In)visible sanctions: micro-level evidence on compulsory activation for young welfare recipients

2022-24 (In)visible sanctions: micro-level evidence on compulsory activation for young welfare recipients Bård Smedsvik and Roberto Iacono1 Norwegian University of Science and Technology Abstract Since the early years of activation and workfare in the 1990s, the use of welfare conditionality and benefit sanctions has been proposed among the necessary solutions to ensure the efficiency of welfare p. [...] The dependent variable of our analysis is the daily social assistance amount of the recipients in Norwegian kroner in 2015. [...] More precisely, we focus on the strength of the relationship between the amount of social assistance and the degree of activation measures, operationalized by dummies summarizing whether young welfare recipients are passive in the labor market in 2015. [...] In practice, since the threat of sanctions is not directly observable, we proxy the effects of compulsory activation by comparing the relationship between recipiency and labor market status dummies (indicating activation) for individuals living in municipalities that practice compulsory activation with individuals residing in municipalities in which activation is not mandatory. [...] Now, at the core of our research question, how does the practice of mandatory activation (and its related threat of sanctions by benefit reduction) affect the relationship between labor market status and social assistance recipiency? We could, for instance, hypothesize that for passive individuals, living in a municipality with compulsory activation would lead to a drop in the amount of social ass.