author: Wang, J., & Van Vliet, O. year: 2016 title: "Social Assistance and Minimum Income Benefits: Benefit Levels, Replacement Rates and Policies Across 26 Oecd Countries, 1990-2009" publisher: European Journal of Social Security uri: https://doi.org/10.1177/138826271601800401 pubtype: article discipline: economics country: global period: 1990-2009 maxlength: targeting: implicit group: low-income data: World Bank CPI indicators; Penn World Table design: observational method: cross-country comparative analysis sample: 26 unit: country representativeness: national causal: 0 # 0 correlation / 1 causal theory: limitations: data availability necessitated indicator construction for real minimum benefits and replacement rates observation: - intervention: direct transfer (social assistance) institutional: 1 structural: 1 agency: 0 inequality: income type: 0 # 0 vertical / 1 horizontal indicator: 1 # 0 absolute / 1 relative measures: real wage; replacement rate findings: real benefit levels increased in most countries, benefit levels increasing more than consumer prices; income replacement rates mixed outcomes with decreases in some countries where real benefit levels increased channels: bulk of increases comes from deliberate policy changes; benefit levels not linked to wages and policy changes not taking into account changes in wages direction: 1 # -1 neg / 0 none / 1 pos significance: # 0 nsg / 1 msg / 2 sg notes: annotation: | An observational study on the levels of social assistance benefits and wages in a national comparative study within 26 developed countries. It finds that real minimum income benefit levels generally increased in most countries from 1990 to 2009, with only a few countries, mostly in Eastern European welfare states, showing decreases during the time frame. The majority of changes in real benefit levels are from deliberate policy changes and the study calculates them by a comparison of the changes in benefit levels to the changes in consumer prices. Secondly, it finds that changes for income replacement rates are more mixed, with rates decreasing even in some countries which have increasing real benefits levels. The study suggests this is because benefit levels are in most cases not linked to wages and policy changes also do not take changes in wages into account resulting in diverging benefit levels and wages, which may lead to exacerbating inequality gaps between income groups.