Beyond unemployment: an investigation of social policies to empower workers in a changing world of work

Thesis

This dissertation analyzes social policies aimed at supporting unemployed workers, scrutinizing consequences of such policies on facilitating access to training, employment, and in improving wages, health, and well-being amidst a changing world of work. Central to the research are two field experiments at scale (chapters 2 and 3), designed in collaboration with implementation partners, uniquely leveraging high-quality administrative records and extensive survey data collected over three years. Chapter two tests the idea of guaranteed employment in a natural context by carefully evaluating a job guarantee scheme, which highlights the psychosocial value of employment. Social programs of this kind often suffer from incomplete take-up, which is investigated in the third chapter. It demonstrates that low-cost interventions can meaningfully decrease non-participation in job training by reducing associated social stigma. Both evaluations are based on combinations of experimental and quasi-experimental methods to separate out direct effects, anticipation effects, and spillover effects, and to understand underlying mechanisms. The field experiments are implemented at scale in a natural context in Austria and involve a EUR 7.4 million expensive program for the second chapter and an intervention involving over 10,000 job seekers for the third chapter. The fourth chapter takes a step further to examine the consequences of temporary jobs, which often constitute job seekers’ only option for re-employment. The analysis explores the implications of temporary employment on workers’ wages and scrutinizes the interplay with labor market institutions across 30 high-income countries, revealing negative spillover effect on permanent workers’ wages. The fifth chapter goes full circle by uncovering unemployed workers' preferences between guaranteed employment and guaranteed income, revealing a strong correlation in support for both concepts with higher support for guaranteed employment. The dissertation is further complemented with a comparative viewpoint published in several complimentary papers and founded on the Oxford Supertracker---a global directory of policy trackers and surveys to document responses to the Covid-19 pandemic across different areas, countries, and data types. At the methodological level, the dissertation propels the empirical turn in social research by widening access to novel data sources and enhancing the application of empirical methods for causal and comparative social policy analysis. At the substantive level, the dissertation contributes by creating robust evidence on innovative social policy ideas to foster a comprehensive understanding of social policies devised for unemployed workers in a changing world of work.

Authors: Lehner, L

• DOI: 10.5287/ora-ppzzzrbbm
• Type of award: DPhil
• Level of award: Doctoral
• Awarding institution: University of Oxford
• Language: English
• Keywords: unemployment; job guarantee; wage growth; social policy; field experiment; labour market policy; labour market dualization; basic income