TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Immervoll, Herwig
AU  - Pasteiner, Felizia
        TI  - Weathering the Storms? Minimum-Income Benefits as a Crisis Response
        PY  - 2025/Jun/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 17943
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/publications/dp17943
        AB  - 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.
        KW  - minimum-income benefits
KW  - social assistance
KW  - economic crisis
KW  - COVID-19
KW  - inflation
KW  - poverty
        ER  -