Kurzbeschreibung

A large body of recent international literature finds that a considerable portion of households eligible for means-tested benefits do not claim their entitlements, a phenomenon known as non-take-up. Empirical studies typically view non-take-up as a rational decision, where take-up occurs if the net utility of claiming benefits is positive for an entitled household. Theoretically, dynamical aspects might take an important role in determining the net utility of benefit take-up. For instance, non-take-up might be more prevalent for households with unstable earned income because they expect to be entitled only for a short period of time. Additionally, opposing effects of past benefit receipt experiences on current take-up can be expected, with familiarity reducing information and transaction costs but negative experiences potentially increasing perceived stigma costs. Despite the potentially important role of a longitudinal perspective on non-take-up, empirical studies considering such aspects remain limited. This paper addresses this gap by incorporating longitudinal aspects into the analysis of non-take-up of social assistance benefits ("Arbeitslosengeld II"), the primary means-tested benefit in Germany. To conduct our analysis, we use data from the German "Panel Study Labour Market and Social Security" (PASS) from 2008 to 2020 linked with administrative data from Germany's Federal Employment Agency (PASS-ADIAB). This linkage allows us to track households benefit receipt history even during periods when they were not surveyed in the PASS data, providing insights into the duration, frequency, and experiences with benefits and labour market policies. Simultaneously, the utilisation of administrative data for benefit receipt assists in mitigating the impact of benefit misreporting in the survey data. We employ GETTSIM, an open-source microsimulation model, to simulate household eligibility in the PASS data. To our knowledge, this paper represents the first application of GETTSIM to the PASS data.