MEANS-TESTED INCOME SUPPORT BENEFITS: GUARANTEED MINIMUM INCOME AND FAMILY ALLOWANCE FOR LOW INCOME FAMILIES WITH DEPENDENT CHILDREN Indeed, whereas in 2008 the value of the ISR was on par with that of the gross minimum wage(Ministerul Muncii, 2020), by 2020 the ISR only represented 22.4 per cent of the gross minimum wage(Ministerul Muncii, 2020).⁹ Unsurprisingly, despite the celebratory tone of some assessments of the performance of the Romanian social assistance programmes(Curtea de Conturi, 2017), the reality is dire. As Table 2. shows, despite remarkable economic growth in the aftermath of the 2009-2012 global crisis, the at-risk-of­poverty rate in Romania increased from 28.4 per cent in 2012 to 30 per cent in 2019. As we have already showed in Figure 8., the impact of social transfers on the poverty rate has been minimal. Second, the system has failed to achieve its main declared goal: that of(re)integrating beneficiaries in the labour market. The conditions associated with the provision of the GMI are not tailored to the needs of the beneficiaries, but rather seek to impose a'one-size-fits-all' policy that ignores the regional and local context. The policy entirely ignores two central features of the Romanian labour market: a strong rural-urban divide that impacts on the availability of jobs in a specific area, and the lack of geographical mobility of the labour force, as affordable transport options remain unavailable in many areas. These two aspects mean that the policy goal of the GMI is unachievable in most situations and irrelevant for the vast majority of its beneficiaries, who are forced to rely on informal work or, especially in rural areas, on precarious contractual day-labour in agriculture(Law 52/2011). Given that since 2015 GMI beneficiaries can formally receive income from contractual day­labour while still drawing social assistance benefits, as long as they perform compulsory community work, they are able to maintain their health insurance in the public system. Thus, rather than providing support for beneficiaries to enter the labour market, the GMI functions as a mechanism for exercising control and disciplining the undeserving poor(Arpinte, 2019), forcing them into precarious day-labour(Raț, 2018, 2019). In a similar vein, the means-tested family allowance for low­income parents with dependent children, introduced in 2003 as an emergency governmental ordinance(O.U.G. 105/2003), provides for relatively low benefits. The allowance is conditional on regular school attendance, and since 2011 goes so far as to cut benefits in situations where school-age children miss more than twenty hours of classes. As a consequence, the most deprived families from marginalised communities, often of Roma ethnicity, who lack the resources to financially sustain the schooling of their children, have lost eligibility for benefits(Raț and Szikra, 2019). Single parents are entitled to slightly higher amounts, but there is no further differentiation according to children's age or the housing situation of the family, which means that rural households facing severe housing deprivation have to make ends meet with the very same amount as families with inherited home-ownership in more affluent urban areas. Moreover, the benefit has a ceiling at the fourth child, meaning that families with five or more children receive the very same amount as those with only four. This bias against large families contrasts with family policies in other countries from the region, such as Hungary and Poland(Raț and Szikra, 2019), and impacts on the adequacy of redistribution, especially for low-income Roma families, who have more children on average than the majority of the population and face manifold barriers in access to child care services and education(Romanian Government, 2015a, Horv á th, 2017). We used Amartya Sen's(2000) concept of“adverse inclusion”¹⁰ to synthetically present the ways in which regulations relating to GMI and means-tested family allowance may hinder the provision of social rights for disadvantaged families, especially Roma families from marginalised and severely impoverished areas, and enforce stigmatising forms of behavioural control(see Table 3). The political rhetoric on“deservingness” translates into specific eligibility criteria and conditions, most importantly proof that an effort is being made to improve“employability” through schooling, vocational training, and regular job-seeking, which nonetheless turn into barriers to access for those who lack the minimum resources to participate. At the same time, the over­bureaucratisation of welfare administration, coupled with the low literacy of claimants and hardly any legal support provided to them through the maze of various institutions, often leads to the exclusion of the most disadvantaged(Bojinc ă, 2009; Arpinte, 2019; Raț, 2019; Țoc and Buligescu, 2020). A critical reading of welfare regulations reveals that cost-containment, labour-force “activation”, control over and disciplining of beneficiaries have underpinned these throughout the past twenty years, and their effects on poverty-reduction have remained very modest. 9 Ministerul Muncii, 2020, Salariul de baza minim brut pe tara garantat in plata, in perioada 2000-2018, Available here: https://mmuncii.ro/j33/images/ Date_lunare/s1-18.pdf. The value of the 2020 gross minimum wage was extracted from the following document: https://mmuncii.ro/j33/images/ Date_lunare/Sal_min_2020.pdf (accessed: 15 September 2020). 10 “Adverse inclusion”is a concept introduced by Amartya Sen(2000) that draws attention to the unfavourable effects of so-called social inclusion policies that de facto hinder the access of the most vulnerable and/or impose conditioning that worsen their situation of deprivation. 11