How helping disabled people find employment affects the job market

a post by Barbara Petrongolo (Queen Mary University of London, UK), Felix Koenig (Princeton University, USA) and John Van Reenan (Massachusetts Institute for Technology, USA) for the OUP blog


JobCentre Plus by Andrew_Writer. CC by 2.0  via Flickr.

Policy makers have long been concerned with helping people on disability benefits find some employment as this group has grown dramatically in recent decades. In the UK, as in several other countries, there are now many more people on disability benefits than on unemployment benefits. The chances of leaving disability benefits once someone is enrolled is low and although many disabled people cannot work at all, many others would like to have some access to the labor market, such as part-time employment.

Introducing performance rewards for public employment service staff may be a cost-effective way to help the disabled find jobs. The UK Jobcentre Plus reform introduced modern management practices into the welfare system. Similar incentive schemes have been associated with substantial productivity gains in the private sector. The reform offered caseworkers greater career rewards if they successfully placed benefit recipients into work. Jobcentre Plus was introduced at different times in different districts between 2001 and 2008, so this staggered timing enabled researchers to implement a thorough examination of the impact of the policy.

Continue reading

See also:

Can helping the sick hurt the able? Incentives, information and disruption in a welfare reform
a paper by Felix Koenig (LSE and CEP), Barbara Petrongolo (QMUL and CEP), John Van Reenen (MIT and CEP) and Nitika Bagaria (CRA)

Full text (PDF 48pp)

---

Compensation or Social Investment? Revisiting the Link between Globalisation and Popular Demand for the Welfare State

an article by Marius R Busemeyer (University of Konstanz, Germany) and Julian L Garritzmann (University of Zurich, Switzerland) published in Journal of Social Policy Volume 48 Issue 3 (July 2019)

Abstract

The debate on effects of globalisation on welfare states is extensive. Often couched in terms of a battle between the compensation and the efficiency theses, the scholarly literature has provided contradictory arguments and findings.

This article contributes to the scholarly debate by exploring in greater detail the micro-level foundations of compensation theory.

More specifically, we distinguish between individual policy preferences for compensatory social policies (unemployment insurance) and human capital-focused social investment policies (education), and expect globalisation to mainly affect demand for educational investment.

A multi-level analysis of International Social Survey Programme (ISSP) survey data provides empirical support for this hypothesis.

This finding provides an important revision and extension of the classical analytical perspective of compensation theory, because it shows that citizens value the social investment function of the welfare state above and beyond simple compensation via social transfers.

This might be particularly relevant in today's skill-centred knowledge economies.

---

The Impact of Conditionality on the Welfare Rights of EU Migrants in the UK

an article by Peter James Dwyer (University of York, UK), Lisa  Scullion and Katy Jones (University of Salford, UK) and Alasdair Stewart (University of Glasgow, UK) published in Policy & Politics Volume 47 Number 1 (January 2019)

Abstract

This paper highlights and explores how conditionality operating at three levels (the EU supranational level, the UK national level and in migrants' mundane 'street level' encounters with social security administrators), come together to restrict and have a negative impact on the social rights of EU migrants living in the UK.

Presenting analysis of new data generated in repeat qualitative interviews with 49 EU migrants resident in the UK, the paper makes an original contribution to understanding how the conditionality inherent in macro level EU and UK policy has seriously detrimental effects on the everyday lives of individual EU migrants.

---

UK Benefits System Fails Mentally Ill Claimants ‘Disproportionately’ By Refusing Benefits

an article by Adam Bloodworth (Freelance News Editor) for Rights Info: Human Rights News, Views & Info

The UK benefits system’s Disability Living Allowance (DLA) has been designed to support people living with disabilities – but handouts may be unfairly benefiting claimants with physical injuries over those with mental illnesses.

According to new figures released from government data, claimants receiving benefits with a psychiatric condition are 2.4 times more likely to lose their disability living allowance than people with physical conditions.

The alarming figures have been unearthed by studying claimants that switched from receiving DLA payments to receiving personal independence payments, known as ‘PIP’ payments.

The findings were extracted from a data set of 237,000 people who switched from DLA to PIP payments between April 2013 and October 2016, and paint an alarming picture of benefits in Britain.

Continue reading

---

Welfare spending – time to reassess universal benefits?

by Kayte Lawton and Kate Stanley via http://www.ippr.org/


In the face of oncoming austerity, no public spending can simply continue without scrutiny. All spending must be subject to robust tests of providing public value, meeting a demonstrable need and contributing to progressive goals. This must include spending on welfare benefits. We cannot simply assume that, because welfare is an intrinsic part of the progressive vision of a society that supports those who are worst off, the current system should remain untouched. Welfare must also be subject to tests of public value.


Difficult political decisions will have to be made – and it does not get much tougher than making changes to benefits for the young and the old that will create losers – but government might have to go there.


Read the full article (PDF 4pp) which is an extracted chapter from Opportunities in an Age of Austerity: Smart ways of dealing with the UK’s fiscal deficit, published in November 2009.

---