Important for what, though? For reducing poverty, we can absolutely know which one does more. Education and employment-side stuff is all going to show up in pre-welfare poverty rates. For social democratic welfare states, poverty rates pre-welfare are similar to the US. It’s only after cash transfers that their poverty rates are better, and they are a *lot* better. Cash welfare in a social democratic model is there to give incomes to children, the elderly, the disabled, and jobseekers (and then a couple other smaller categories), since they’re the main drivers of poverty. You may have an anecdote of people “gaming the system,” but honestly if this were a widespread problem we would see this in labor force participation and employment rate data. We simply don’t. All of the Nordics, who have social democratic welfare states, have workplace participation rates similar to or higher than the US.