In the UK they are on a stepped scale. So you hit a trigger point a lose a lot, especially housing benefit. In some benefits you have to be out of work so-long

In the UK they are on a stepped scale. So you hit a trigger point a lose a lot, especially housing benefit. In some benefits you have to be out of work so-long to get them again, so a day's work can lose you a whole weeks benefit. I was out of work for a few weeks during the recession. It took a month to receive any housing benefit and two weeks to get unemployment by which time I was behind on my rent. I took the first job I could find at a little over minimum (with best intentions) and applied for working tax credits which were sorted a few weeks later. The tax credits were back-dated to when I started earning so now I had 'earned too much' in a prior period to have claimed housing benefit and I got a bill to pay it all back. Then because I had claimed a benefit I was not entitled to I was pulled in for an interview under-caution for benefit fraud! I was read my rights and they put two tapes in a machine just like in the films and started questioning me. We got to the end of the first tape before they accepted that their chronology was rather unfair. So yes UK benefits are a severe poverty trap I have a relation who was manager of a number of low waged workers and none of them would take extra hours for fear of upsetting their tax credits. Something about 16 hours a week, but I don't know whether it was a time or a wage limit. Imagine a society incentivising people not to work?