Spain

Spain has a high share of the working age population at risk of poverty or social exclusion and a high incidence of child poverty. While Spain has introduced a minimum income at the national level, social inclusion policies are the responsibility of the regions. At present, the coverage of the minimum income remains low and there are many differences in the design and implementation of social inclusion policies across regions, especially as a number of regions do not develop social inclusion strategies. There is also a lack of a multidimensional approach to social inclusion. This report develops options for new inclusion models that address current challenges and help formulate a coherent inclusion strategy. It also sets out a blueprint for developing a monitoring and evaluation framework. The recommendations aim to increase the effectiveness of minimum income policies and strengthen the co-ordination between social services, employment, health and housing.

Being able to swim empowers individuals to make choices, have agency, and be free to choose core aspects of their life, such as working safely on or near water. It is also associated with lifelong health benefits and reduces the risk of drowning. Using data from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll 2019, this paper provides the first global estimates of adults’ ability to swim without assistance. Individuals in high-income countries are considerably more likely to report being able to swim without assistance than individuals in low-income countries. Disparities also exist within countries. In particular, women are less likely to be able to swim without assistance than men in virtually all countries, birth cohorts, and levels of education. Investing in reducing inequalities in life skills, such as swimming, can foster economic development and empowerment, especially in light of threats, such as climate change.

Social services in Spain are confronted with a series of challenges, including growing demand due to population ageing, changing family models, rising inequality and labour market changes. Services are fragmented and, with multiple providers, lack reliable and comprehensive data. There is also a discontinuity between primary and specialised care. The decentralised model of competences generates complexity in management and financing of services. With the current governance and financing system, there are disparities in the type and quality of social services provided across the 17 Spanish Autonomous Communities and two autonomous cities. In addition, there is a lack of portability of benefits throughout the country. This report suggests ways to improve the legal context, move towards more universal services, strengthen quality, and move towards more evidence-based policies.

This paper provides an overview of how social services are organised in European Union countries. With a special focus on Spain and countries with federal or semi-federal organisation, the paper starts by analysing social services from a legal perspective. It provides a comparative perspective on several concrete aspects of social services: sources of funding (national, regional, local, etc.), organization of service provision, expenditure, human resources, governance and coordination between institutions. The analysis finds that, despite differences across countries, there is no link between the existence of a comprehensive national social services laws and the comprehensiveness of the social service offer (the main differences concern family services and housing services in countries which consider housing as a right). There exist large differences in the contribution of central, regional, and local governments to social expenditure. Spending more on services does not necessarily imply spending less in cash transfers. Indeed, it appears that Nordic countries, that spend more on services as a share of their GDP, also spend more on cash transfers. Finally, the paper stresses the important role of the information technology and the horizontal and vertical coordination mechanisms to improve service quality and accessibility.

This paper sets out the OECD’s assessment of the information technology (IT) systems for social services used by the public administration in Spain. It shows that large disparities exist between and within regions in the use of IT tools. The lack of unified systems and the different ways to identify individuals and classify services makes the exchange of information extremely challenging. Improving the national data collection on social services highlights the importance of agreeing on a common terminology and deciding on a set of indicators as well as designing a flexible IT infrastructure to collect the information.

Spanish society values families and family life highly, but the way that families look and live has been changing drastically over the past decades. From being one of the countries with the highest fertility rates in Europe, Spain now has the lowest rate in the region and the legalisation of divorce and social acceptance of co-habitation has led to a decline in the traditional nuclear family model. At the same time, the share of mothers who are employed increased by more than 50% over the past two decades, though it remains below the OECD average. While family law has evolved quite strongly alongside these societal changes, family policy – i.e. the combination of benefits, services, tax breaks and leave arrangements that support family members in raising and providing care to minor children and other dependent persons – has undergone some changes but few major reforms. This report suggests ways to adapt Spain’s family policy to incorporate family diversity into the national policy framework, improve family well-being, reduce child poverty and make family life easier for all.

Social protection systems use a range of entitlement criteria. First-tier support typically requires contributions or past employment in many countries, while safety net benefits are granted on the basis of need. In a context of volatile and uncertain labour markets, careful and continuous monitoring of the effectiveness of income support is a key input into an evidence-based policy process. This paper proposes a novel empirical method for monitoring the accessibility and levels of safety net benefits. It focusses on minimum-income benefits (MIB) and other non-contributory transfers and relies on data on the amounts of cash support that individuals in need receive in practice. Results show that accessibility and benefit levels differ enormously across countries – for instance, in 2015/16, more than four out of five low-income workless one-person households received MIB in Australia, France and the United Kingdom, compared to only one in five in Greece, Italy and Korea, three countries that have since sought to strengthen aspects of safety-net provisions.

In Barcelona, the rate of foreign residents has quintupled since 2000, and in 2017, 23% of the population was foreign-born. From the late 1990s until today, the municipality has followed an intercultural strategy to implement inclusive measures for local migrant integration. These measures have been recently reinforced to welcome asylum seekers who tripled between 2015 and 2017. For this group, the municipality set up targeted housing and reception policies that complement the national reception system. Migrants have access to municipal measures in key sectors such as housing, minimum living allowances and labour market integration - by the employment service Barcelona Activa - on the same basis as the other residents. Further, Barcelona has developed sensitization initiatives to curb discrimination and improve service delivery in the most disadvantaged neighbourhoods. The municipality has developed local coordination mechanisms with migrant associations and non-governmental organisations that aim to share information, avoid duplication and maximise the access to services such as language classes for migrants. Yet, migrants are particularly affected by socio-economic inequalities particularly following the economic crisis. This report sheds light on how the municipality and non-state partners work together with the other levels of government for sustainable migrant and refugee integration.