Eligibility Criteria for Unemployment Benefits

Eligibility criteria for unemployment benefits, which require recipients to actively look for work, takeup suitable job offers or take part in active labour market programmes (ALMPs), or risk benefit sanctions,can play an important role in offsetting the negative impact of generous unemployment benefits onemployment incentives. This paper presents information on the strictness of eligibility criteria forunemployment benefits for 36 OECD and/or EU member countries. It covers entitlement conditions(employment and/or contribution requirements to gain access to benefits and sanctions for voluntaryunemployment), job-search requirements (availability requirements during ALMPs and suitable workcriteria), monitoring of job-search effort and sanctions for refusing a job offer or ALMP placement. Thesequalitative data are then used to compile a composite indicator of the strictness of eligibility criteria andsome comparisons are made with the results of a similar exercise for earlier periods. This indicatorcomplements existing cross-country indicators relating to unemployment benefits, such as net replacementrate data from the OECD Tax and Benefits database and data on ALMP expenditure compiled annually byEurostat and the OECD.