Barcelona's minimum living wage initiative

Abstract

Given its level of prosperity, Spain’s position as the third most unequal country in the EU-28 is far worse than would be expected. A country’s overall inequality is determined first by the primary or predistributive level of inequality created by the market, and second, by the extent to which this is mitigated or redistributed by tax policy and social transfers. The capacity for redistribution in Spain has always been low and does not appear to be showing any signs of improvement, with taxation and benefits reducing inequality by just 3.16 per cent in 2014 and a mere 2.54 per cent in 2015 (Fedea, 2018: 4). The main problem with the Spanish redistributive model, however, is the dual nature of its labour market and social welfare system, both of which disadvantage outsiders and favour insiders (Buendía and Molero Simarro, 2018; Fernández-Albertos and Manzano, 2012).