A Social Accounting Matrix and EU-SILC data to assess the impact of social policies funded by oil royalties

According to the concept of "weak" sustainability, exploited natural capital should be replaced with other produced assets, such as social capital, to ensure non-declining welfare dynamics. One way to promote the accumulation of social capital is to use revenues from the exploitation of natural resources for social welfare policies. Better ex-ante and ex-post assessment of policies is needed in order to optimize the use of resources, especially when revenues from the use of a non-renewable natural resource such as oil are used to foster development in poor countries and lagging regions. The aim of this work is to assess the impact on income distribution of a social card funded by oil royalties to support the income of poor families in the Basilicata region, Italy. The direct and indirect distributive effects of this policy are assessed by combining microeconomic information from the European Survey on Incomes and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) with a multi-sector model of the regional economy based on a two-region social accounting matrix (SAM). The analysis has shown that the EU-SILC data sample, combined with a SAM multisector model, can be used to support the study of regional policies, and this is a promising result for the future development of research.