The lines for all five countries are essentially flat, which implies that there is very little systematic variation in rates of benefit receipt between calendar months. Any month-to-month fluctuations in benefit receipt observed in the monthly rates of benefit receipt for Sweden and Norway in the bottom-left panel represent ‘noise’, i.e. random variations, rather than seasonal effects. Figure 6 shows that 2-4% of working-age individuals in Latvia and Norway receive HB while the corresponding share is 3-6% in Germany and 8-10% in the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.