Is workfare all bad? Some evidence from Sweden

The debate about 'workfare' - defined as requiring benefit claimants to participate in some form of work-based activity - has raged this past week.  But the debate has largely been clouded by hyperbole from both   those for and against.  Depending on your position, you are either likely to see the claimants involved as slaves or scroungers.

In times like this it's helpful to have some evidence on the matter at hand.  A key argument against workfare is the humiliation it might involve for participants.  Working for huge, profit-making companies like Tesco for around £1 an hour - whilst those around you get paid 6x as much - is hardly good for self-esteem.

But what if this argument is wrong?  What if participating in work-based schemes is actually good for unemployed people and boosts their well-being, confidence and self-esteem?  This is the question posed in this paper from 2001 by Strandh, who considered whether participation in employment programmes boosted the well-being of participants in Sweden.

The theory that such programmes might be good for unemployed people is based upon arguments from social psychology that work fulfils certain human functions, like time structure, social contacts and collective endeavour.  Consequently, while workfare programmes might not ease the economic woe of unemployment, they may help the unemployed overcome the more psychological damage wrought by being unemployed.

In short, Strandh explored three different types of work-based programme: vocational training, work experience schemes (which take place outside the labour market, e.g. community work) and workplace participation.  It is this latter type of Swedish programme - workplace participation - which is most similar to the Coalition's workfare programme, as it involves unemployed people gaining experience in an ordinary labour market setting.

What Strandh wanted to know was whether participation in these schemes was associated with better well-being for participants (compared to those who didn't participate).  The results are quite surprising - especially given the furore of the past week.  In short, when controlling for a range of other factors, Strandh found that participation in work-based programmes was significantly associated with higher well-being amongst unemployed participants.


Further - and this is where it gets interesting - out of the three different types of programme Strandh looked at, he found that the programme with the strongest effect was the 'workplace participation' scheme (e.g., the one most similar in theory to the workfare scheme here).  Indeed, the 'vocational training' scheme had no effect on well-being.  The positive consequences of workplace participation schemes were even stronger for those who had been unemployed for a year or more, while the other two types of programme had zero effect for this group.

It's true that comparing Swedish programmes to British ones might be like comparing apples with oranges - and I'm also not suggesting that current Government policy is the right one.  But studies like Strandh's show that requiring unemployed people to participate in work-based programmes has the potential to have positive outcomes.  We thus need a much more nuanced debate in the UK. One which isn't about whether conditionality is 'right or wrong', but what about which conditionality is right and which conditionality is wrong.

Using Jahoda's theory of employment to understand the psychology of a PhD

Half the challenge of a PhD seems to be psychology.  Chats with other students about PhD life invariably revolve around the more psychological aspects of work.  Problems seem to centre less around the actual content of study but more about the actuality of doing it: structuring the day, keeping motivated, overcoming barriers and so on.

For my own PhD I'm exploring the psychosocial effects of unemployment and, more specifically, how welfare policies can help mediate these effects.  One key theorist in the literature is Jahoda (1982), who argues that one of the reasons why unemployment is so mentally damaging is because the process of work fulfils five key functions:

1. Time structure
2. Social contacts
3. Participation in collective purpose
4. Status and identity
5. Regular activity

Whilst reading Jahoda, I began to think that this theory might go some way into explaining the psychology of a PhD.  I don't think PhD students have any problem with no.4, status and identity, but I think Jahoda's other four 'psychosocial functions of employment' are challenged whilst doing a PhD. Structuring time is perhaps the most common problem cited by PhD students: the days are long and empty and it's solely up to you to fill them productively and efficiently.  Having social contact is an exception, not a rule.  Whilst our PhDs are contributing to a wider, collective knowledge, most of the time PhDs can feel highly narrow and individualised.  Finally, having regular activity can also be problematic, especially, I imagine, for first-year students engaging almost solely with the literature base.

While PhDs do present a challenge, understanding why this is - as  I think Jahoda's theory helps us to - can enable students to overcome these hurdles.  Structuring the day, linking up with fellow academics with similar interests and making the effort to attend conferences, lectures and workshops may just help us feel slightly - just slightly - like members of the real world.

A 'Spirit Level' Britain?

In an interview with the Guardian this week, Ken Livingstone praised Ed Miliband as the man to make make us a 'Spirit Level Britain'.  Despite this being a rather cringeworthy turn of phrase, Livingstone makes a key argument: that Labour must strive to make Britain a more equal society in its income distribution

New Labour didn't believe that income equality was important.  As far as Blair et al were concerned, what mattered was raising the economic condition of the poorest; as long as that improved, the rich could be as rich as they wanted to be.  More traditional social democrats baulked at this easiness with inequality but grudgingly accepted it: the economy was booming and New Labour was able to utilise tax revenue to boost incomes at the bottom.

Now the economy isn't booming.  And in addition, we have lots of evidence that high levels of income inequality are linked to a range of health and social problems.  So what Livingstone is saying is that it's time Labour revisited inequality and, presumably, proposed policies which aim to reduce it.

How can this be done?


In The Spirit Level, Wilkinson and Pickett argue that there are two central paths to greater equality.

First, Labour could pursue the path taken by the Scandinavian countries.  This involves accepting a highly unequal labour market but using the welfare state to redistribute from rich to poor.  Could this work in Britain?  I don't think so: we have a much more liberal attitude to earning money and many - even people on modest incomes - don't like the idea of the state 'penalising hard work'.  Further, with such hostile attitudes to many of those who would benefit from a more redistributive state, it seems politically untenable and would require deep cultural change.


The second way to greater equality is how Japan achieves it: through a more equal labour market, with no need for the state to intervene with people's incomes.  But as Wilkinson and Pickett admit on their website, market incomes are relatively equal in Japan because of how their companies are structured and ran.  To ape this in the UK would require deep economic change and could certainly not happen over night.

Is there a third option?


If these two ways of achieving greater equality are hard to envisage in the UK, is there a third option available to the centre-left?

One solution might be to consider the ideas of a basic income.  In short, a basic income involves the state provision of a grant to each citizen and is paid unconditionally.  Whilst I don't think a full basic income is economically viable nor morally desirable, some variation of it could provide the Left with a solid plan for building a more equal Britain.

In theory, it's not hard to imagine a universal grant available to everyone except those who fall, say, in the top 20-30% of the income distribution.  The principle would be that a universal grant could improve the quality of life for everyone in society, except those who are very rich and for whom it would have a negligible impact.  You would have to increase taxes to pay for it, but since 3/4 of adults would benefit it would be a much more acceptable form of redistribution than that which goes from the very top to the very bottom.  Plus, if implemented it would mean savings could be made in other areas - there would be no need for JSA, for example, and other means-tested benefits could also be reviewed.

This all needs to be fully costed, but if affordable what could hold a universal grant back?  It would transform the scale of inequality over night and, given what know about its harmful effects, make Britain a much better place to live.

Welfare Reform 2.0 - where will the Coalition go next?

As the Welfare Reform Bill goes through the Lords (with difficulty), it might seem premature to consider where the Coalition goes next on welfare.  The Bill contains so many deep reforms and has encountered so many problems that many people probably aren't considering what comes next.

But it is highly likely that stronger and deeper reform will come.  The Coalition know they're on to a vote winner with welfare; for many complex reasons, the public have turned on the welfare state and, in particular, the benefits system.  Welfare reform will be a key area - if not the key area - fought over during the run-up to 2015 and the Coalition will be desperate to prove they've been radical.

This means that after the Welfare Reform Bill is finally passed, the Coalition will start to think how they go about a second phase of welfare reform.  After all, the clue is the name; 'welfare reform' suggests a narrative of ongoing, relentless change and this is precisely what the government will be keen to show.

So what might we expect during this second phase of policy, or Welfare Reform 2.0?  This is just guesswork, but we can get some clues from the direction of travel in the US, who are about 15 years ahead (or behind, if you think - like I do - that these are neanderthal reforms) of us on welfare reform.  Here are some predictions (and definitely not recommendations) about what might happen next:

• Intensified workfare.  Workfare (or work-for-your benefit schemes) are already increasing in use, as stories such as Cait Reilly's demonstrate.  But I think we'll see them rolled out even more over the next few years, to increasing jumpers of JSA claimants and at an earlier stage of the claim.  Why?  For the two reasons most welfare reforms are introduced: to cut expenditure (by discouraging people from claiming benefits) and to shame the unemployed (because the public like this kind of thing).
• Time-limited benefits.  Time-limiting is already a feature of the welfare state, but this is mostly applied to the contributory components of benefits like ESA and JSA.  I think we might see time-limits introduced to means-tested benefits, such as - for example - a 12 month limit to any claim to JSA.
• The abolition of contributions-based benefits.  It also wouldn't surprise me to see the abolition of the contributory element to JSA and ESA considered, thereby placing all claimants within a system of means-testing.  The contributory principle is already very weak in the UK relative to other countries and has been chipped away at for decades.  
• Regionalising benefits.  This idea has been brought up by James Kirkup in the Telegraph and has apparently been referred to by Iain Duncan Smith.  This would involve giving people lower benefits if they live in 'low-cost' parts of the country (presumably old industrial areas in south Wales, Scotland, the north-east and the north-west).
• Limited child benefits and tax credits. The Coalition are already proposing removing Child Benefit from higher earners, but there has been much debate over the past year about large families and whether it is right for the state to support such families.  It's an increasingly populist view that the state should not and it would undoubtedly please many if benefits were limited to a first or second child.

These are just some of the reforms which the Coalition might be considering: in reality they might not pursue any.  But those who want to defend the welfare state must not be complacent in the thought that the government will stop with the Welfare Reform Bill.  They will seek to go further, and they must be challenged.

Is evidence-based policy a load of crap?

In a book I'm reading for the LSE Politics and Policy Blog - Personalising Public Services - the author Catherine Needham argues that despite the rhetoric about 'evidence-based policy-making', governments in reality construct and implement policies by 'telling stories' to the electorate:

"Formal evaluative data remains important, as might be expected in an era in which ministers demand 'evidence-based policy'.  However, when compelling findings have proved somewhat elusive - appeals to common sense and/or resonant stories are deployed to fill the gap" (p. 55).

I thought about this (for about 5 minutes) and come to the conclusion (perhaps cynically) that most of the time this is what politicians are doing.  They evade and manipulate questions of evidence: they celebrate research that supports their aims and rubbish research that doesn't.  Thus even when evidence is used in the policy-making process it doesn't form central stage: it becomes part of a wider, theatrical production in which a certain political strategy is put on show.

No where is this clearer than with welfare reform, which is not about evidence at all.  Welfare reform is a grand narrative starring the workshy scrounger and the hardworking taxpayer.  It is played out as soap opera, in which the scrounger has the upper hand but where the taxpayer is fighting back.  As with all soap opera the realities of people's lives and experiences are ignored in favour of a simplistic, dramatic and ultimately false dramatisation of the real-life protagonists.

It'd be nice to think that our politicians were old enough and mature enough to do policy differently than 'telling a story'.  But they're not.  Instead we have a political elite obsessed with crafting lies and creating villains.  They don't seem to realise that this fiction is a reality for those they cast in the leading roles.

Trouble ahead for Cameron's Work Programme

Every week at PMQs, in response to the many questions he receives about unemployment and welfare, David Cameron consistently refers to the implementation of the Work Programme - the Coalition's replacement welfare-to-work scheme for the unemployed - as the means by which the country's labour market problems will be solved.

Cameron does this so frequently that last week I asked on Twitter what evidence does he have - if any - that the Work Programme is working and, if there is any evidence, is he sharing it?  After some rooting I found that there is an official evaluation of the Work Programme by CESI, but that we won't see qualitative evidence on its success for another six months, and the statistical analyses won't come until next Winter.

In a time of increasing unemployment and huge welfare changes, it is surely too long to wait until next Winter to get some hard facts about whether the Government's landmark scheme is actually having any effect.  However, some early evidence on its impact comes here, from the National Audit Office, and the signs aren't good for Mr Cameron.

Although praising the Work Programme's central feature of 'payment-by-results', the NAO highlighted the following problems:

• 14% fewer over-25s would get jobs compared with official estimates.
• Programme providers run the risk of getting into 'serious financial difficulty' due to the ambitious targets built into the system.
• The 'harder to help' category (previous IB claimants) are getting less support than expected.
• The absence of a proper evaluation study now was a cause for concern.

The NAO also said it was a concern that no alternatives to the Work Programme had been considered.  What this represents is David Cameron's quasi-fundamentalist belief - on display every Wednesday at PMQs - that the Work Programme is a panacea for all sorts of problems.  However, as those of us who study welfare-to-work understand, the effect of such schemes is often modest and dependent upon buoyant labour market conditions.  

If Ed Miliband has any sense, he will make the NAO's report the centrepiece of his questioning to the Prime Minister tomorrow.  Coalition ministers consistently celebrate the Work Programme as their central strategy to defeat high unemployment.  Yet the early evidence from the NAO is that it is far from the panacea it is heralded as.  While it's still early days, it's time the Government thought of new approaches to welfare-to-work as the labour market plummets.  It is up to Labour to hold them to account.

The benefits cap is all about morality, with a nonchalant regard for the consequences

Today's debates about the Government's proposed benefit cap have been unusual in the context of welfare reform.  Few numbers have been throw about, there is little talk about policy objectives and whether the cap will boost employment seems at best a side issue.

Instead, the policy is all about morality and, more specifically, about what is fair and what is unfair.  According to the Coalition - and, seemingly, the 75% of the public who agree with them - it is only fair to cap the total amount of benefits an out-of-work household can claim at the same level as median earnings.  If you can take in more through benefits than you can through the average income then, according to this logic, there is something deeply wrong with the welfare state.

Putting aside whether this a morally justifiable position to take, perhaps the most worrying feature of the debate has been the complete sidelining of the likely effects and outcomes of the policy.  The consequences of the cap will be horrific for those affected (just a few are outlined here by the Guardian).  Yet in debate after debate these issues - from child poverty to homelessness - are brushed aside with remarkable nonchalance.  What matters - and only matters, it seems - is justice for the taxpayer.

You can't take morality and justice out of social policy.  But equally, you can't and shouldn't take out evidence.  In debating the benefit cap the Government and its many supporters are doing precisely the latter.  The social and economic fall-outs from the cap have become secondary to notions of justice, and those who are seeking justice care little for the condemned.

Policy-making should always be about combining your politics with the evidence.  People on the left have  often wrestled with this dual concern: as the desire to seek economic justice has often clashed with the need for economic efficiency to fund the goals of social democracy.  Yet politicians can sometimes find themselves in a dangerous comfort zone: when the public are on their side they can resort to political manoeuvres with little regard of the consequences.  This is where the Conservatives find themselves today on welfare; the limits on how far they will go are unknown and, at this point in time, deeply unsettling for those who care about the welfare state.