Targeting unemployment benefits in Hungary

• Authors: Galasi Peter , Nagy Gyula
• Languages of publication: HU

Abstracts

EN

The authors use the 2004 income survey of the Central Statistical Office to consider targeting of two types of unemployment-related benefit: (a) unemployment insurance and retraining benefits (UBs), and (b) unemployment assistance (UA). The evidence suggests that UBs are relatively well-targeted in the sense that most of the income support goes to persons at the bottom of the income ladder, although those in deep poverty benefit less. Income-redistribution exercises performed show that removing UBs would be detrimental to the position of persons at the bottom of the income scale, resulting in a higher poverty rate, while that redistributing them in favour of members of the original bottom or two bottom income deciles would better their income position and reduce the poverty rate. The authors also looked at whether persons eligible for UA (the main means-tested benefit in Hungary) were actually benefiting from it, and whether local labour-market conditions influenced the probability of receiving UA. It was found that persons meeting the eligibility criteria (personal and household income levels) have better chances of receiving UA, while local rates of unemployment also have a positive effect on such chances.

Keywords

EN

COMPENSATION AND LABOR COSTS; PERSONAL INCOME; POVERTY'S MEASUREMENT & ANALYSIS; PUBLIC POLICY; UNEMPLOYMENT AND VACANCIES; UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE; WEALTH AND THEIR DISTRIBUTIONS

Discipline

• ECONOMICS: ECONOMICS

• Publisher: Committee for Economic Sciences of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Kozgazdasagi Szemle (Economic Review)
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 55
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 23
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Galasi Peter

author

Nagy Gyula

• Peter Galasi, no address given, contact the journal editor

Identifiers

CEJSH db identifier

10HUAAAA078623