%0 Report
        %A Immervoll, Herwig
%A Pasteiner, Felizia
        %T Weathering the Storms? Minimum-Income Benefits as a Crisis Response
        %D 2025
        %8 2025 Jun
        %I Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        %C Bonn
        %7 IZA Discussion Paper
        %N 17943
        %U https://www.iza.org/publications/dp17943
        %X 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.
        %K minimum-income benefits
%K social assistance
%K economic crisis
%K COVID-19
%K inflation
%K poverty