Take-up of social benefits is a central issue in poverty alleviation and fiscal evaluations of policy reforms. However, it is difficult t o fi nd exogenous variation in the benefit level, and little is therefore known about takeup responses to basic financial i ncentives. We exploit large and...

We exploit a sharp birthday discontinuity in a large and universal Swedish cash transfer program, creating plausibly exogenous variation in the default disbursement option, while holding entitlements and other financial incentives constant. When the cash transfer is paid out to the mother by...

Take-up of social benefits is a central issue in poverty alleviation and fiscal evaluations of policy reforms. However, it is difficult t o fi nd exogenous variation in the benefit level, and little is therefore known about takeup responses to basic financial i ncentives. We exploit large and...

We exploit a sharp birthday discontinuity in a large and universal Swedish cash transfer program, creating plausibly exogenous variation in the default disbursement option, while holding entitlements and other financial incentives constant. When the cash transfer is paid out to the mother by...