Social Impact Assessment: Social inclusion and protection through public policy
The EU2020 strategy promotes inclusive growth, but how can developments in this area be monitored? A Social Impact Assessment, a tool and process to estimate likely future impacts of policy proposals, can play an instrumental role, but its implementation is still in its infancy in most European countries.
Description
Social impact assessment has increasingly come to the fore as a potential tool to mainstream social protection and social inclusion concerns into policy-making in the EU
Member States. Currently, impact assessment efforts regarding
new policy usually focus on economic and financial impacts, while
the evaluation of social impacts is often less well developed.
By reviewing the ways in which social impact assessments are
currently embedded in EU member states, this study has found that
an effective social impact assessment is possible. Based on this
review, it has identified 10 common challenges that any government
should be aware of and address. One key challenge is to involve
policy makers into social assessments, so that the operation is not
being percepted as an additional administrative burden. It is also
important to train assessors properly, and to develop a common view
on what social impacts of policy actually are.
This study proposes to summarise social impacts in 5
subcategories:
- Employment;
- Income;
- Access to services;
- Respect for fundamental rights;
- Public health and safety.
These categories can be combined with specific population groups,
for example elderly or ethnic minorities. By developing the
implementation of social impact assessments, it becomes possible to
more effectively realise social cohesion, as well as good
governance.
Publication date
June 2010
Document type
Policy document
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