Annual rates of SA benefit receipt - the standard measure of benefit receipt in most empirical work - are therefore not generally a good measure of benefit receipt at a point in time. The result also implies that a significant number of people receive benefits for relatively short periods (less than a year). The ratio of annual to average monthly rates of benefit receipt can be interpreted as a measure of turnover in benefit receipt: among the five countries looked at, turnover is highest in Norway and lowest in Luxembourg and the Netherlands.