revised version published as 'The impact of sanctions for young welfare recipients on transitions to work and wages and on dropping out" in: Economica, 2022, 89 (535), 1-28
With the introduction of a new welfare benefit system in 2005, Germany implemented quite strict benefit sanctions for welfare recipients aged younger than 25 years. For all types of non-compliance except for missing appointments, their basic cash benefit is withdrawn for three months. A second sanction of the same type within one year implies a complete benefit cut for three months. We analyze the impact of these sanctions on job search outcomes and on transitions out of the labor force. Our analysis is based on administrative data on a large inflow sample of young male jobseekers into welfare in West Germany.
We estimate separate models for people living alone and people living with their family, as sanctioned welfare recipients living with other household members can partly rely on their support and might react less by increasing search intensity and lowering reservation wages. We estimate the parameters of multivariate duration models taking selection based on unobservables into account. Our results suggest that both the first and the second sanction increase the probability of finding a job, but that these jobs go along with lower earnings due to first but not the second sanction. Moreover, first sanctions significantly increase the transition rate out of the labor force of both groups of young men, while the second sanction amplify this effect only for young men living in single households.
We use cookies to provide you with an optimal website experience. This includes cookies that are necessary for the operation of the site as well as cookies that are only used for anonymous statistical purposes, for comfort settings or to display personalized content. You can decide for yourself which categories you want to allow. Please note that based on your settings, you may not be able to use all of the site's functions.
Cookie settings
These necessary cookies are required to activate the core functionality of the website. An opt-out from these technologies is not available.
In order to further improve our offer and our website, we collect anonymous data for statistics and analyses. With the help of these cookies we can, for example, determine the number of visitors and the effect of certain pages on our website and optimize our content.