Weathering the storms? Minimum-income benefits as a crisis response

Herwig Immervoll and Felizia Pasteiner

No 323, OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers from OECD Publishing

Abstract: Economic crises produce rapid and sizable shifts in the demand for social support. Means-tested cash transfers, such as 'social assistance' programmes and related minimum-income benefits (MIB) typically function as benefits of last-resort, filling some of the support gaps left by other government transfers and are key pillars of strategies to alleviate hardship and prevent long-term damage from episodes spent in poverty. This paper discusses crisis-related challenges for MIB programmes, focussing on support for working-age individuals and their families, and drawing on the experience of OECD countries during the COVID-19 pandemic and the subsequent cost-of-living crisis. It compares MIB provisions before these crises, surveys countries’ approaches and reforms in subsequent years, and distils lessons for making MIBs more effective, responsive and crisis ready.

JEL-codes: D31 E66 H12 H31 H53 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-06-20
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

There are no downloads for this item, see the EconPapers FAQ for hints about obtaining it.

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:oec:elsaab:323-en

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in OECD Social, Employment and Migration Working Papers from OECD Publishing Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().