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Kwota wolna od podatku i świadczenie wychowawcze 500+ po pięciu latach od prezydenckich deklaracji
W czasie kampanii prezydenckiej w 2015 roku jednymi z głównych haseł wyborczych Prezydenta Andrzeja Dudy były dwa rozwiązania w systemie podatkowo-świadczeniowym – wprowadzenie świadczenia dla rodzin z dziećmi w wysokości 500 złotych miesięcznie i uniwersalne podniesienie wysokości kwoty wolnej od podatku do 8 000 zł. W niniejszym Komentarzu przedstawiono analizy skupiające się na tych dwóch elementach systemu podatkowo-świadczeniowego, a przyjęte ostatecznie przez rząd i Parlament rozwiązania w tych kwestiach porównano do deklaracji składanych przez Andrzeja Dudę przed wyborami prezydenckimi, a następnie powtórzonych w czasie kampanii wyborczej do Parlamentu w 2015 roku w programie Prawa i Sprawiedliwości.
Dane do wykresów przedstawionych w Komentarzu są dostępne tutaj.
Kontakt dla mediów:
dr. hab. Michał Myck, mmyck@cenea.org.pl, tel. 91 831 40 29
Ahead of Future Waves of Covid-19: A Regional Perspective on Health Risks and Healthcare Resources in Germany and Poland
Drawing on the most fundamental conclusions from the early research on the Covid-19 pandemic, in this policy paper we examine the regional prevalence of a number of risk factors related to severe consequences of Covid-19. Using the examples of Germany and Poland, two neighbouring countries which have generally dealt relatively well with the outbreak in recent months, we show that there is significant regional variation both in the distribution of health status and healthcare resources. Highly differentiated demographic and epidemiological risks related to the pandemic between as well as within Germany and Poland call for a decentralised evaluation of risks and point out the need to consider an application of regionally focused policy reactions such as lockdowns and social distancing regulations. The cross-country regional perspective adds a valuable angle to the analysis of challenges raised by the Covid-19 pandemic and should urgently be considered regarding any possible consequences of future outbreaks of the virus.
Safety of older people during the COVID-19 pandemic: coresidence of people aged 65+ in Poland compared to other European countries
Due to the fact that both the risk of severe symptoms from the disease and the risk of death as a result of complications after coronavirus infection significantly increases with the age of the infected person, the most vulnerable group is the elderly. In this report, we present an analysis of the housing situation of people aged 65+ in Poland compared to other European countries, with our results indicating that there is a large diversity in health risks for the elderly. This is due, on the one hand, to differences in the rate of cohabitation with younger people, and on the other, to differences in the frequency of using care institutions in later life. One of the basic challenges for both health and socio-economic policy design in the coming months will be to ensure safety and reduce coronavirus infection in the oldest population group. Decisions regarding the loosening of regulations that have imposed an obligation to maintain social distancing, in addition to considering incidence statistics, should also take these differences into account.
The Commentary Paper is available here.
The results presented in the paper are also available in Microsoft Excel.
COVID19 | FREE Network Project
The Covid-19 pandemic is affecting all the inhabited continents of this planet and leaves none of us untouched. It has already killed thousands of people across the globe, closed down cities, borders and businesses and most countries are still just in the initial phase of this crisis. Although there is 24/7 reporting on the pandemic, much of the focus in international media has been on the most affected countries and richer countries in Eastern Asia, the EU and the US. Much less attention has been given to countries around the Baltics, in Eastern Europe and the Caucasus.
However, these countries are home to more than 200 million people and to the institutes that form the Forum for Research on Eastern Europe and Emerging Economies, i.e. the FREE network. The FREE Network has therefore started to collect data on this region from official sources with the ambition to offer a regularly updated, comprehensive and easily comparable overview of the health impact of the Covid-19 pandemics, as well as the policies and practices countries in the region adopt to deal with it.
The countries in the network and the region that are included in the project are Belarus, Georgia, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Sweden, and Ukraine. Italy is included as a point of comparison since it is a country that has been particularly badly affected and several people involved in the project know Italian and follow these developments closely. In addition to FREE Network countries, Armenia, Estonia, Lithuania, Moldova and Germany are covered due to close links between the network and economists and researchers specialised in these countries, therefore extending the covered region.
The COVID19 FREE Network Project covering the above mentioned countries is available here.
The Poland country report is available here.
School lockdown: distance learning environment during the COVID-19 outbreak
In connection with the coronavirus COVID-19 outbreak, Poland’s Minister of Education, in a Regulation introduced on the 20th March 2020, postponed the end date of the lockdown of Polish schools until the 10th April 2020. Since the 25th March 2020, 4.6M students in Poland have been studying remotely, and any decisions on reopening schools or extending the lockdown depend on the course of development of the pandemic. Even at the time of “regular” access to schooling, the discrepancies in living conditions between students, in particular in terms of their housing conditions and household infrastructure, have a substantial impact on the overall quality of learning and educational outcomes, all the more so when students have to switch to distance learning. In the current situation, substandard housing conditions and lack of access to a computer or the Internet can make it difficult or outright impossible for many students to access education in the coming weeks.
The full report is available here.
The results presented in the report are also available in Microsoft Excel.
Household exposure to financial risks: the first wave of impact from COVID-19 on the economy
The full scale of the socio-economic impact of COVID-19 outbreak is incalculable today, given the uncertainty of lockdown duration and the severity of pandemic-driven slowdown in the international economy. Still, it is possible to analyze the direct implications of the lockdown, self-isolation and quarantine measures introduced over the last few weeks in an attempt to formulate a preliminary assessment of how the outbreak will affect households in economic terms. The priority challenge now is, of course, to contain the spread of coronavirus, but as we identify the scale of potential economic consequences associated with the pandemic, we may help calibrate the safeguards that could protect households from the impact of the imminent economic slowdown.
In this commentary paper, based on the Household Budget Survey (HBS) data, the percentage of households (HHs) whose members are most at risk of losing their job or compromising their income due to the first wave of economic consequences of the pandemic is taken as a measure of economic impact of COVID-19 outbreak. The analysis looks into the population of people who are economically active (through employment or self-employment) in those sectors of the economy which are most exposed to the effects of the lockdown. According to our findings, 17.2 percent of the HHs in Poland are at risk of a loss of income due to the first wave of economic consequences of the pandemic, and for 5.2 percent of the HHs this risk can be described as particularly high. When we focus on the HHs with at least one person active on the labor market, the parameters are 24.7 percent and 7.4 percent, respectively.
The full report is available here.
The results presented in the report are also available in Microsoft Excel.
Financial and non-financial private transfers from close ones: beyond family and kinship
Internally-defined ties such as friendship, trust, or closeness might enhance private transfers. The present study examines the role of these ties on top of the impact of genetic relatedness and legal family relations using families with varied access to filial support as a source of heterogeneity. We investigate, in addition to family support, financial and non-financial transfers received from unrelated individuals by mature adults in childless, dispersed (that is, with an adult child living at a significant distance from parents), and local families using the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe. We find that the structure of support given to mature adults indeed depends on internally-defined ties that are independent from family ties, controlling for other relevant factors. The positive impact on informal support of internally-defined ties concerns particularly, but is not limited to, non-financial support.
Family policies in Poland – addressing one of the lowest fertility rates in Europe
The brief opens a series of FROGEE Policy Briefs aimed at providing overviews and the popularization of economic research related to gender equality issues. The current brief introduces the general rationale behind fertility decisions and policy interventions. It summarizes the economic literature on the effects of different types of policy interventions on enhancing childbearing. A well-documented phenomenon in developed countries is that fertility declines with income levels and as countries become richer, fertility rates fall over time. This negative fertility-income relationship is mainly due to two distinct trade-offs faced by individuals. The quality-quantity trade-off manifests itself in the tendency of well-off individuals to choose to invest more in a child’s quality and therefore forgo quantity. Another trade-off arises from the fact that raising children takes time, which confronts parenthood with people’s career opportunities. The brief continues by summarizing economic research on the effectiveness of various pronatalist policies. It appears that the most effective ones are exactly those which aim at the elimination of the discussed trade-offs. In particular, policies which are able to free the time of potential parents or combine parenthood with career, appear to be most promising.
In the last two decades family has been at the center of social policy in Poland. The policy approach prior to 2016 focused on extending parental leave policies, improvements in formal childcare and adjusting employment incentives for parents and addressing gender inequality on the labor market. Family policy has taken a turn under the current government by focusing on a generous new benefit for families with children. Despite numerous generous policies, the fertility rate in Poland is still one of the lowest in Europe. This calls for an appraisal of the entire family-focused package and designing a comprehensive approach that includes policies to address gender imbalances on the labor market, as well as a more equal division of family responsibilities between men and women.
You can also find country reports from Belarus, Georgia, Latvia, Russia and Ukraine here.
Income Inequality in Transition. New Results for Poland Combining Survey and Tax Return Data
We re-examine the evolution of income inequality in Poland in the process of post-socialist transition focusing on the previously neglected problem of under-coverage of top incomes in household survey data. Multiple statistical techniques (Pareto imputation, survey reweighting, and microsimulation methods) are applied to combined household survey and tax return data in order to obtain top-corrected inequality estimates. We find that the top-corrected Gini coefficient grew in Poland by 14-26% more compared to the unadjusted survey-based estimates. This implies that over the last three decades Poland has become one of the most unequal European countries among those for which top-corrected inequality estimates exist. The highest-income earners benefited the most during the post-socialist transformation: the annual rate of income growth for the top 5% of the population exceeded 3.5%, while the median income grew on average by about 2.5% per year. This brief summarizes the results presented in Brzezinski et al. (2019).
From Partial to Full Universality: The Family 500+ Programme in Poland and Its Labour Supply Implications
The implementation of the ‘Family 500+’ programme in April 2016 represented a significant shift in public support for families with children in Poland. The programme guaranteed 500 PLN/month (approx. 120 euros) for each second and subsequent child in the family and the same amount for the first child in families with incomes below a specified threshold. As of July 2019, the benefit has been made fully universal for all children aged 0-17, an extension which nearly doubled its total cost and benefited primarily middle and higher income households. We examine the labour market implications of both the initial design and its recent fully universal version. Using the discrete choice labour supply model, we show that the initial Family 500+ benefits generated strong labour supply disincentives and were expected to result in the withdrawal of between 160-200 thousand women from the labour market. The recent removal of the means test is likely to nullify this negative effect, leading to an approximately neutral impact on labour supply. We argue that when spending over 4% of GDP on families with children, it should be possible to design a more comprehensive system of support, which would be more effective in reaching the joint objectives of low child poverty and high female employment combined with higher fertility rates.