Recovery of Claims Arising from Abuse of Non-insurance Social Security Benefit System
Recovery of Claims Arising from Abuse of Non-insurance Social Security Benefit System

Summary/Abstract: The paper presents the volume of debts incurred as part of non-insurance social security benefits in the Czech Republic from 2016 to 2020 and defines the structure of these debts by individual types of non-insurance social security benefits, where 25% is attributable to parental allowance, followed by housing allowance (17%) and subsistence allowance (20%). The analysis deals with the number of debts broken down into paid, collected, settled by other means, written off for uncollectibility or extinction ofthe right. The study works with unique data obtained by summarisation from the application programmes used by the Labour Office of the Czech Republic, which showed a continuous decrease in total identified claims by 46% between 2016 and 2020. An analysis of time series and a regression and correlation analysis are performed in the paper. These methods confirm a decreasing trend in the number of total debts and a decreasing proportion of paid debts over time, in contrast to the ratio of outstanding debts, which has been increasing over time. Lastly, they also identify variability in the structure of social security benefits, i.e., inconsistency in the share of individual benefits over the period under review. Social expenditures are fundamental to state spending, but addressing their potential misuse is a sensitive political issue. From an economic perspective, this paradoxical situation leads to overlooking potential resources that could be potentially available through the elimination of purposeful exploitation of the social system, leaving the question of the frequency of purposeful claiming unanswered. Any potential political decision to reduce social expenditures, without an economic evaluation of the frequency and volume of purposefully claimed benefits from the social system, may not be optimal.

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