Many OECD countries have in recent decades experienced periods of relatively rapid growth in nonemployment benefit expenditures and recipiency rates which have not subsequently been reversed. By contrast, in a number of OECD countries the number of unemployment benefit recipients has declined fairly sharply since the mid-1990s. Although national situations for particular benefits vary greatly, a variety of evidence suggests that there is now often substantial scope for bringing people currently in the sick and disabled, lone-parent, old-age and non-categorical social assistance groups into employment.