Abstract

The aim of this analysis is to evaluate the development of national unemployment benefit schemes (NUBSs) since the Great Recession in the euro area. For this purpose, a number of key unemployment benefit indicators from SSPTW, MISSOC, Eurostat, ILO and the OECD are compared between the periods before and after the Great Recession. The results of the comparative analysis in fourteen countries of the euro area do not point in a uniform direction of a generosity loss or enhancement in the NUBSs. In a second step, we evaluate the medium-term impact of the economic downturn of 2007/2008, measured as real GDP growth per capita, general government gross debt and the aggregate unemployment rate of the years 2006 until 2014/2015. The results from the cross section OLS regression suggest that the Great Recession and the macroeconomic condition in the euro area affected some of the benefit indicators negatively, such as net replacement rates and the contribution period. The duration of the unemployment insurance payments did not seem to be influenced by the chosen macroeconomic variables.