IZAZOVI U UBLAŽAVANJU SIROMAŠTVA: KOMPARATIVNA ANALIZA SUSTAVA MINIMALNOG DOHOTKA HRVATSKE I SLOVENIJE

CHALLENGES IN POVERTY ALLEVIATION: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS OF THE MINIMUM INCOME SYSTEMS IN CROATIA AND SLOVENIA ABSTRACT Minimum income systems in the countries of the European Union are an important instrument in the policy of fighting poverty. Although in several strategic documents of various EU institutions, member states are invited to improve their minimum income systems and the recommendations how to do it are included, in a large number of EU countries, including Croatia, the aforementioned recommendations are still awaiting implementation. Therefore, the main goal of this work is to achieve a deeper insight into the potentials and challenges of the minimum income system in their focus on poverty alleviation and better social integration of their users in Croatia and Slovenia through a comparative analysis of the minimum income systems in Croatia and Slovenia. For the comparison and evaluation of the minimum income systems, numerous indicators will be analysed, such as the rate of adequacy of the minimum income and the rate of coverage of the poor by the minimum income for the period from 2018 to 2020. Elements of the availability of the minimum income system to citizens will be analysed, such as the complexity of the application process and the complexity of the method of checking income and assets, the so-called means test. At the end, after the analysis, certain recommendations for improving the minimum income system in the Republic of Croatia will be presented. Key words: minimum income; poverty; social exclusion; social integration