Endogenizing take-up of social assistance in a microsimulation model. A case study for Germany

Jürgen Wiemers ()
Additional contact information
Jürgen Wiemers: Institute for Employment Research (IAB)

International Journal of Microsimulation, 2015, vol. 8, issue 2, 4-27

Abstract: Microsimulation studies typically assume that all entitlements to means-tested benefits are actually claimed by eligible households, despite a large body of research that suggests that take-up rates are substantially below 100%. The assumption of full take-up tends to exaggerate the simulated increase in caseloads and fiscal costs of a social policy reform. This paper investigates the impact of non-take-up for two hypothetical scenarios, namely increasing and decreasing the base amount of social assistance in Germany by 100 per month. We find a substantial effect of considering non-take-up on the simulated change in fiscal costs and in particular on the change in caseloads, where the full take-up assumption exaggerates the latter change by a factor of about two.

Keywords: Non-take-up; microsimulation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C15 H31 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.microsimulation.org/IJM/V8_2/2_IJM_8_2_2015_Wiemers.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ijm:journl:v:8:y:2015:i:2:p:4-27

Access Statistics for this article

International Journal of Microsimulation is currently edited by Matteo Richiardi

More articles in International Journal of Microsimulation from International Microsimulation Association
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Jinjing Li ().