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Falling through the social safety net? Analysing non-take-up of minimum income benefit and monetary social assistance in Austria

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  • Gasior, Katrin
  • Hollan, Katarina
  • Fuchs, Michael
  • Premrov, Tamara
  • Scoppetta, Anette

Abstract

Non-take-up of means tested benefits is a wide spread phenomenon in European welfare states. The paper assesses whether the reform that replaced the monetary social assistance benefit by the minimum income benefit in Austria has succeeded in increasing take up rates. We use EU-SILC register data together with the tax-benefit microsimulation model EUROMOD/SORESI. The results show that the reform led to a significant decrease of non-take-up from 53% to 30% in terms of the number of households and from 51% to 30% in terms of expenditure. Estimates of a two-stage Heckman selection model show that pecuniary determinants (higher degree of need), lower applications costs (unemployment, low education, renting one’s home) and lower psychological barriers (size of municipality and lone-parenthood) are predictors of taking up the benefit.

Suggested Citation

  • Gasior, Katrin & Hollan, Katarina & Fuchs, Michael & Premrov, Tamara & Scoppetta, Anette, 2019. "Falling through the social safety net? Analysing non-take-up of minimum income benefit and monetary social assistance in Austria," EUROMOD Working Papers EM9/19, EUROMOD at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    • Handle: RePEc:ese:emodwp:em9-19
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    Cited by:

    1. Michael Christl & Silvia Poli, 2021. "Trapped in inactivity? Social assistance and labour supply in Austria," Empirica, Springer;Austrian Institute for Economic Research;Austrian Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 661-696, August.
    2. Julie Janssens & Tim Goedemé & Koen Ponnet, 2021. "The Claiming Costs Scale: A new instrument for measuring the costs potential beneficiaries face when claiming social benefits," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(8), pages 1-17, August.
    3. Marian Fink & Christine Mayrhuber & Silvia Rocha-Akis, 2022. "Maßnahmenpakete gegen Teuerung. Potentielle Wirkung auf die privaten Haushalte," WIFO Research Briefs 11, WIFO.
    4. Munoz de Bustillo Llorente Rafael & FERNANDEZ MACIAS Enrique & GONZALEZ VAZQUEZ Ignacio, 2020. "Universality in Social Protection: An Inquiry about its Meaning and Measurement," JRC Research Reports JRC122953, Joint Research Centre.

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