Welfare fraud

Welfare fraud is the act of illegally using state welfare systems by knowingly withholding or giving information to obtain more funds than would otherwise be allocated.

This article deals with welfare fraud in various countries of the world, and includes many social benefit programs such as food assistance, housing, unemployment benefits, Social Security, disability, and medical. Each country's problems and programs are varied. Obtaining reliable evidence of welfare fraud is notoriously difficult.^[1] Apart from the obvious methodological problems, research reveals that interviewing performance is often mediocre, and may be anecdotal, misunderstood, or collected from opinionated or biased caseworkers.^[2] Interviews with non-citizen welfare recipients, where the interviewer has succeeded in gaining a high level of trust, have shown that a very high percent fail to report incomes.^[3][4] Official figures of the prevalence of welfare fraud based on government investigation tend to be low – a few percent of the total amount of welfare spending. Statistical research indicates that the vast majority of fraud is committed by businesses serving the recipients of government benefits.^[5] Welfare or benefits fraud committed by recipients is usually of very modest sums, and is committed by people who struggle with poverty; but once started it often continues after reaching financial stability.^[6][7]