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European Sociological Review Advance Access originally published online on June 22, 2006
European Sociological Review 2006 22(4):443-458; doi:10.1093/esr/jcl007
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© The Author 2006. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oxfordjournals.org

Take-Up Down Under: Hits and Misses of Means-Tested Benefits in Australia

Carina Mood

Department of Sociology, Stockholm University, 106 91 Stockholm, Sweden. E-mail: carinam{at}sociology.su.se

Research has revealed considerable non-take-up rates of benefits in western welfare states, which has raised concern that benefits fail to reach their objectives. Most research has focused on means-tested benefits, partly because they are believed to be subject to high stigma deterring people from take-up. I study the take-up of such benefits in Australia, where virtually all cash benefits are means-tested. Using data from the first two waves of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics Australia (HILDA) survey, I estimate the general take-up rate of benefits among people with low assets and incomes and carry out a detailed analysis of take-up of one particular benefit, Parenting Payment. Contrary to the traditional conception of selective welfare states as highly stigmatizing, I find no evidence of a particularly low degree of take-up, and I suggest that stigma of means-tested benefits in Australia may on average be low because they target a relatively large proportion of the population. However, non-take-up appears to be considerable in some population categories where stigma is likely to be relatively high.

Manuscript received: November 1, 2005.


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