In Canada, means tests are used for student finance (for post-secondary education), legal aid, and "welfare" (direct transfer payments to individuals to combat poverty).
Means tests are also not used for pensions and seniors' benefits, but there is a clawback of Old Age Security payments for people making over $69,562 (in 2012).
[1] Resentment over a means test was among the factors giving rise to the National Unemployed Workers' Movement in the United Kingdom.
[2] Today, means-tested benefits—meaning that entitlement is affected by the amount of income, savings, capital and assets— is a central feature of the benefit system.
The rules for free NHS dentistry and optical charges have become more complex since the introduction of Universal Credit and have led to many people facing financial penalties, often wrongly.
Defunct benefits include: Means testing is used to test for eligibility to Medicaid, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, Section 8 housing, Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, Pell Grant, Federal Supplemental Educational Opportunity Grant, Federal Work-Study Program, direct subsidized student loans, as well as the eligibility for relief for debtors who have sufficient financial means to pay a portion of their debts.
In 1992, third-party presidential candidate Ross Perot proposed that future Social Security benefits be subjected to a means test;[7] though this was hailed by some as a potential solution to a purported impending crisis in funding the program, few other political candidates since Perot have publicly made the same suggestion, which would require costly investigations and might associate accepting those benefits with social stigma.