IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/pubeco/v95y2011i9-10p1096-1110.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Caught in the trap? Welfare's disincentive and the labor supply of single men

Author

Listed:
  • Bargain, Olivier
  • Doorley, Karina

Abstract

Youth unemployment is particularly large in many industrialized countries and has dramatic consequences in both the short and long-term. While there is abundant evidence about the labor supply of married women and single mothers, little is known about how young (childless) singles react to financial incentives. The French minimum income (Revenu Minimum d'Insertion, RMI), often accused of generating strong disincentives to work, offers a natural setting to study this question since childless single individuals, primarily males, constitute the core group of recipients. Exploiting the fact that childless adults under age 25 are not eligible for this program, we conduct a regression discontinuity analysis using French Census data. We find that the RMI reduces the participation of uneducated single men by 7-10% at age 25. We conduct an extensive robustness check and discuss the implications of our results for youth unemployment and current policy developments.

Suggested Citation

  • Bargain, Olivier & Doorley, Karina, 2011. "Caught in the trap? Welfare's disincentive and the labor supply of single men," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(9-10), pages 1096-1110, October.
  • Handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:95:y:2011:i:9-10:p:1096-1110
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S004727271100079X
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or search for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Regression discontinuity Welfare Social assistance Labor supply;

    JEL classification:

    • H52 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and Education
    • J21 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Force and Employment, Size, and Structure

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:95:y:2011:i:9-10:p:1096-1110. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/inca/505578 .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.