Call for research projects - Evaluation of the impact of the exceptional increase of the Prime d’activité

Call for research projects - Evaluation of the impact of the exceptional increase
of the Prime d’activité

The Evaluation committee of the National Strategy for the Prevention and Fight against Poverty, managed by France Stratégie and chaired by Louis Schweitzer, issues a call for research projects.

Evaluation of the poverty strategy : launch of a call for research projects

Set up in September 2019, the Evaluation Committee, composed of presidents of national associations fighting poverty, qualified personalities and researchers, supported by administrations and organizations and consulting the college of people in poverty or in a precarious situation of the CNLE and a panel of citizens, is in charge of evaluating the effects of the  National Strategy for the Prevention and Fight against Poverty.

The National Strategy for the Prevention and Fight against Poverty was presented on September 13, 2018 by the French President Emmanuel Macron. It is made up of a large number of measures based on two distinct axes: preventing reproduction of poverty through acting for children and providing support for employment.

The Evaluation Committee's progress report published in March 2020 sets out the main thrusts of the evaluation process, the methods under consideration and the timetable for the work to be carried out.

The committee decided that the evaluation would have a dual strategic and analytical dimension and that it would be carried out at two levels:

• Monitoring the implementation of the measures of the strategy and evaluating their effects. The committee identified thirty-five measures, which it classified into five public policies areas : Early Childhood and Education, Health, Support, training and employment, Housing, Social rights.
• Evaluating the national strategy as a whole with respect to the major objectives targeted by the Strategy and selected by the committee: to prevent the intergenerational transmission of poverty, to enable people to move out of poverty and to leave no one in deep poverty.

The committee programs the evaluation work, relies on work already carried out by the administrations, and for measures for which a scientific evaluation committee is or will be set up, on the conclusions of these evaluations.

The committee wishes to assess the impact of the exceptional increase of the Prime d’activité, which is one of the Strategy’s measures. This is the purpose of this call for research projects.

Research axis of the call for research projets

The Prime d’activité (“Activity bonus”), which was introduced in 2016 to replace the Revenu de solidarité active (RSA)” (“Active Solidarity Income”) and the Prime pour l’emploi (“Employment Bonus”) , was substantially increased at the end of 2018 (decree no. 2018-1197 of December 21, 2018 relating to the exceptional increase of the Prime d’activité). The exceptional increase took the form of an increase in the individual bonus’ maximum amount of the Prime d’activité. Paid to each member of the beneficiary household whose professional income is greater than 0.5 minimum wage (SMIC), this bonus is an increasing function of this income up to the minimum wage (SMIC). Beyond that, the amount of the bonus remains constant. The revaluation came into effect on January 1, 2019.

France Stratégie wishes, within the framework of the present call for projects, to encourage research projects on two distinct aspects:

• research projects to measure the effects of the 2019 Prime d’activité exceptional increase on activity behavior. The work should propose an empirical (and not descriptive) approach to identifying these effects.
• research projects to document the effect of the exceptional increase of the Prime d’activité on the take-up of the benefit and the reasons for a possible increase in take-up. The work should propose a qualitative approach.

Research proposals on the two axes or on one or the other may be submitted.

This call for projects comprises a single step which consists in selecting the projects to be funded among the detailed proposals of the research teams.

Key Date

Closing date for submission of detailed proposals: November 13, 2020 at 2:00 p.m. (Paris time)

• Issues and themes
• Regulations for the call
• Financial appendix
• Presentation of the applicant organization