Further vocational training for the unemployed aims at enhancing their job prospects. This paper analyses the effectiveness of such subsidized training programmes for means-tested unemployment benefit recipients in Germany. The empirical findings are based on rich administrative data of the...

Bringing welfare recipients into jobs is a major goal of German labour market policy since a reform of the year 2005. Direct job creation providing participants with tem-porary subsidized jobs mainly in the non-profit sector plays an important role for achieving this goal. There are three...

We analyse the effects of active social policy (ASP) on the dynamics of welfare dependence. We evaluate the impact of various ASP measures (employment and training) on the duration of welfare spells and subsequent employment spells, based on data from Denmark. The results show that employment...

In this paper I examine the rates at which adults in households recently receiving Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) become jobless, apply for and receive unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, and participate in publicly funded employment services. I also investigate the correlation...

Recent efforts to expand unemployment insurance (UI) eligibility are expected to increase low-earning workers' access to UI. Although the expansion's aim is to smooth the income and consumption of previously ineligible workers, it is possible that UI benefits simply displace other sources of...

The goal of this paper is to evaluate a ?couples-based? policy intervention designed to reduce the number of Australian families without work. In 2000 and 2001, the Australian Government piloted a new counseling initiative targeted towards couple-headed families with dependent children in which...

This paper reviews how income-support systems affect labour force participation in the UK. The UK's approach to social insurance is basic security, with modest, typically flat-rate, benefits; insurance-based benefits are relatively unimportant. Compared with the EU, the UK has high employment...

By increasing the labor supply of welfare recipients, welfare reform may reduce wages and increase unemployment among other less-educated groups. These "spillover effects" are difficult to estimate because welfare caseloads decrease in response to improvements in the economy, which leads...

The German Hartz reforms, introduced by the Red-Green coalition government in the years 2003 to 2005, form part of a broader pattern of European activation policies which have become known as new labour policies. The idea of these reforms was to reduce welfare dependency and to boost activity...