Income and social security
How do laws and regulations affect ordinary people?
The financial situation of households and the way social security is administered and supports people financially is a central theme in many of Centerdata’s projects.
Over the years, we have made some significant contributions to this topic from different perspectives, particularly from the perspective of different groups of people: employees, benefit recipients, pensioners or consumers.
Our projects also focus on the practicalities of providing financial support: how can municipalities, the UWV (employee insurance agency), the banks and pension funds ensure that people are helped quickly and effectively?
What do we do in this area?
We study the effect of laws and regulations on ordinary people and how these laws and regulations impact the provision of financial support. We look at the impact of changes on different groups of people (consumers, benefit recipients, patients, employees) and the effect on their behavior. To this end, we distribute questionnaire surveys to our representative panels.
We also conduct research among specific target groups using both questionnaires (to be linked to administrative files) as well as in-depth interviews. We are not only asked to study the effect on people but also on the professionals and the administration services, such as the UWV (employee insurance agency), municipal authorities, insurers and care institutions.
We are experts in the fields of private and public insurances, employee insurances, municipal benefit schemes (formerly WWB, Wajong and Wsw), and national insurances such as AOW (state pension) and child benefit. Our clients in the area of income and social security include the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, DNB, UWV and the Social and Cultural Planning Bureau.
Example projects
- Empirical study Participation Act municipalities
For the Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment, we looked at the experience of municipal authorities with the Participation Act in the period 2015-2019. In 2015, 2017 and 2019 we sent online questionnaires to a sample of more than 100 municipalities and held interviews with approximately 30 municipalities. The experiences of UWV, collected through questionnaires, interviews and focus group meetings, have also been included in this study. This study resulted in the creation of three reports that were presented to the Dutch House of Representatives.
- The unemployed over-50s
People aged over 50 who become unemployed face many changes. We received funding from the GAK Institute to find out how people over 50 who lose their job cope with these changes and how they manage to create a new routine. We analyzed the data we had collected previously through the LISS panel; we distributed questionnaires, held interviews and organized focus group meetings for the target group. The report also focuses on those people over 50 who are not or no longer benefit recipients. This means that they lose out on job-related information or advice on how to supplement their income and they are not included in new schemes and policies for the unemployed over-50s.
- Research project into double child benefit
Parents with special needs children who require a lot of care may be entitled to receive double child benefit. The Ministry of Social Affairs and Employment asked us to find out what the take-up rates of this scheme are to ensure that all parents who are entitled actually receive double child benefit. We compared the characteristics of parents who apply for double child benefit through the SVB and CIZ with the characteristics of parents who only receive single child benefit. For this purpose we analyzed micro data from Statistics Netherlands. We discovered that people from lower socio-economic backgrounds and single parents were more likely to drop out of the application process and that they are less likely to be awarded double child benefit.