Social Insurance Literacy of Dutch Workers Receiving Disability Benefits and its Associations with Socio-Economic Characteristics.
M D Boonstra, F I Abma, L Wilming and 3 others
PMID 34985681WHAT IT FOUND
About one in three Dutch workers on disability benefits reported limited ability to navigate the social insurance system.
This struggle was linked to not having a partner and poorer Dutch language skills, but surprisingly, those with lower education or weaker language skills rated the system itself as more understandable.
Key findings
0134.9% of participants had limited social insurance literacy, characterized by lower scores on obtaining, understanding, and acting on information.
02Participants with limited literacy were significantly more likely to be without a partner.
03Counterintuitively, people with lower education and limited Dutch language skills rated the system's comprehensibility higher than those with higher education and better language skills.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for OTs
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What it does not show
Significant selection bias: Participants were recruited from an online panel, requiring digital literacy and proactive registration. The sample was higher educated and had better Dutch language skills than the general population of disability benefit recipients. Low response rate (32%), which is considered too low by quality assessment standards. Participants with 'not applicable/don't know' answers were excluded, and those excluded were lower educated and had poorer language skills, likely leading to an underestimation of limited literacy. The SILQ-NL37 measure had not been fully validated at the time of the study (validation results were forthcoming). Cross-sectional design prevents determining causality between socio-economic factors and literacy.
Declared interests
The study was funded by the Institute for Employee Benefits Schemes (UWV), the Dutch social security institute whose clients were studied.
The easy way to misread this
Do not assume that clients with lower education or language skills find the social insurance system easier to navigate because they rate it as more comprehensible. The study suggests this may be due to a lack of awareness of the system's complexity or self-blame for not understanding it, rather than true ease of access.