Arbeitspapier

Beans for breakfast? How exportable is the British workfare model?

Social assistance and inactivity traps have long been considered as one of the main causes of the poor employment performance of EU countries. The success of New Labour in the UK has triggered a growing interests in instruments capable of combining the promotion of responsibility and self-sufficiency with solidarity with less skilled workers. Making-work-pay (MWP) policies, consisting of transfers to households with low earning capacity, have quickly emerged as the most politically acceptable instruments in tax-benefit reforms of many Anglo-Saxon countries. This chapter explores the impact of introducing the British Working Families’ Tax Credit (WFTC) in three EU countries with rather different labor market and welfare institutions: Finland, France and Germany. Simulating the reform reveals that, while first-round effects on income distribution is considerable, the interaction of the new instrument with the structural characteristics of the economy and the population may lead to counterproductive second round effects (i.e. changes in economic behavior). The implementation of the reform, in this case, could only be justified if the social inclusion (i.e. transition into activity) of some specific household types (singles and single mothers) is valued more than a rise in the employment per se.

Sprache
Englisch

Erschienen in
Series: EUROMOD Working Paper ; No. EM2/06

Klassifikation
Wirtschaft
Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents: Household
National Government Expenditures and Welfare Programs
Measurement and Analysis of Poverty
Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty: Government Programs; Provision and Effects of Welfare Programs
Thema
tax-benefit systems
in-work benefits
microsimulation
poverty

Ereignis
Geistige Schöpfung
(wer)
Bargain, Olivier
Orsini, Kristian
Ereignis
Veröffentlichung
(wer)
University of Essex, Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER)
(wo)
Colchester
(wann)
2006

Handle
Letzte Aktualisierung
10.03.2025, 11:43 MEZ

Datenpartner

Dieses Objekt wird bereitgestellt von:
ZBW - Deutsche Zentralbibliothek für Wirtschaftswissenschaften - Leibniz-Informationszentrum Wirtschaft. Bei Fragen zum Objekt wenden Sie sich bitte an den Datenpartner.

Objekttyp

  • Arbeitspapier

Beteiligte

  • Bargain, Olivier
  • Orsini, Kristian
  • University of Essex, Institute for Social and Economic Research (ISER)

Entstanden

  • 2006

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