a success or failure seems to me a simplification and Airef is not a friend of putting qualifiers on the data".
On the other hand, the Airef analysis provides other interesting observations. For example, the very high level of refusals. Of a total of 1.5 million applications submitted until December 31, 73% were denied, the majority for exceeding the minimum income set or for not matching the criteria of coexistence and registration. It is true that the level of refusals was concentrated especially in the first months of implementation of the benefit, reaching 80% refusals, which has been reduced to the current 60%.
