The social bonds are being collected by more than half of the large families with the highest incomes. Specifically, 55% of households with three or more descendants located among the 20% with the highest income receive aid to pay their energy costs. The fact that up to now it has not been required to prove income to access the benefits directed, in principle, for the vulnerable, causes this situation that the Government will reform.
There is a "mismatch" problem between the architecture of the social bonds and who actually collects them, causing them to reach a multitude of people who do not need them. It is the main conclusion of a report by EsadeEcPol published this Wednesday in which energy aid is analyzed and cross-referenced with income levels and types of families existing in Spain. The document, signed by Ángel Martínez, Natalia Collado and Jorge Galindo, outlines the general situation based on the microdata from the Living Conditions Survey of the National Statistics Institute (INE) and points out that, among large families, a good part of The middle class, the upper middle class and a part of the households with the highest incomes are receiving this aid, which should only reach the most needy, according to the general bases of the call.
Among large families, such as the cases of Enrique Ossorio, vice president of the Community of Madrid, and Mónica García, leader of the opposition and of Más Madrid, the households that receive some type of energy bonus are in the majority among medium, high income and very high. To the aforementioned 55% with higher incomes who receive some help, an identical percentage must be added between the 20% of medium and high incomes and the 20% of intermediates.
The number of beneficiaries, on the other hand, is reduced in large families with low or very low income. In this way, less than one in three households with three or more children from the 20% with the lowest income receive any energy aid and only 38% of medium-low income households receive it.
In other words, less than one in three households with a large family in the 20% with the lowest income receives an energy bonus. The proportion of beneficiaries of aid of this type reaches two out of three among the middle and upper classes.
The reason why the social bonus is in the majority among large middle, upper and very high class families is due to the fact that households "with greater availability of time and information to achieve this type of bonus (something that can be approximated by the level of household income) has a greater probability of being able to obtain them”, states the Esade report.
What are considered high, medium and low income among large families? The authors divide the income levels of the h into five sections of the household income levels. For this, it uses the INE academic standard, equivalent income, not net income. In this way, the first tranche corresponds to households with an equivalent income of less than 9,320 euros, households in the second tranche are between that figure and 13,764 euros, those in the third reach 18,554 euros, and those in the fourth reach 25,727 euros. and the families of the last tranche exceed said 25,727 euros. All members of the large household have the same equivalent income and it is the result of dividing the family income between the consumption units. For example, a family of two adults without children would have a consumption unit of 1.5. If your income is 15,000 euros, the equivalent income would be 10,000 euros.
The fact that a significant number of large families receive some kind of social bonus means that, in the analysis of family income in general, it is observed that 2% of households with the greatest economic capacity are receiving some help to cover their energy bill. In other words, one in every 25 families of the 2% that earns the most in the country are also taking advantage of the social bonds.
On the opposite side, among the lowest income households, only 17% receive some type of social bonus. Another striking fact is that only 8.3% of Spanish households receive energy aid, a percentage that contrasts with the number of households, the 14.3% who declare that they cannot keep their home at an adequate temperature.
