Asset tests play a key role in determining eligibility for minimum income (MI) benefits in most OECD and EU countries, yet their design, implementation, and impact remain largely underexplored. While there is broad consensus in the policy community on the importance of assessing household wealth alongside income, countries apply highly diverse and often complex rules, with unclear implications for benefit adequacy, coverage, and take-up.
This paper aims to fill this information gap by providing a comparative account of asset test requirements in MI schemes, drawing on a new OECD database developed with financial support from the European commission. The database maps how countries assess various asset types and introduces a novel classification framework to group asset test features and rank their potential strictness for claimants. The paper also proposes three methodological options to quantify asset test strictness at the country level and presents an empirical application to selected EU countries. The final section discusses the trade-offs in asset test design and offers policy guidance to support equitable, efficient, and sustainable targeting of MI benefits.
