CESE Conference on Poverty and education
Florence – 22 May 2010
Antonia Carparelli
European Commission, Head of Unit
DG Employment, Social inclusion policies
I would like to thank President Mario Sepi and the colleagues of the Economic and Social Committee for organizing this high-level conference. And a special thank for giving a prominent role to the European Commission, which I am representing this morning together with my colleague from the Education Department. Tomorrow, as you know, President Barroso will be here.
This conference is also a tribute of the European and Social Committee to the European Year 2010 against poverty and exclusion, which falls in a particularly critical moment for the Union and for its future.
As you know there are many European years, many Europeans day and also European weeks. Someone would say too many… and some of them pass almost unnoticed to the large public. This does not seem to be the case of this European Year 2010 against poverty. In fact, so far the mobilization around the Year has been very encouraging and in several cases it has largely exceeded our expectations.
This is probably because poverty and exclusion are becoming an increasing concern for citizens, and not only for those who are most directly affected. A recent article talked about “the rediscovery of poverty”, and noticed that at some point the word poverty had almost disappeared from the vocabulary of our affluent societies, while it is now increasingly present in the public debate.
In reality I would rather talk about “the re-emergence of poverty”, because what we have observed in recent years is an increase of poverty in the richest and more advanced countries, linked to new social and economic realities: migration, new family patterns, labour market fragmentation, technological divide, etc..
This is why the European Union has decided to put the fight against poverty and exclusion at the centre of its strategy for the next decade, the so called Europe2020 strategy. I am sure that President Barroso will illustrate it tomorrow in greater detail. But let me just say that the Europe2020 strategy aims at promoting smart, sustainable and inclusive growth in Europe.
This vision is underpinned by five headline targets. Two of them concern the issues that are at the centre of this conference: education and poverty (the others are employment, research and energy). This means that all Member States will commit to achieve concrete results in terms of reducing the early school drops, to increase the number of people with tertiary education, to reduce the number of people at risk of poverty or exclusion.
It is important to underline that these targets are strictly linked and – as we say it – mutually reinforcing. But of course this is rather obvious when talking about education and poverty.
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All those who deal with antipoverty policies recognize the central role of education. And the statistics in this respect are extremely clear. The unemployment rate is stubbornly higher in the population with lower educational attainments. In 2009 it averaged 13% for people with low educational achievements, 7.5% for people with upper secondary education and less than 5% in the population with tertiary education.
In 2008, the percentage of people at risk of poverty in Europe was 17% - some 80 million people. However, this percentage increases to 23% for the population with low educational attainment (maximum lower secondary education); it falls to 13% for the population with upper secondary education and goes down to 7% for people with tertiary education.
These and other data are reported in a precious booklet that Eurostat has dedicated to the European Year 2010 and is called "Combating poverty and social exclusion. Statistical Portrait of Europe 2010", and can be found on the Eurostat website .
Against this background it is not surprising that education has a special place among the objectives of the European Year 2010 against poverty and exclusion. If you visit the website of the Year and have a look at the projects that have been supported at national level you will find a large number and variety of projects that refer to education in a broad sense, and some of them are very innovative and interesting.
Education has also been very present in the exchange of good practices and mutual learning that is at the centre of the coordination among Member States in the field of Social Policy – the so called Open Method of Coordination.
I will just refer to a pilot project that was run a few years ago in Luxembourg, and which was presented in a "peer review" exercise. The project consisted in following over a very long periods two groups of children with migration background. The first group included children enrolled in pre-primary school at the age of 3, while the second included children who only started school at the age of 6. The results were absolutely clear. The first group significantly outperformed the second in terms of school performance, employment, professional status and income….
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So there is overwhelming evidence that education is a necessary tool to ensure equal opportunities and to combat poverty and exclusion. I believe that no one would question this.
However, when it comes to assessing how much education matters or to what extent can overtake other antipoverty policies , the opinions become less consensual and the debate becomes more complicated.
In fact it becomes very much the debate about opportunities versus outcomes, with on the one hand those who consider that social policies should essentially be concerned with ensuring equal opportunities and on the other hand those who insist that you cannot really ensure equal opportunities without a constant and sustained effort to correct the inequalities in outcomes.
In this context, I would like to refer to another project, which this time refers to the US. The project was conducted by the NationalCenter for Education statistics and analysed the educational career of a group of Americans who where finishing the primary school in 1988.The pupils were classified according to their school performance at the age of 13 and according to the status of their parents (income, education, employment). The result was that the family status is still a better predictor of the likelihood to get a university degree than the school performance.
To my knowledge, we don’t have similar, comprehensive studies for Europe. But there is a widespread perception that education must be associated to other policies that tackle the various dimensions of poverty and marginalisation. Without this it will be very difficult, if not impossible, to break the intergenerational transmission of poverty and exclusion.
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In proposing a target for poverty reduction as a way to create more inclusive and cohesive societies, the European Union has clearly taken the view that opening opportunities and goes hand in hand with correcting deep inequalities in outcomes. The challenge will be now to move from words to deeds.
Thank you for your attention
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