In view of the demographic trends, most EU countries face the problem of a declining work force in the future. Understanding the interaction between income support systems (such as unemployment benefits, social assistance, early retirement and pension systems) and total labor supply is of...

This paper summarizes a set of expert reports commissioned by the IFAU. The expert reports cover Estonia, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. These countries represent range of welfare states, both in terms of scope and design. And in each country there are...

Comparing Sweden to other EU countries, labour force participation rates of older individuals and females are high. These facts are consistent with the idea that institutional design matters: access to child care, paid parental leave, and a tax system with individual rather than household income...

In this paper we provide a description of the labor market in the Netherlands. Compared to other OECD countries labor force participation is high and the unemployment rate is low (also for young workers). Among the unemployed there are, however, relatively many long-term unemployed workers....

In this paper we give an overview of labour supply incentives present in the Estonian income support system and how changes during the last ten years in the Estonian benefit system have influenced the incentives. As Estonia belongs to the group of EU countries where both taxes and social...

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...

This paper analyzes transitions into and out of 3 different labor market states, social assistance, unemployment and employment. We estimate a dynamic multinomial logit model, controlling for endogenous initial condition and unobserved heterogeneity, using a large representative Swedish panel...

To analyze the effect of health on work, many studies use a simple self-assessed health measure based upon a question such as do you have an impairment or health problem limiting the kind or amount of work you can do? A possible drawback of such a measure is the possibility that different groups...

The current unemployment insurance and employment protection legislation were set up in an environment in which relationships between workers and firms were typically long-lasting and stable. The increasing globalisation of the economy and the rapid technological and organisational changes...

The UK's Labour Government has expanded means-testing of social security but attempted to do so while minimising the disincentive effects typically associated with such an approach. We test whether it has succeeded by reviewing the effect of 5 years of reforms on a range of incentives across the...