Five decades of disability benefit policies in five OECD countries

This chapter summarizes and discusses developments and policy changes in the public disability benefit systems of five countries of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD)—the Netherlands, Sweden, Great Britain, Germany, and Australia—over the past five decades. All five countries experienced substantial increases in their disability recipiency rates (beneficiaries as a share of the working-age population) at some point after 1970, followed by plateaus and, eventually, declines. This pattern reflects a commonality in the evolution of their disability benefit policies: a period of expanding eligibility standards and/or benefits was followed by rising recipiency rates. These rising rates triggered policy reforms that tightened eligibility standards and/or benefits again, which reduced growth rates and, eventually, recipiency rates.