open access

https://hdl.handle.net/2115/89027

Population Dynamics of Welfare Stigma : Welfare Fraud vs. Incomplete Take-Up

英語

Non-Take-Up

2023-04-05

0-33

JEL classifications : H31, H53, 138

There are two important problems in welfare benefit programs: the prevalence of welfare fraud, in which ineligible people receive welfare benefits, and incomplete take-up, whereby eligible poor people are reluctant to claim welfare benefits. This study investigates both of these opposing phenomena by extending the static models of statistical discrimination and the taxpayer resentment view welfare stigma suggested by Besley and Coate (1992) to a simple dynamic model of a population game. We find multiple stable equilibria in the long run, one of which entails low welfare fraud and 100% incomplete take-up and the other of which entails high welfare fraud and complete take-up in either model, and, moreover, that an interior stationary equilibrium that allows for the coexistence of welfare fraud and incomplete take? up is unstable in the first model, but it is stable in the second model. We thus conclude that the model of the tax-payer resentment view welfare stigma would provide a better explanation for the persistent coexistence of welfare fraud and incomplete take-up actually observed in Japan and Germany.

学術雑誌論文

Author's Original