Public Expenditure on Social Protection in the Light of the Europe 2020 Poverty Objective

The problem of poverty and social inequality has become extremely important as a consequence of the 2008 financial and economic crisis. Taking into consideration, the Europe 2020 targets lifting at least 20 million people out of the risk of poverty and social exclusion compared with 2008 it seems necessary to check to what extent the member states of the European Union are capable of meeting their imposed requirements. The main aims of the paper include: the description of the EU strategy concerning fight with the poverty and social exclusion, its objectives and the methods used in their implementation in the Member States, analysis of European measures of poverty and social exclusion in Poland against the background of European Union countries and correlation between the level of public expenditure on social protection and indicators of poverty contained in the Europe 2020 strategy. Panel data models (longitudinal data) were used in the research. EU countries will also be subdivided into relatively homogeneous groups in terms of selected poverty rates. The study finds that the variation in the level of spending on social protection was reflected in the degree to which individual EU countries have achieved benchmarks. A higher level of GDP per capita results in a reduction in poverty while an increase in the unemployment rate raises the level of the analyzed poverty rates.