With rising spending during the COVID-19 pandemic, the state has become involved in decision-making in areas where it has held back for years. In the case of housing the state's role has declined sharply since 1989, and the expectation that housing is the private responsibility of each...

This paper makes two contributions to the literature. First, by employing a macro-level institutional dataset on benefit levels for social assistance (SA) and minimum income protection (MIP) in 22 European countries in the period 1990–2013, I show that the adequacy of income support for...