Research into the income structure of the population seeks to assess developments in social incomes from the point of view of their protective function (covering the necessary population groups and various situations in life, including monitoring changes in the level of benefits from the perspective of social need or replacement of work incomes) and their incentive function (the unemployment and poverty traps), including international comparison. These perspectives are applied to various groups of social incomes beneficiaries and adjustments applied to social benefits and taxes.
Regarding wages, the research covers a wide range of social and economic contexts of the market formation of the price of labour. Within the triangle of the state, employers and employees, the institute’s research scrutinises the mechanisms of distribution and re-distribution processes, relationships between the social partners, the state and other social groups that influence the behaviour of the population, public budgets policy, the competitiveness of Czech enterprises and the quality of the workforce. The structure of the distribution and re-distribution process reflects the contexts of political, economic and social flux in the EU and the Czech Republic.
When examining the interaction between the price of labour and the social system the research deals with the issues of labour costs, wage developments, the state’s involvement in the valuation of labour (the formation of wages in the enterprise sphere and pay in the non-enterprise sphere) and impacts on the social structure of society (poverty, social exclusion and the basic parameters of the social safety net – the subsistence minimum and existence minimum). Another central part of the research is the migration potential of Czech labour in connection with nominal and parity income levels in the Czech Republic and host countries.