Rational Poverty or Poor Rationality? The Take-Up of Social Assistance Benefits

By R. Riphahn. Social Science Research Network, 2001

184 citations recorded by the source corpus.

In several countries social assistance dependence has been increasing since the 1980s. After surveying the theoretical and empirical take-up literature, this study presents estimates of recent rates of non take-up of social assistance benefits. Once methodological shortcomings of prior estimations are corrected, the results show that take-up has fallen recently and thus cannot explain the rising welfare receipt. Following theoretical predictions, the probability that a rational individual takes up social assistance increases with the expected benefit amount and duration, and falls with application cost and stigma. More than half of all households eligible for transfers under the German social assistance program did not claim their benefits.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Political Science and International Relations, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/87014fc41a82480bbce4c97a8112915d5ea1f8e2

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Gender Studies

1. Heikki Viitamäki
2. Olivier Bargain
3. H. Immervoll

In Political Science and International Relations

1. Heikki Viitamäki
2. Olivier Bargain
3. H. Immervoll

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Heikki Viitamäki
2. Olivier Bargain
3. H. Immervoll

Citations in the corpus

• No claim, no pain. Measuring the non-take-up of social assistance using register data (2010, methodology): “Note also that among the dichotomous indicators, home ownership (outright) has the largest marginal e¤ect, increasing the non take-up probability by 31 points, which is qualitatively and quantitatively similar to Riphahn (2001).”