IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hal/journl/hal-04354622.html

The Impact of Sanctions for Young Welfare Recipients on Transitions to Work and Wages, and on Dropping Out

Author

Listed:
  • Gerard van den Berg
  • Arne Uhlendorff

    (CREST - Centre de Recherche en Économie et Statistique - ENSAI - Ecole Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Analyse de l'Information [Bruz] - Groupe ENSAE-ENSAI - Groupe des Écoles Nationales d'Économie et Statistique - X - École polytechnique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - ENSAE Paris - École Nationale de la Statistique et de l'Administration Économique - Groupe ENSAE-ENSAI - Groupe des Écoles Nationales d'Économie et Statistique - IP Paris - Institut Polytechnique de Paris - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique)

  • Joachim Wolff

    (Bioinformatics Group [Freiburg] - Department of Computer Science [Freiburg] - Albert-Ludwigs-Universität Freiburg = University of Freiburg)

Abstract

The reintegration of young welfare recipients into the labour market is a major policy objective in many European countries. In this context, monitoring and sanctions are commonly used policy tools. We analyse the impact of strict sanctions for young welfare recipients whose institutional setting features sanctions for non‐compliance with job‐search requirements that effectively cancel benefits for a period of 3 months after detection. We consider effects on job‐search outcomes and on dropping out of the labour force, using administrative data on a large inflow sample. We estimate multivariate duration models taking selection on unobservables into account. Our results indicate an increased job entry rate at the expense of an increased withdrawal from the labour force and lower entry wages. Combining quantitative with qualitative evidence reveals that the latter side‐effects of sanctions can have dramatic consequences for the quality of life of the youths involved.

Suggested Citation

  • Gerard van den Berg & Arne Uhlendorff & Joachim Wolff, 2021. "The Impact of Sanctions for Young Welfare Recipients on Transitions to Work and Wages, and on Dropping Out," Post-Print hal-04354622, HAL.
    • Handle: RePEc:hal:journl:hal-04354622
    DOI: 10.1111/ecca.12392
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
    1. Check below whether another version of this item is available online.
    2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
    3. Perform a
    for a similarly titled item that would be available.

    Other versions of this item:

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Collewet, Marion & Fairley, Kim & Kessels, Roselinde & Knoef, Marike & van Vliet, Olaf, 2024. "The design of welfare: unraveling taxpayers' preferences," OSF Preprints 4am7e, Center for Open Science.
    3. Dahl, Espen S. & Hernaes, Øystein, 2022. "Making Activation for Young Welfare Recipients Mandatory," IZA Discussion Papers 15170, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Huuskonen, Jussi & Kiviholma, Sanni, 2025. "Check in, check out: How periodic interviews lead immigrants to leave the labor force," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 252(C).
    5. Julia Schmidtke, 2023. "Linking information on unemployment benefit sanctions from different datasets about welfare receipt: proceedings and research potential," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 57(1), pages 1-19, December.
    6. Holger Schäfer, 2022. "Bürgergeld statt Hartz IV [Citizen’s Income (“Bürgergeld”) or Social Welfare (“Hartz IV”)?]," Wirtschaftsdienst, Springer;ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 102(2), pages 82-85, February.
    7. Espen S. Dahl & Øystein Hernaes, 2023. "Making activation for young welfare recipients mandatory," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 37(1), pages 96-121, March.
    8. Goller, Daniel & Lechner, Michael & Pongratz, Tamara & Wolff, Joachim, 2025. "Active labor market policies for the long-term unemployed: New evidence from causal machine learning," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(C).
    9. van den Berg, Gerard J. & Uhlendorff, Arne & Wolf, Markus & Wolff, Joachim, 2025. "Effects of Welfare Sanctions in Couple Households," IZA Discussion Papers 18253, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Stefan Tübbicke, 2023. "How sensitive are matching estimates of active labor market policy effects to typically unobserved confounders?," Journal for Labour Market Research, Springer;Institute for Employment Research/ Institut für Arbeitsmarkt- und Berufsforschung (IAB), vol. 57(1), pages 1-16, December.
    11. van den Berg, Gerard J. & Kesternich, Iris & Müller, Gerrit & Siflinger, Bettina M., 2024. "Reciprocity and the interaction between the unemployed and the caseworker," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 227(C).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C21 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Single Equation Models; Single Variables - - - Cross-Sectional Models; Spatial Models; Treatment Effect Models
    • C41 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Econometric and Statistical Methods: Special Topics - - - Duration Analysis; Optimal Timing Strategies
    • J64 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment: Models, Duration, Incidence, and Job Search
    • J65 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Unemployment Insurance; Severance Pay; Plant Closings

    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:hal:journl:hal-04354622. 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: CCSD (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/ .

    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.