There’s a clear brightline---the legal conditions for social security benefit eligibility are sharply defined.
Frans Pennings 18, Professor of Labour Law and Social Security Law, Utrecht University, the Netherlands and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser, Professor of Comparative Public Policy, Institute of Political Science, Eberhard Karls University of Tübingen, Germany, “Social Security,” Routledge Handbook of the Welfare State, edited by Bent Greve, 2nd ed., Routledge, 06/28/2018, pp. 355–365 DOI.org (Crossref), doi:10.4324/9781315207049-32
The distinction between old and new risks on grounds of the possibility to influence one’s own risk is not an absolute one. For instance, unemployed people can to a certain extent influence the duration of their unemployment depending on their willingness and attempts to accept and find work. Also in case of illness there can be large variations in the work which persons are still willing to do. Family benefits are only paid after a couple has taken the initiative to produce a child. If we compare this with a new risk, namely the obligation to care for a seriously ill child, this does not leave much choice, in some situations, to quit or reduce work.
The problem is, however, that for the old risks the legal conditions for benefit eligibility can be much more sharply defined and supervised than in the case of the new risks. This makes it more difficult to control access to compensation for such new risks. For instance, in the example of the ill child, it can still be disputed whether the partner, or other family members, of a professional organisation is asked to provide the care. And in case of care for other family members, friends or relatives the question also arises if the person concerned has to undertake the task of caring or whether somebody else can be asked. Comparable discussions arise in case of divorce insurance. The new risks make supervision difficult and would require a thorough investigation of the private situation of the claimant.