Job search, employment chances and living conditions of social welfare recipients in Dutch ‘Participation Income’ experiments: Results from administrative and survey data

The paper discusses the history, design and first empirical findings of Dutch local RCT experiments with Participation Income which are currently implemented in eleven cities. The emergence of these local experiments can be viewed as reflecting an ongoing shift in Dutch social policy from a classical ‘stick and carrot’ or workfare approach of social welfare to a social investment and capacitating approach. The empirical analyses discusses the methodology and outcomes on job search, employment and living conditions of some 1500 participants using the participants’ survey data and the municipal administrative data. We perform LCA (latent class analysis) to provide a profile of the participants of the experiments and we estimate (binary logit regression) their exit probabilities into paid work over the period June 2016 to June 2018. In the end we formulate some expectations and conclusions about the meaning and effects of these participation income experiments in the Netherlands for people’s employment, health and wellbeing situation and their wider implications for social policy.