Saturday, 15 January 2022

"Contrary to its vocation, the RSA does not sufficiently protect against poverty or facilitate the return to employment, according to the Court of Auditors".

 

To be noted:

Non-appeal is assessed (2011) at 30%:

"As regards the benefit, the last precise study on non-recourse, which dates from 2011, estimated this phenomenon at 30% of the target population. No recent study, nor any of the rare initiatives deployed at local level to assess non-recourse, lead us to revise this estimate, which is widely accepted by RSA stakeholders. It therefore seems possible to estimate the rate of reaching the target population at 70%.”

70% of what is described as "fraud" is due to omissions or misrepresentation of resources:

"In the opposite direction, fraud has little impact on the number of legitimate beneficiaries4 . On the other hand, its effects on the amounts are significant, with more than €190 million detected in 2019, leading to a total estimate by Cnaf of approximately €1 billion in potential fraud5 . Most of this fraud concerns the amounts paid rather than the actual eligibility of people for the RSA. Thus, 70% of the cases of fraud detected involve omissions or errors in declarations of resources. A major challenge is therefore to make the payment of the RSA more secure with regard to the real situation of beneficiaries, by increasing the reliability of the data taken into account and detecting a greater number of errors.”

Insufficient support:

 "As regards support, it can be estimated that 60% of beneficiaries subject to 'rights and duties' do not have a support contract. Even if this rate is based on imperfect data, it highlights a serious dysfunction in this aspect of the RSA. This poor result can be explained by the fact that only eight out of ten recipients were actually referred to a support organisation, and of these, only half of those referred to social support signed a contract. "

Recipients live below the poverty line:

"Consistently since 2010, 65% of RSA beneficiaries live below the monetary poverty line 6 , a share 4.4 times higher than in the general population, where this share is between 14% and 15%. 51% of RSA beneficiaries are also considered to have poor living conditions 7 , a proportion almost five times higher than for the rest of the population. This situation results directly from the amounts guaranteed by the allowance: for a single person, the amount of the RSA is 565 euros per month (as of April 1, 2021), a level below the monetary poverty line (1,063 euros per month in 2018 according to INSEE).”

“The RSA, on the other hand, protects its beneficiaries from extreme poverty. While 46% of RSA beneficiaries still live below the poverty line at 50% of the median income, only 16% live with less than 40% of The effect of the RSA is even clearer on the intensity of poverty: while poverty is much greater among RSA beneficiaries at the 60% threshold, the situation is reversed at the 40% threshold. : the intensity of poverty is twice as high for people who do not benefit from the RSA.”

"This role of protection against extreme poverty is perceived and confirmed by the recipients themselves. Questioned by survey, 78% believe that the RSA has "provided them with a minimum income" and has "prevented them from falling into poverty". This is the dimension of this system most recognized by its beneficiaries".

Returning to work remains the preferred way out of poverty:

"The choice of the legislator to favor activity as a means of getting out of poverty is confirmed in practice. If monetary poverty at the 50% threshold affects almost all recipients whose income is mainly made up of the RSA, this share drops to 20% only for those whose allowance weighs less than 10% in income. Returning to work, even part-time, effectively makes it possible to cross the poverty line in most family and professional configurations".

General recommendations:

"Improve the RSA coverage rate by adopting a process of simplification, clarity, publicity of the allowance and commitment to potential recipients. 2. Restore their full meaning to the rights and duties provided for by law, by facilitating the payment of the allowance and by reinforcing the support of the people most in difficulty, in return for a precise formalization and an effective sanction of the obligations registered in the support contracts. managers of the system by ensuring that they fully exercise their steering, decision-making, coordination, sanction and evaluation skills and revise the financing key in compliance with the principle "financier = decision maker".

First "hot" personal comment:

The non-use seems directly linked to representations: for many people, having recourse to the RSA constitutes a "shame", or else the choice of a certain "outside the system" way of life makes them say "I do not want to receive anything from the 'State, I manage on my own'. These are two very different postures: in the first case, people facing precariousness experience this situation as a personal failure and the RSA status as a social "forfeiture". The representation of the RSA in this case is akin to "parasitism": only those who do not want to "work" would benefit from it. The fact of finding themselves in this situation precipitates the person into fear and shame at being associated with this representation which they think is shared by a majority. In the second case, the person has made the conscious choice to eventually find himself in a precarious situation by not following the established channels of social integration through employment, generally by engaging in paid "black" activities, which allows it to survive without going through the channels of employment or national solidarity. While this posture could easily be maintained in the 1970s and 1990s, it is nevertheless much more difficult to maintain today, due to the changeover to the euro in the 2000s and the resulting loss of purchasing power, digitization and tracing, and the checks that have become necessary.

As far as support is concerned, it seems that it varies greatly from one department to another. From my experience, it is also likely that support is not "sought after" by many recipients given its cruel lack of efficiency.

It is obvious that the RSA and related allowances (housing, CMU) protect against extreme poverty but not poverty. But this situation is now also shared to a certain extent by the smicards, whether employed or self-employed. And, understandably, they find it very hard to devote their time to earning an income while still remaining so poor. Also, I disagree with the statement that "the choice of activity as a way out of poverty is verified" and on the relevance of the calculations of the activity bonus: most often the resumption of employment constitutes a significant drop in purchasing power to the point that the person "can't make it anymore" and cannot afford the costs (childcare, transport, etc.) related to returning to work.

Poverty does not cover the same realities either, depending on whether one lives in town or in the countryside, and whether the person is culturally determined by the criteria of the consumer society or not.

In its general recommendations, the Court of Auditors shows that it has not grasped the systemic and structural nature of the problem, a problem which it attributes both to the actors of the system and to the recipients themselves by advocating control and increased penalties.

It maintains the "return to work" as a priority of integration policies without worrying about what has become of "employment" today. However, there will be no change possible without a fundamental transformation of the definition and place of "work" in society and the evolution of its commodification (employment) towards its rehabilitation as an activity essential to harmonious development. human beings and societies.

The hypocrisy which consists in placing the fault on the actors of integration and the recipients, instead of dealing with the root of the problem, that is to say that of a system which generates exclusion in an endemic way, does not serves only to protect those who have interests, consciously or unconsciously, that the system continues because they derive a certain benefit from it.

SE

SAISI

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