ALBERT

Notes: Abstract This paper provides a comprehensive account of the regulations governing the systems of unemployment support and social assistance in post-communist Poland. To provide a solid foundation for a further discussion of these issues, the paper extensively characterizes the Polish labor force in terms of the prevalence and duration of unemployment. A final aspect of our empirical analysis concerned the question of what are the main sources of personal income for labor force participants, unemployed workers and long-term unemployed workers. In conclusion, we argue for a reform of the Polish systems of income support that separates the objectives of employment growth and poverty alleviation, and that improves upon the implementation of support schemes.

Notes: Abstract In this paper we provide an account of most of the passive labor market policies (unemployment compensation, social assistance, state social support and the pension system) in the Czech Republic during the 1990–1996 period. The eligibility requirements and benefit levels are described in great detail. Using Labor Force Survey data, we compare the characteristics of unemployed people receiving unemployment benefits with those receiving social assistance and those not receiving any benefits and we find significant differences in their characteristics. Finally, we provide an analysis of the work disincentive effects of the unemployment and social assistance benefits by comparing these benefits to market wages and by analyzing the effect of being in the system on the duration of unemployment of two cohorts of unemployed in 1994 and 1995. We find that social assistance benefits are fairly generous for low income families with more children, individuals with these characteristics have a higher probability of receiving social assistance and they tend to stay unemployed longer than those people with relatively fewer dependants. We conclude that the social assistance scheme seems to be having some disincentive effects for at least one group in the population.

Notes: Abstract The topic of this paper is the transition from unemployment benefit schemes to social assistance in seven European OECD countries. The unemployment benefit schemes are formally quite different in the seven countries. Most are mandatory but Denmark and Sweden have voluntary unemployment insurance and Finland has a mandatory basic scheme with a voluntary income related component on top of that. Self employed people can join the U.B. schemes in the 3 Scandinavian countries. All the U.B. schemes have working or contribution conditions to be met by the members in order to obtain eligibility for benefits. These conditions are relatively tight in the Netherlands, France and Sweden and relatively easy in Denmark and Great Britain with Germany and Finland in between (based on rules in 1994–95). Recent developments in several countries have been to tighten the access conditions to the U.B. schemes and from 1997 Denmark will be ‘on line’ with Germany. The Netherlands have tightened the access criteria very significantly in 1995. There is a considerable variation as far as the duration of the unemployment benefit period is concerned. Sweden has a benefit period in fact without effective time limitations. The Danish benefit period is also very long, 7 years now being reduced to 5 years. 5 years is also the maximum duration in the Netherlands and in France, but only after many years of work and after a relatively high age has been reached. The maximum period in Germany, 22/3 years, also requires a long work history and a relatively high age. Finland and Great Britain have uniform benefit period (just as in Denmark and Sweden), in Finland it is appr. 2 years (longer for elderly unemployed just as in Sweden and Denmark) and in Great Britain it was 1 year but from October 1996 it was reduced to 1/2 year. The differences in the duration of the benefit periods between the seven countries are very considerable. As already mentioned, there has been a tendency to reduce the benefit period in several countries. Such a change is also being considered for the ‘never ending’ benefit period in the Swedish U.B. scheme. The benefit formula is purely flat rate in Great Britain and income related in the other countries. There is a maximum benefit level in 5 of these countries, but not in Finland, where the compensation is stepwise decreasing with increasing income. In the 5 countries with income related benefits and a maximum benefit level, this maximum level is reached at a relatively low income in Denmark (2/3 APW income) and Sweden (close to APW income) and at a relatively high income in the Netherlands (appr. 1.5 APW income) and Germany (appr. 1.7 APW income) and at a very high income level in France. France is the only country among the 7, where the benefits after an initial period are being reduced regularly (every 4 months) in the benefit period down to a minimum level. Sweden and Germany have reduced the benefit levels in recent years. Denmark has the highest gross compensation percentage, 90, in relation to lost income, but it is only effective over a relatively narrow income interval, from approx. 133,000 DKK to 162,000 DKK (1996), ‘between’ the min. and max. U.B. rates. According to the 3 institutional criteria applied here, access to the schemes, duration of the benefit period and the type of benefit formula, the U.B. schemes of the seven countries studied are very different. The exit scheme from U.B is social assistance in most of the countries, but not in Germany, where it is possible to continue in a scheme with lower compensation but still income related. For Sweden it is hardly meaningful to speak of an ‘exit scheme’ when the U.B. insurance is without effective time limitations. The exit schemes in the other countries are all characterized by having flat rate benefits. All the exit schemes are means tested and this is a crucial difference to the U.B. schemes, and they are without time limitations. Means testing and no effective time limitations are usual characteristics for social assistance and social assistance like schemes. In all the countries, except in Denmark and Sweden, there is ‘topping-up’ from social assistance to a guaranteed minimum level disregarding the income sources. In the two Scandinavian countries mentioned, a ‘social event’, i.e. illness or unemployment, is required in order to be eligible for social assistance benefits. Net replacement rates are used to illustrate the levels of compensation within the U.B. and the S.A. schemes, to identify possible incentives problems, and to illustrate the economic implications of the transition from U.B. to S.A. schemes. The net replacement rates presented are calculated by using the ‘disposable income after net housing costs’ income concept. The calculations include several family types, singles and couples with and without children and for the couples with one or two incomes. A general result but with some modifications, cf. the following, could be that the U.B. based replacement rates usually are higher than the S.A. based, but that the difference is minor when the U.B. scheme is flat rate or income related with a maximum benefit level being reached at a relatively low income, for Great Britain there are in several cases no difference at all. The ‘topping-up’ has the implication that the U.B. and S.A. based replacement rates are often identical at the lower end of the income scale. The very high S.A. based replacement rates (well over 100 per cent) often seen for Denmark and Sweden at low income levels do not necessarily imply, that social assistance in those two countries is more generous than in the other countries, it is very much an effect of not having more or less automatic ‘topping-up’ to a guaranteed minimum income level when earned income is low. The single parent family type seems to have incentives problems at relatively low income levels in most of the countries, especially when receiving U.B., she may temporarily be caught in the ‘unemployment trap’. The one earner couple with children may also be exposed to the ‘unemployment trap’ but on a more permanent basis. The S.A. based replacement rates for this family type are extraordinarily high (and higher than the U.B. based) in Denmark and Sweden, where this family type, however, is very rare. For the two earner family (where one of the spouses always has earned income) the means testing of S.A. makes an impact on the S.A. based net replacement rates, they are in most cases substantially lower than the U.B. based. The results of the net replacement calculations indicate no or only minor economic implications by a transition from U.B. to S.A. in the lower end of the income scale while the effect in most cases will be more substantial in the higher end of the income scale. This is not always the case in Sweden and Denmark where S.A. for some family types are preferable to U.B. and where the difference in other cases may be so small, that it implies incentives problems for joining the voluntary U.B. scheme. The calculation of ‘long term’ (5 years) net replacement rates for families at a low income level (the point in the income distribution where only 5 per cent have lower income) and only including one earner families, reveals that either the long benefit period in the U.B. scheme (Sweden and Denmark) or ‘topping-up’ (Germany, the Netherlands and Great Britain) generate ‘constant’ net replacement rates, and quite high ones, at low income levels. Only in France and to some extent in Finland will there be a decrease in net replacement rates over time. Most of the differences concerning the duration of unemployment benefit periods and to some extend the benefit formulas have no effect on the long term net replacement rates. At higher income levels the time limitations in the U.B. schemes will be visible again, except in Great Britain where the U.B. and S.A. benefits are almost identical. It is not possible to point out a ‘worst’ country wi

Notes: Abstract. This paper utilizes a new data set, compiled by Citizenship and Immigration Canada, Revenue Canada and Statistics Canada, to examine the unemployment experience of Canadian immigrant cohorts over the time period 1980 to 1988. Using the records of unemployment insurance benefits of persons who immigrated to Canada in those years and who filed income tax returns, the unemployment experiences of those people are compared by landing year, gender, level of education, language ability, and country of last permanent residence. The determinants of the proportion of each immigrant cohort that received unemployment insurance benefits are estimated by relating the proportions to landing year, duration of time in Canada, and labour market conditions. Briefly, we find no obvious influences on UI receipt behaviour following the immigration reforms of 1982. However, the recession of 1981–82 had a major impact on incomes which did not recover until 5 or 6 years later. Nevertheless, more generous UI benefits did raise slightly the likelihood of UI receipts.

Notes: Abstract Non-employment rates in all central and eastern European countries have increased dranatically thoroughout the transition and are currently larger than those of the lowest income OECD countries. Non-employment benefits other than unemployment benefits are providing income support to this growing number of able-bodied individuals out of work. Under the present design of unemployment benefits and social assistance, there may be serious incentive problems related to the shift from unemployment benefits to other, means-tested, non-employment benefits and this shift occurs in transition countries at rather early stages of an unemployment spell; these incentive problems are bound to become particularly acute in a less inflationary environment.

Notes: Abstract Low outflow rates from unemployment and cuts in benefit entitlement periods resulted in sharp reductions in the coverage by Unemployment Insurance of the unemployed stock in Central and Eastern European countries during the 1990s. From mid-1994 in Hungary the most common benefit received by the registered unemployed stock is means-tested Unemployment Assistance (UA) but so far very little is known about its receipt. In the paper, using microdata from the unemployment register we investigate the operation of the UA scheme in Hungary, including the benefit levels, the characteristics of benefit recipients and the determinants of flows to and from receipt.

Notes: Abstract In this paper we investigate whether the potential disincentive effects of the Slovak benefit system have an actual meaning. Using data from subsequent labour force surveys we study the determinants of the outflow from unemployment to a job and the determinants of the outflow to out of the labour force. We find that single unemployed, highly educated unemployed and unemployed living in the capital Bratislava have higher exit rates both to a job and to out of the labour force. The characteristic with a distinctly different effect on both exit rates is the previous labour market position We also find that there are fluctuations in the hazard rate over the duration of unemployment. However, these fluctuations are not very informative. The direct indicators of the type of unemployment benefit do not affect the exit rates, neither do the indirect indicators like, for example, the presence of young children. Although there are potential disincentive effects in the Slovak benefit system we find no evidence that these potential effects materialise.

Notes: Abstract The paper investigates the working of the unemployment insurance and social assistance systems during Slovenia's transition, when both systems came under increased pressure. It describes unemployment insurance and social assistance programs, reviews trends in number of beneficiaries and expenditures, and identifies main issues in getting unemployed cash benefit recipients back to work: deficient targeting, too easy access to cash benefits to the better-off, adverse incentives created by cash benefit systems, and doubletrack provision of means-tested assistance to the unemployed.

Notes: Abstract. This paper provides a comprehensive account of the regulations governing the systems of unemployment support and social assistance in post-communist Poland. To provide a solid foundation for a further discussion of these issues, the paper extensively characterizes the Polish labor force in terms of the prevalence and duration of unemployment. A final aspect of our empirical analysis concerned the question of what are the main sources of personal income for labor force participants, unemployed workers and long-term unemployed workers. In conclusion, we argue for a reform of the Polish systems of income support that separates the objectives of employment growth and poverty alleviation, and that improves upon the implementation of support schemes.

Notes: Abstract. In this paper we provide an account of most of the passive labor market policies (unemployment compensation, social assistance, state social support and the pension system) in the Czech Republic during the 1990–1996 period. The eligibility requirements and benefit levels are described in great detail. Using Labor Force Survey data, we compare the characteristics of unemployed people receiving unemployment benefits with those receiving social assistance and those not receiving any benefits and we find significant differences in their characteristics. Finally, we provide an analysis of the work disincentive effects of the unemployment and social assistance benefits by comparing these benefits to market wages and by analyzing the effect of being in the system on the duration of unemployment of two cohorts of unemployed in 1994 and 1995. We find that social assistance benefits are fairly generous for low income families with more children, individuals with these characteristics have a higher probability of receiving social assistance and they tend to stay unemployed longer than those people with relatively fewer dependants. We conclude that the social assistance scheme seems to be having some disincentive effects for at least one group in the population.