Welfare regimes and welfare use: social assistance patterns an an outcome of minimum income support policies in German and Italian cities

Abstract

"This working paper focuses on one hand on the aspects of the social assistance programmes directed to combat poverty and social exclusion, on the other hand it focuses on the risks of dependency associated with longterm recipiency of social assistance basic income support in Germany and Italy. The aim is to describe the institutional background in both countries and then re-explain relative differences in the risk of remaining on social assistance benefits in selected local contexts (Bremen, Bozen, Milan, Turin). In the multivariate models of social assistance receipt, we relate the risk of social assistance recipiency to the institutional settings and demographic characteristics of recipients, e.g., gender, age, nationality, household type, number of children and seasonal effects of terminating."