ABSTRACT
Even if social assistance schemes provide benefits for the whole population living in a country, and even if the level of benefits guarantees a decent standard of living, poverty may still occur if social assistance benefits are not claimed by those who are entitled to receive them. Even though the income situation of temporal non-claimants is relatively good compared to others, frictional non-take-up may be an important factor in explaining the incidence of poverty. If the receipt of social assistance is widespread and considered as fairly normal, general stigmatization is expected to be less problematic than in a country where recipiency is very unusual. The analysis of expenditure for social assistance illustrates that the relative weight of social assistance differs considerably across countries. In Sweden, social assistance schemes are clearly detached from most other social security benefits, for most of which the linkage between individual contributions and benefits is relatively strong.
