Social Protection Puzzle: Recipiency-based Benefit Complexity in Europe

Social protection systems are considered the cornerstones of the welfare state, originally built to address inequalities, alleviate poverty, and mitigate social risks. Many European social protection systems have evolved into complex, multi-tiered 'puzzles' as they expand coverage to address new life-course risks. This has created systems in which navigating is a skill and access is unequal. This paper uses a recipiency-based approach to analyse the level of benefit complexity of European social protection systems, 'the puzzle', by counting how many different types of social cash benefits households receive in one year. A higher number reflects greater complexity of the income protection system. Using microdata from the Luxembourg Income Study across 25 European countries for the years 2000-2023, the results show that households, particularly families, can receive up to 15 different benefits as part of their annual income, although there is significant variation across countries and households. Benefit complexity has increased in some countries, whereas it has been relatively stable in others. The increase in benefit complexity is associated with higher access to benefits in Southern Europe across all household types, whereas in the Nordic countries, the rise in single-parent benefit complexity aligns with growing single-parent poverty rates.