Tell us a bit about you - what is your background?

Vitalija Gabnytė-Baranauskė: I obtained a bachelor's and master's degree in social policy at the Vilnius University. I am currently in doctoral studies in economics at the same university and I am working at the Ministry of Social Security and Labour of the Republic of Lithuania as a senior advisor of the Strategic Decisions Support Group.

When and what was your first contact with EUROMOD?

Vitalija Gabnytė-Baranauskė: My first contact with the EUROMOD was in 2018-2019 when a started working at the Ministry of Social Security and Labour. I was employed as a specialist in a project on “Establishment of a system for forecasting, deciding, coordinating and monitoring the effectiveness of social assistance policies“. During this project EUROMOD was implemented for the Ministry. Some of my colleagues had previous knowledge about the model as they belong to the EUROMOD National Team (Jekaterina Navickė and Aušra Čižauskaitė) so the first acquaintance with the model took place with their help. Later, on March 2019, I participated in a EUROMOD training course at the ISER, University of Essex.

How is EUROMOD used at your work?

Vitalija Gabnytė-Baranauskė: The model is used quite often in the Ministry. We are conducting reforms impact assessments on poverty, inequality, and income distribution, or sometimes the eligible people for the benefit coverage change. Also, we evaluate how the existing measures affect population income in the upcoming year (for example, at the end of 2023 we already know what the basic amounts for social benefits, minimum wage would be, personal income tax, etc.) compared to the previous year. In addition to this, we also provide assessment on incentives to work, or on hypothetical households and their budget constrains for the current year. Finally, using EUROMOD we nowcast poverty and inequality indicators up to the current year.

Would you like to share any recent highlights for your country?

Vitalija Gabnytė-Baranauskė: As I mentioned before, we nowcast poverty and inequality indicators up to the current year using EUROMOD. The latest official statistics on poverty in 2023 (2022 incomes) for Lithuania were published at the end of April. Our poverty nowcast showed that the change between 2021-2022 (income years) on poverty for the total population would be -0.3 percentage points. Our poverty nowcast turned out to be fully in line with the official statistics, as the at-risk-of-poverty rate in 2022 (2021 incomes) was 20.9% and in 2023 (2022 incomes) was 20.6% (total change – 0.3 percentage points).