IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jae/japmet/v22y2007i3p581-598.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The welfare cost of means-testing: pensioner participation in income support

Author

Listed:
  • Stephen Pudney

    (Institute for Social and Economic Research, University of Essex, Colchester, UK)

  • Monica Hernandez

    (Department of Economics, University of Sheffield, UK)

  • Ruth Hancock

    (Department of Health and Human Sciences, University of Essex, Colchester, UK)

Abstract

We estimate parametric and semi-parametric binary choice models of benefit take-up by British pensioners and use a revealed preference argument to infer the cash-equivalent value of disutility arising from stigma or complexity of the claims process. These implicit costs turn out to be relatively small, averaging about £3-4 per week across Income Support recipients. Using the Foster-Greer-Thorbecke measure of poverty among pensioners, we find that allowing for implicit claim costs incurred by benefit recipients raises the measured degree of poverty by not more than 13%. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suggested Citation

  • Stephen Pudney & Monica Hernandez & Ruth Hancock, 2007. "The welfare cost of means-testing: pensioner participation in income support," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(3), pages 581-598.
    • Handle: RePEc:jae:japmet:v:22:y:2007:i:3:p:581-598
    DOI: 10.1002/jae.940
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1002/jae.940
    File Function: Link to full text; subscription required
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: http://qed.econ.queensu.ca:80/jae/2007-v22.3/
    File Function: Supporting data files and programs
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/jae.940?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Marlene Kim & Thanos Mergoupis, 1995. "The Working Poor and Welfare Recipiency," Economics Working Paper Archive wp_151, Levy Economics Institute.
    2. Keane, Michael & Moffitt, Robert, 1998. "A Structural Model of Multiple Welfare Program Participation and Labor Supply," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 39(3), pages 553-589, August.
    3. Halpern, Janice & Hausman, Jerry A., 1986. "Choice under uncertainty: A model of applications for the social security disability insurance program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 131-161, November.
    4. Foster, James & Greer, Joel & Thorbecke, Erik, 1984. "A Class of Decomposable Poverty Measures," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(3), pages 761-766, May.
    5. Monica Hernandez & Stephen Pudney & Ruth Hancock, 2006. "The Welfare Cost of Means Testing: Pensioner Participation in Income," Working Papers 2006004, The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics, revised Apr 2006.
    6. Blundell, Richard & Fry, Vanessa & Walker, Ian, 1987. "Modelling the Take-up of Means-tested Benefits: the Case of Housing Benefits in the United Kingdom," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 98(390), pages 58-74, Supplemen.
    7. Moffitt, Robert, 1983. "An Economic Model of Welfare Stigma," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(5), pages 1023-1035, December.
    8. Stephen Pudney & Monica Hernandez & Ruth Hancock, 2007. "The welfare cost of means-testing: pensioner participation in income support," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 22(3), pages 581-598.
    9. Marlene Kim & Thanos Mergoupis, 1997. "The Working Poor and Welfare Recipiency: Participation, Evidence, and Policy Directions," Journal of Economic Issues, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 31(3), pages 707-728, September.
    10. Ruth Hancock & Geraldine Barker, 2005. "The quality of social security benefit data in the British Family Resources Survey: implications for investigating income support take‐up by pensioners," Journal of the Royal Statistical Society Series A, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 168(1), pages 63-82, January.
    11. M. Keane & R. Mofitt, 1995. "A Structural Model of Multiple Welfare Program Participation and Labor Supply," Working Papers 95-4, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    12. Regina T. Riphahn, 2001. "Rational Poverty or Poor Rationality? The Take‐up of Social Assistance Benefits," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 47(3), pages 379-398, September.
    13. Patricia M. Anderson & Bruce D. Meyer, 1997. "Unemployment Insurance Takeup Rates and the After-Tax Value of Benefits," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 112(3), pages 913-937.
    14. Klein, Roger W & Spady, Richard H, 1993. "An Efficient Semiparametric Estimator for Binary Response Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(2), pages 387-421, March.
    15. Duclos, Jean-Yves, 1995. "Modelling the take-up of state support," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 58(3), pages 391-415, November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hernandez, Monica & Pudney, Stephen, 2007. "Measurement error in models of welfare participation," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(1-2), pages 327-341, February.
    2. Zantomio, Francesca, 2008. "The route to take-up: raising incentives or lowering barriers?," ISER Working Paper Series 2008-35, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    3. Pudney, Stephen & Hancock, Ruth & Henandez, Monica, 2004. "Participation in multiple welfare programmes: discrete choice with heterogeneous awareness," ISER Working Paper Series 2004-15, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    4. Stephen Pudney & Ruth Hancock & Holly Sutherland, 2006. "Simulating the Reform of Means‐tested Benefits with Endogenous Take‐up and Claim Costs," Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics, Department of Economics, University of Oxford, vol. 68(2), pages 135-166, April.
    5. Olivier Bargain & Herwig Immervoll & Heikki Viitamäki, 2012. "No claim, no pain. Measuring the non-take-up of social assistance using register data," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 10(3), pages 375-395, September.
    6. Pudney, Stephen & Hancock, Ruth & Zantomio, Francesca, 2006. "Estimating the impact of a policy reform on welfare participation: the 2001 extension to the minimum income guarantee for UK pensioners," ISER Working Paper Series 2006-21, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    7. Regina T. Riphahn, 2001. "Rational Poverty or Poor Rationality? The Take‐up of Social Assistance Benefits," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 47(3), pages 379-398, September.
    8. Olivier Bargain, 2017. "Welfare analysis and redistributive policies," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 15(4), pages 393-419, December.
    9. Bargain, Olivier & Immervoll, Herwig & Viitamäki, Heikki, 2007. "How Tight Are Safety-Nets in Nordic Countries? Evidence from Finnish Register Data," IZA Discussion Papers 3004, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Alari Paulus, 2016. "The antipoverty performance of universal and means-tested benefits with costly take-up," ImPRovE Working Papers 16/12, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    11. Colleen Flaherty & Kevin Mumford, 2007. "Separating Psychological Costs from Time Costs: Female Labor Supply and Participation in Food Stamps and WIC," Discussion Papers 06-024, Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research.
    12. David Coady & César Martinelli & Susan W. Parker, 2013. "Information and Participation in Social Programs," The World Bank Economic Review, World Bank, vol. 27(1), pages 149-170.
    13. Bruckmeier, Kerstin & Riphahn, Regina T. & Wiemers, Jürgen, 2019. "Benefit underreporting in survey data and its consequences for measuring non-take-up: new evidence from linked administrative and survey data," IAB-Discussion Paper 201906, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    14. Cyrine Hannafi & Rémi Le Gall & François Legendre, 2022. "Recours et non-recours à la prime d’activité : une évaluation en termes de bien-être," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 73(5), pages 841-873.
    15. Stéphane Auray & David L. Fuller, 2020. "Eligibility, experience rating, and unemployment insurance take‐up," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 11(3), pages 1059-1107, July.
    16. John Creedy & Guyonne Kalb, 2005. "Discrete Hours Labour Supply Modelling: Specification, Estimation and Simulation," Journal of Economic Surveys, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 19(5), pages 697-734, December.
    17. repec:hal:spmain:info:hdl:2441/5f63rk8j8i8vlpr3b1ernvsg0u is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Terracol, Antoine, 2009. "Guaranteed minimum income and unemployment duration in France," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2), pages 171-182, April.
    19. Bruckmeier, Kerstin & Wiemers, Jürgen, 2011. "A new targeting - a new take-up? : non-take-up of social assistance in Germany after social policy reforms," IAB-Discussion Paper 201110, Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), Nürnberg [Institute for Employment Research, Nuremberg, Germany].
    20. Edwin Fourrier-Nicolai, 2020. "How Family Transfers Crowd-out Social Assistance in Germany," AMSE Working Papers 2023, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    21. Sylvain Chareyron, 2015. "Take-up of social assistance benefits: The case of homeless Take-up of Social Assistance Benefits: The Case of Homeless," Working Papers hal-01292107, HAL.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C25 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Discrete Regression and Qualitative Choice Models; Discrete Regressors; Proportions; Probabilities
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • H55 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Social Security and Public Pensions
    • I32 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
    • I38 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty - - - Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jae:japmet:v:22:y:2007:i:3:p:581-598. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley-Blackwell Digital Licensing or Christopher F. Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.interscience.wiley.com/jpages/0883-7252/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.