Persistent or temporary? Effects of social assistance benefit sanctions on employment quality
single-authored
Socio-Economic Review, 22(3), 1531–1557
Abstract: This article analyzes the effects of sanctions for unemployed recipients of the social assistance benefit in Germany. I conduct an analysis using administrative data from 2012 to 2018, applying a dynamic entropy balancing approach. In contrast to most previous analyses of benefit sanction effects, I analyse outcomes over a longer period and assess effects on various dimensions of employment quality, including education (mis)match. The results show, in line with previous research, that benefit sanctions increase the employment probability in the first months after treatment. In the long run, the employment probability and employment quality of sanctioned benefit recipients are lower than those for the comparison group of non-sanctioned benefit recipients, indicating long-lasting negative effects. The negative consequences of benefit sanctions for employment quality are hence not temporary, but persistent.
with Veronika J. Knize
Journal of European Social Policy, 34(5), 573-589
Abstract: Active labour market programmes (ALMPs) should help young adults who collect welfare benefits ‘get back on track’. Despite the recent proliferation of research on ALMPs, only scant attention has been paid to their employment quality effects. Aiming to fill this gap, this article evaluates the long-term effects of German ALMPs on young adults’ employment quality. We measure employment quality with two indicators: one on whether someone has a job with earnings below the low wage threshold and the other on whether they have a job with earnings above the low wage threshold. These measures help us assess whether ALMPs prevent young adults from being at risk of poverty again. In addition, we study whether ALMP effects vary by social origin. We distinguish young adults by whether their families collected benefits when they were adolescents, as a marker for disadvantaged social origin. We analyse in-firm training and one-euro jobs as examples for enabling and workfare programmes, which exist across other welfare states as well. Empirically, we apply an entropy balancing approach to a self-drawn sample from registry data to analyse ALMP treatment effects. Results show that in-firm training enhances young adults’ employment quality in the long run. The effects tend to be lower for those from disadvantaged families though, indicating that disadvantages embedded in social origin remain. The workfare programme harms participants’ employment quality, with those less disadvantaged suffering the greatest damage. Overall, our research provides evidence that in-firm training effectively enables young adults to find a job of higher quality, addressing their risk of social exclusion and proving useful in promoting upward social mobility. Nonetheless, the article also raises urgent issues concerning how the needs of those most vulnerable can be addressed by social policy.