Patterns of Social Assistance Receipt - Experiences from Sweden during a Period of Rapidly Deteriorating Labour Market Conditions

• This paper analyses Swedish-born people who became first-time receivers of social assistance in 1987 and 1992. The macroeconomic situation at the time of entry was rather different for the two cohorts and the number of new entrances increased by almost 50 percent. Much of the increase consisted of young adults and experience of social assistance has been shown to be fairly widespread among those under age of 25. The role of bridging the period for individuals of being supported by their parents to being established as wage earners has become an important function of social assistance in Sweden. We find that pattern of social assistance receipt is rather heterogeneous across new recipients. The complex pattern of receipt means that due to choice of perspective, duration of social assistance can appear rather different. On one hand we find that median duration of social assistance receipt is as low as two years when an eleven-year follow-up period is applied. On the other hand, among people who receive social assistance during one particular year, as many as half had entered receipt more than four years earlier.

Nyckelord

Keywords: Social assistance

unemployment

duration

Sweden

panel data

Publikations- och innehållstyp

ref (ämneskategori)

art (ämneskategori)