The decline in SA benefit receipt observed for many countries in Figure 5 has been driven primarily by falling entry rates into benefit receipt. The two top panels of Figure 7 show that the patterns observed for entry rates are remarkably similar to those reported earlier for the rates of benefit receipt. There is a clear downward trend in year-to-year entry rates into benefit receipt for five countries, for which entry rates into SA benefits appear to converge to around 1-1.5% towards the end of the observation periods. Exceptions are again the entry rate for Germany, which fluctuates heavily between 2% and 4.5% possibly in response to the 2005 ‘Hartz reforms’, and the one for Latvia, where no clear trend can be identified due to the shorter observation period.