The paper starts with a brief look at social expenditure patterns and the importance of different social policy areas, in particular the role of social assistance policy within social protection systems. It then looks at the objectives of social assistance policy and considers payment-rates in...

This paper follows the framework developed in past OECD studies for analysis of social assistance programmes that aim to provide low-income clients with adequate financial support while simultaneously promoting their reintegration into labour market and, where necessary, mainstream society....

The OECD Social Expenditure data base (SOCX) allows the monitoring of trends in aggregate social expenditure and changes in its composition. But aggregate social expenditure may sometimes fail to reflect the true ‘effort’ of a country in providing social support. Account needs to be taken of...