Social integration income. Contributions to understanding a benefit of last resort
The social insertion income is a last resort benefit designed to give some protection to the very poor. Although it has a high profile in the public arena, this social benefit is not always debated in an informed manner. This text begins by providing a legal framework for this benefit and analyzes relevant statistical information, on a national and municipal scale, about the social profile of its beneficiaries, its duration and its amount. The analysis shows that around 1/3 of RSI beneficiaries are minors living in very poor households. Although most of the adult beneficiaries of this benefit are unemployed, around 11% earn income from work. In some municipalities, this figure is higher than 20%. In 2019, the average time spent receiving RSI was 34 months, a figure that was consistently higher in the municipalities of the Porto Metropolitan Area and lower in the border municipalities of Alto Minho, Beiras, some municipalities in the West and the central axis of the Algarve and Alentejo regions. Of the ten municipalities in the country with the highest number of RSI recipients per 1,000 working-age inhabitants, six belong to the island of São Miguel. The RSI reference value has been moving away from the poverty line in Portuguese society (around 37% for adults living alone). This means that the situation of RSI recipients has been deteriorating as part of the overall poor population in Portugal.
