Escrivá finalizes employment incentives for beneficiaries of the minimum vital income | Economy

The minimum vital income (IMV), about to celebrate two years of life in Spain, is entering a new phase, in the opinion of the Minister of Inclusion, Social Security and Migration, José Luis Escrivá. “Once we have a considerable number of beneficiaries and we have stabilized the benefit, the key has to be the integration of these people,” said the minister this Monday at an informative breakfast. To promote this inclusion, Escrivá has highlighted the importance of the entry of IMV beneficiaries into the labor market. With this objective, the minister has announced that his department is working on a regulation that will encourage these vulnerable people to access a job.

“We are about to issue an incentive regulation for the employment of these people who find it difficult to enter the labor market. They must be helped to make their employment more compatible with their situation with the minimum vital income”, commented Escrivá during his appearance, organized by the debate organization Nueva Economía Fórum. This initiative will arrive “soon” at the Council of Ministers, as well as “the social seal, which will facilitate collaboration with companies to favor the inclusion of the beneficiaries of the benefit”.

As explained by the minister, there are already 1.2 million beneficiaries of the IMV, who live in 461,000 households. Escrivá has highlighted that this aid reaches more than half a million children and 85,000 single-parent households, “normally women with children who cannot reconcile sufficient employment; Helping them is an absolute social responsibility.”

The aid started with many implementation problems, such as delays in its processing. Of the 2,728 million planned in the 2021 item, only 1,402 had been executed in September, according to a report by the Association of Directors and Managers of Social Services. When the IMV was approved, in June 2020, the Executive calculated that it could reach 850,000 households in which more than 2.3 million people live, around half of the current beneficiaries.

The minister has spoken of the “poverty trap” in which many people fall and from which it is “very difficult to get out”. “There are processes by which some people get into a loop of negativity.” To escape this spiral, Escrivá considers necessary “a small and limited benefit that maintains the dignity of people”, that takes them “out of the vicious circle of poverty”. “The success of the IMV can be verified when we know how many people transit to a better situation”, added the minister, who he has classified as “an insult” to call this benefit “little payment”. “It is intolerable because of the pejorative element and what it means in terms of ignorance of severe poverty and social exclusion,” he has said.

Along these lines, Escrivá has also explained that his department is trying to find out what is the most effective way to achieve the inclusion of the most vulnerable. “There are many organizations and social workers from municipalities and autonomous communities, but we do not have the perception of what works best. We need scientific rigor.” For this he has spoken of the implementation of 34 inclusion itineraries in collaboration with different public administrations and entities of the third sector. They serve to “know better what works to get them out of that trap; we are doing it with the financing of resilience funds”.