HBS Economics helped the Danish Ministry of Employment build a data-driven tool that maps standard ways in and out of different public benefits using register data from Statistics Denmark.
The tool is flexible and allows the user to choose between different benefits, time periods and follow people with certain characteristics, such as different age groups or people from different regions.
As a part of the project, we presented our tool for the Danish Benefit Commission (in Danish, Ydelseskommissionen) and discussed the implications for rethinking the Danish Benefit system. Part of their final report is based on the insights from our tool, see chapter 5.
In short, HBS Economics helped define standard ways in and out of social assistance and showed how, for example, 53 percent of new receivers of social assistance in first quarter of 2019 had previously been receiving social assistance or unemployment benefits in the past two years. This shows how a substantial part of benefit receivers struggle to enter and stay connected to the labor market. The tool will be able to track how future policies aimed at reducing this share succeed.
The final report from the Danish Benefit Commission can be read here.
