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Figure 1 shows the number and the share of benefit applications selected
to monitoring each week between October 1 2010 and December 31 2013.
Between 40 and 4,900 applications are assigned to treatment each
monitoring week. For most weeks, this corresponds to about 5 per cent
of the applications. During some weeks, however, no applications have
been selected for monitoring. In autumn 2012 about 10 per cent of the
applications were selected for monitoring.
Table 1 shows the descriptive statistics for the treatment and the
comparison groups. It seems convincing that the treatment assignment
is random. The treatment and the comparison groups are very similar to
each other. There are, however, small differences in the age of the parent,
the number of children and the age of the youngest child between the
treatment and the comparison group.
The sum of temporary parental benefit days 52 weeks before the
monitoring assignment does not differ between the groups. On average the
parents in the treatment and comparison groups got paid for approximately
9.2 gross benefit days during the 52 weeks before monitoring. After
monitoring the treatment group uses less benefit days compared to the
comparison group.
10
The benefit take-up for the treatment group 52 weeks
after the monitoring assignment is 0.11 gross benefit days lower than
for the comparison group. This can be interpreted as a causal effect of
monitoring assignment. More precise analysis is carried out in the next
chapter to verify this effect.
10
Both groups have lower level of benefit take-up in the period after. One reason for
this is that the follow-up period is shorter than 52 weeks for parents selected for
the treatment and comparison groups after February 2013.