Social Exclusion and Minimum Income Programmes in Spain

This article analyses the ways in which Spanish society is dealing with extreme poverty and social exclusion. Spanish society exhibits a paradoxical combination of widespread precariousness and a limited degree of extreme poverty and exclusion. Social exclusion is still, to a great extent, a remnant of the past rather than a result of recent trends in employment. Some of the social policy actions carried out during the last fifteen years with an impact on this problem are the development of a means-tested benefit system, the setting up of minimum income for social integration programmes targeting the most excluded, and the building of a network of public local social services. We analyse these programmes in the context of economic modernization in Spain in recent years.