Social assistance and family welfare

The purpose of this project is to investigate how the level of social assistance generosity affects the welfare of adults and families. How are adults’ labour market outcomes, social assistance recipiency and disposable incomes affected, and do the effects vary by household composition?

Individuals who live in municipalities that changed the level of social assistance due to reforms and a court ruling in 1993 are compared to individuals living in other municipalities who were not affected.

To define the level of social assistance, data on the local norms have been collected and are used together with aggregated information about social assistance payments by household types. Labour market outcomes, incomes and background information about individual educational attainment, migration history and household composition for 18-58 year olds living in Sweden in 1990-1995 are based on administrative records.