Report
Falling through the social safety net? Analysing non-take-up of minimum income benefit and monetary social assistance in Austria
Publication details
Summary
A key performance criterion of social protection systems is whether benefits reach their target groups. Means-tested programmes, however, tend to be characterised by a certain extent of take-up problems. With the aim to increase target efficiency by facilitating access and introducing new minimum standards, the Austrian benefit of last resort “monetary social assistance” was replaced by the “minimum income benefit” in 2010/11. This policy brief quantifies the success of the reform by assessing the size and social determinants of (non-)takeup of those benefits, and points at potentials for further policy improvement.