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Reducing Income Transfers to Refugee Immigrants: Does Starthelp Help You Start?

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Author Info
Michael Rosholm () (University of Aarhus and IZA)
Rune M. Vejlin () (University of Aarhus)

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Abstract

In this paper we estimate the causal effect of lowering the public income transfers administered to newly arrived refugee immigrants in Denmark - the so-called starthelp - using a competing risk mixed proportional hazard framework. The two competing risks are exit to job and exit out of the labour force. A standard search model predicts that lower benefits decrease the reservation wage and/or increase the search effort. However, newly arrived refugee immigrants may initially have a weak position in the labour market due to the fact that they do not know the language and typically have no education, or alternatively, their education is not recognized in Denmark. Hence, there may be no demand for their skills. The empirical question addressed here is whether lower benefits affect their job finding rate; if no employer wants to hire them at the going minimum wage, the fact that the reservation wage is lowered may have little effect. For identification we use a ‘quasi-natural’ experiment, in which the rules for welfare benefits in Denmark changed rather dramatically. Refugee immigrants obtaining residence permit before July 1st 2002 received and continue to receive larger income transfers than those obtaining their residence permit after July 1st. We find that lowering public income transfers has a small positive effect on the job finding rate, once calendar time effects are introduced into the model. However, introducing time-variation in the effect, we find that most of the positive effect stems from a large positive effect after two years in Denmark. We also find that the exit rate from the labour force is positively affected by lower transfers, but here the effect is large during the first year in the host country, and then it declines. Furthermore, we investigate heterogeneous treatment effects, and we find, generally, that those which we consider the weakest in the labour market are close to being immune to this treatment.

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Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number 2720.

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Length: 47 pages
Date of creation: Apr 2007
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp2720

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Related research
Keywords: economic incentives; refugee immigrants; duration model; quasi-natural experiment;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
E64 - Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics - - Macroeconomic Policy, Macroeconomic Aspects of Public Finance, and General Outlook - - - Incomes Policy; Price Policy
J18 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Public Policy
J23 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Labor Demand
J38 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Wages, Compensation, and Labor Costs - - - Public Policy
J58 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor-Management Relations, Trade Unions, and Collective Bargaining - - - Public Policy
J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings
J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, and Vacancies - - - Public Policy

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  1. van Ours, Jan C & Vodopivec, Milan, 2006. "Shortening the Potential Duration of Unemployment Benefits Does Not Affect the Quality of Post-Unemployment Jobs: Evidence from a Natural Experiment," CEPR Discussion Papers 5741, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  2. Heckman, James & Singer, Burton, 1984. "A Method for Minimizing the Impact of Distributional Assumptions in Econometric Models for Duration Data," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(2), pages 271-320, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  3. Jaap H. Abbring & Gerard J. van den Berg, 2003. "The identifiability of the mixed proportional hazards competing risks model," Journal Of The Royal Statistical Society Series B, Royal Statistical Society, vol. 65(3), pages 701-710. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  4. Holmlund, Bertil, 1998. " Unemployment Insurance in Theory and Practice," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Blackwell Publishing, vol. 100(1), pages 113-41, March. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  5. Bernard M.S. van Praag & Ada Ferrer-i-Carbonell, 2002. "Life Satisfaction Differences between Workers and Non-Workers - The Value of Participation per se," Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers 02-018/3, Tinbergen Institute. [Downloadable!]
  6. Bennmarker, Helge & Carling, Kenneth & Holmlund, Bertil, 2005. "Do Benefit Hikes Damage Job Finding? Evidence from Swedish Unemployment Insurance Reforms," Working Paper Series 2005:15, Uppsala University, Department of Economics. [Downloadable!]
    Other versions:
  7. Pedersen, Peder J. & Smith, Nina, 2002. "Unemployment Traps: Do Financial Dis-incentives matter?," CLS Working Papers 01-1, University of Aarhus, Aarhus School of Business, Centre for Labour Market and Social Research. [Downloadable!]
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  8. Jaap H. Abbring & Gerard J. Berg & Jan C. Ours, 2005. "The Effect of Unemployment Insurance Sanctions on the Transition Rate from Unemployment to Employment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 115(505), pages 602-630, 07. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  9. Olympia Bover & Manuel Arellano & Samuel Bentolila, 2002. "Unemployment Duration, Benefit Duration and the Business Cycle," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(479), pages 223-265, April. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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  10. Lalive, Rafael & Zweimuller, Josef, 2004. "Benefit entitlement and unemployment duration: The role of policy endogeneity," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(12), pages 2587-2616, December. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
    Other versions:
  11. van Ours, Jan C. & Vodopivec, Milan, 2004. "How Changes in Benefits Entitlement Affect Job-Finding: Lessons from the Slovenian "Experiment"," IZA Discussion Papers 1181, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
  12. Ai, Chunrong & Norton, Edward C., 2003. "Interaction terms in logit and probit models," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 80(1), pages 123-129, July. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
  13. Michael Rosholm & Ott Toomet, 2005. "A Search Model of Discouragement," IZA Discussion Papers 1633, Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). [Downloadable!]
  14. Jaap H. Abbring & Gerard J. van den Berg, 2003. "The Nonparametric Identification of Treatment Effects in Duration Models," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 71(5), pages 1491-1517, 09. [Downloadable!] (restricted)
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