Procesos de exclusión en las políticas sociales: explorando los perfiles de la población no perceptora de la Asignación Universal por Hijo

Abstract

It is widely demonstrated that labor market institutions and social security related to formal employment are the main factor of systemic social inclusion in market-based economies (OIT, 2017). Nevertheless, productive restructuration and its effects on employment and exclusion led governments globally to develop social protection systems coexisting with them (CEPAL, 2018). In Latin America, these systems are conditional cash transfers, aimed at poverty reduction and conceived as temporary initiatives, until recipients obtain a better labor market position. Even if they have been effective against extreme poverty, it has been proved their insufficiency to outpace exclusions and auto-exclusions and to promote broader ways of social inclusion.

In 2009, Argentina’s government implemented a conditional cash transfer –the Asignación Universal por Hijo (AUH)– (the Universal Child Allowance) aimed at households with children whose parents are informal employees, unemployed or inactive with no access to social protection system. Since then, literature has tackled several aspects of the program. Adopting a critical approach about the universal, transitory and inclusive character of this initiative, this paper focuses on a less attended issue: the socioeconomic, demographic, labor and residential profile of potential recipients of the program that remain excluded or auto-excluded from it. The main hypothesis is that this population is heterogeneous, with internal cleavages and several degrees of social marginality, whose conditions are the main factor of the exclusion of the program.

Data come from microdata of the Encuesta de la Deuda Social Argentina (Survey of Argentina’s Social Debt) of the Universidad Católica Argentina (Catholic University of Argentina), corresponding to 2010-2015. Based on stacked datasets, regressions, factor and cluster analysis were carried out, to characterize different processes of exclusion underlying a population of children that are no recipients of the AUH but are eligible to receive it.