Developing methodology to measure the returns on investment from integrated social assistance schemes

This study aimed to develop and apply methodologies to measure both what is and what could be the return on investment from integrated social assistance schemes for each of the 28 Member States. The main question was if benefit recipients have access to employment and social services in an integrated manner, does this help their labour market reintegration? This has been done using typical households with working-age members receiving minimum income support in a cross-country analysis.

As a partner to Ecorys, the Budapest Institute developed a questionnaire and various indicators to measure the level of integration with services and contributed to developing cost-benefit models for jointly estimating the benefit take-up and the (re-)employment of those at risk of poverty and minimum income beneficiaries, as well as the take-up of certain basic services based on household-level EU SILC data. Ecorys will also conduct an efficiency frontier analysis for the expenditures and coverage/use of services to compare the efficiency of those services, including for services not covered by EU-SILC.

The study was the result of a collaboration between Ecorys and BI. 

Commissioned by the EU DG Employment, led by Ecorys Netherlands.