Information and take-up of social benefits in France

Last registered on June 08, 2018

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Information and take-up of social benefits in France
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0001882
Initial registration date
January 03, 2017

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
January 03, 2017, 12:01 PM EST

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Last updated
June 08, 2018, 12:36 PM EDT

Last updated is the most recent time when changes to the trial's registration were published.

Locations

Region

Primary Investigator

Affiliation
Paris School of Economics

Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Affiliation
DREES, Ministère des affaires sociales
PI Affiliation
Warwick University
PI Affiliation
Warwick University

Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2015-08-01
End date
2018-09-30
Secondary IDs
Abstract
The low take-up of social benefits is one of the major hurdles in designing effective social policies. A proportion of individuals who are entitled to social benefits choose not to claim them. The literature has advanced several possible explanations for this phenomenon: lack of information, transaction costs (such as transport costs), and fear of being stigmatised.

In order to face this problem, the French Welfare Office (CNAF) invites potential beneficiaries to meet with social workers in order to examine their eligibility status with respect to a large range of State and local social benefits. Our project examines the effects of various type of invitations, which address different plausible causes of low take-up, on the presence of people at those meetings and the effect of this presence on the actual take-up of social benefits. We focus our analysis on a population which is likely to require social benefits: people who recently registered as unemployed or for whom unemployment insurance will soon come to an end.

This experimentation has a double goal: evaluating a program which aims at increasing the level of take-up of social benefits and studying the causes of this low take-up (lack of information, cost of contracting social service and stigmatisation) and their relative weight.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Castell, Laura et al. 2018. "Information and take-up of social benefits in France." AEA RCT Registry. June 08. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.1882-3.0
Former Citation
Castell, Laura et al. 2018. "Information and take-up of social benefits in France." AEA RCT Registry. June 08. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/1882/history/30548
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
The intervention consists in a meeting at the Welfare Office, where a social worker examines the financial situation of the subject and explores possible eligibility to a number of social benefits. This mostly provides detailed information on benefits. It also reduces transaction costs (conditional on attending the meeting) as beneficiaires will be helped in the process. A phone version of the meeting is also offered in order to reduce transaction costs.
Intervention Start Date
2017-09-01
Intervention End Date
2018-03-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Meeting attendance, detection of eligibility during the meetings, actual take-up of social benefits.
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
The experimentation targets unemployed workers who either recently entered unemployment or are about to terminate unemployment insurance in the Public Unemployment Service administrative files. Participants are then randomly allocated to one of the seven groups:

- Group 1 serves as control.
- Group 2 receives an invitation to a meeting with the Welfare Office. Among this group there are six equally size subgroups.They receive different types of invitations and the nature of the meeting to which they have access differs:

1) Subgroup 1 receives a neutral invitation. It urges recipients to call a phone number in order to plan the meeting. Those people are only offered this appointment at the Welfare Office’s premises
2) Subgroup 2 receives an invitation containing examples of hypothetical life situations together with the corresponding benefit. Those people are only offered this appointment at the Welfare Office’s premises
3) Subgroup 3 receives an invitation containing in addition personal tales of people who have improved their social situation thanks to benefits; this is meant to reduce the feeling of stigmatization. Those people are only offered this appointment at the Welfare Office’s premises
4) Subgroup 4 receives a neutral invitation. It urges recipients to call a phone number in order to plan the meeting. Those people are given a choice of an appointment at the Welfare Office’s premises or a phone interview.
5) Subgroup 5 receives an invitation containing examples of hypothetical life situations together with the corresponding benefit. It urges recipients to call a phone number in order to plan the meeting. Those people are given a choice of an appointment at the Welfare Office’s premises or a phone interview.
6) Subgroup 6 receives an invitation containing in addition personal tales of people who have improved their social situation thanks to benefits; this is meant to reduce the feeling of stigmatization. It urges recipients to call a phone number in order to plan the meeting. Those people are given a choice of an appointment at the Welfare Office’s premises or a phone interview.

Then, three and six month after the intervention, we measure the actual take-up of social benefits in our sample.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
In office using a computer
Randomization Unit
Individuals
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
48,000 (of which 6,000 treated).
Sample size: planned number of observations
48,000
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
24,000 controls; 4,000 per subgroup (intention to treat)
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
J-PAL Europe
IRB Approval Date
2015-04-21
IRB Approval Number
CE/2015-004
Analysis Plan

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Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials