Not everyone in Switzerland has enough money. The research of social scientist Oliver Hümbelin is improving our data for assessing inequalities. | Photo: Ruben Hollinger

Oliver Hümbelin, one in twelve people in Switzerland is classed as being poor. Where do we have to look if we want to see this poverty?

We social scientists see it partly in the statistics and data we analyse. They show how many people are living below the poverty line, or are receiving welfare payments. The Covid crisis has also made poverty more obviously visible in public life. Such as when people in Geneva or Zurich stand in line at food banks. There are many people in Switzerland today for whom everyday life is a struggle for survival. Even if they are not forced to sleep on the streets or to go begging.

At what point are people here classed as being ‘poor’?

According to the Swiss Conference for Social Welfare (SKOS), the poverty threshold in 2018 was situated at an average of CHF 2,286 a month for individuals, and at CHF 3,968 a month for a household comprising two adults and two children under 14. After accommodation and health insurance costs, there is not much left over. Overall, these are always people who have only a precarious connection to the job market – or none at all. This is why it’s so important that everyone – inasmuch as it’s possible – should be able to enjoy a working life under fair conditions.

For several years now, poverty in Switzerland has been garnering more and more attention. We see this in the media, but also in political discussions. Is poverty increasing here?

Broad sections of the population are becoming more aware that poverty can affect them too. This is especially the case in a time of crisis such as the one we’re experiencing. The poverty quota has risen again slightly in recent years, while the number of those drawing welfare payments has remained roughly constant. This seems to suggest that there is an increasing number of people in poverty who are receiving no welfare payments. We lack the figures, however, to be able to make any reliable statement about it.

What factors are responsible for the increased risk of poverty?

In our study published last autumn, my colleagues and I were able to show that people with young children run a greater risk of poverty, because many parents reduce their working hours after having a baby. In combination with the relatively conservative family politics of Switzerland, children can thus become a poverty risk. This is especially the case with single parents. Furthermore, it is becoming more and more difficult for people to get onto the job market if they have no educational qualifications. The simple tasks that humans once did are increasingly being taken over by machines and computers. People with health impairments who have been rejected by their invalidity insurance are especially at risk, as are foreign nationals – though the language barrier also often plays a role here.

In 2019, you also published a study about the regions with the highest risk of poverty.

The figures show that this risk is greatest in the cities; then comes the countryside, and finally the conurbations. We suspect that this is primarily connected to the different economic and social structures in these different regions. In the countryside, those affected by poverty tend to be individual farmers who are struggling to survive. In cities, there are many self-employed people who have an irregular income, alongside foreigners and young people in precarious employment. There is also an interesting difference in the respective amounts of welfare payments issued. Those affected by poverty in cities receive noticeably less welfare money than those in the countryside. There are indications this is connected to different levels of societal acceptance when it comes to welfare, as they vary depending on the social environment.

Last November, the charity Caritas warned of a large increase in those affected by poverty on account of the Covid crisis. Do you share their misgivings?

The situation is indeed worrying. We are in the biggest economic slump since 1975. Before the crisis, the unemployment rate was a low two percent, but it rose to 3.2 percent in October 2020. That means 50,000 more unemployed people. What’s more, 300,000 people are on reduced hours, and we still have to see how things are going to develop for them. Last summer saw a slight improvement overall, but this was interrupted by the second wave. People with a low income will have been worse affected by these developments. The Covid crisis is intensifying inequalities.

What impact is this situation having on social welfare?

At the beginning of the first wave, four times as many people applied for initial consultations with the welfare authorities than had been the norm. Many just didn’t know what to do during the crisis. The actual number of welfare cases has not yet risen, also because the Swiss Federal Council took appropriate measures relatively swiftly. Just how high the number of cases will still rise will also depend on how long the crisis lasts, and how many businesses go bankrupt. In January 2021, SKOS estimated that there will be an increase of between 12 and 22 percent in social welfare cases up to 2022.

Can the welfare system cope with such an increase?

The welfare system has a difficult task, even without a pandemic. It was originally intended as a bridging measure in emergencies. As the data show, a third of recipients indeed leave the programme within a year. But the number of those who get stuck on welfare is rising constantly. This is because of the increasing demands made upon people in the labour market and the tightening of access to invalidity insurance, as a federal study has recently shown. If there are as many new applications for welfare as is feared by SKOS, it will be a big challenge. There is even a danger that welfare will have to take on more and more tasks for which it was never originally intended. Thus it becomes a catchment basin for unsolved societal problems. This is something we have to talk about.

People who claim welfare are often stigmatised. But those whom the pandemic has thrust into poverty are obviously not personally to blame for their financial problems. Could this perhaps be an opportunity for society to assume a more positive attitude towards welfare aid?

You mean: if more people are living on welfare through no fault of their own, then society will see welfare in a more positive light? I don’t know. Does that mean that people already on welfare were to blame for their plight? Some sectors of the population might see it this way, but many studies have shown that things are far more complex than that. I suspect, however, that the crisis has made the Swiss more appreciative of having a system of social safeguards based on the principle of solidarity. Without state-run protection – and here I primarily mean the possibility of working reduced hours and the other measures taken by the federal government – part of the Swiss population would be in a much worse position right now.