Assisting the Transition from Workfare to Work: A Randomized Experiment

Galasso, Emanuela; Ravallion, Martin; Salvia, Agustín

doi:10.2307/4126640

Cited by 35 publications

(36 citation statements)

References 24 publications

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“…We choose not to estimate the treatment effect on the treated because, especially in the case of the job voucher, it seems plausible that being offered the treatment may have impacts on employment outcomes even if the treatment is not actually used. Indeed Galasso et al (2004) find evidence of this in a wage subsidy experiment in Argentina, and they suggest that one main effect of vouchers in their experiment was to encourage workers to exert more effort finding work and to give them more confidence approaching employers, even though actual take-up of the vouchers was low. Similarly, one could imagine that the offer of training or a voucher may affect job search behavior even if the treatments are not taken up.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Wage subsidy programs for youth have been used in a number of transition countries such as Poland and the Slovakia, and there appears to be renewed policy interest in developing countries, with examples such as Morocco's Idmaj program and Tunisia's SIVP program 1 , and South Africa about to launch a program. Despite this policy enthusiasm, there is very little evidence on the effectiveness of such programs in developing countries, the one exception being an experiment by Galasso et al (2004) in Argentina. They found that job vouchers to the unemployed lead to a 6 percentage point increase in wage employment 18 months later, although this impact largely occurred in informal and temporary jobs.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Soft Skills or Hard Cash? The Impact of Training and Wage Subsidy Programs on Female Youth Employment in Jordan

Groh¹,

Krishnan²,

McKenzie³

et al. 2012

Policy Research Working Papers

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Unemployment rates of educated youth are high throughout the Middle East, and female labor force participation is low. We study the impact of a randomized experiment in Jordan designed to assist female community college graduates find employment. One randomly chosen group of graduates was given a voucher that would pay an employer a subsidy equivalent to the minimum wage for up to 6 months if they hired the graduate; a second group was invited to attend 45 hours of employability skills training designed to provide them with the soft skills employers say graduates often lack; a third group was offered both interventions; and the fourth group forms the control group. We find that the job voucher led to a 40 percentage point increase in employment in the short-run, but that most of this employment is not formal, and that the average effect is much smaller and no longer statistically significant 4 months after the voucher period has ended. The voucher does appear to have persistent impacts outside of Amman, where it almost doubles the employment rate of graduates, but this appears likely to largely reflect displacement effects. Soft skills training has no average impact on employment, although again there is a weakly significant impact outside of Amman. The training does lead to graduates believing their life will be better in five years, and to them having better mental health. The results suggest that wage subsidies can help increase employment in the short-term, but are no panacea for the problems of high urban female youth unemployment.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Soft Skills or Hard Cash? The Impact of Training and Wage Subsidy Programs on Female Youth Employment in Jordan

Groh¹,

Krishnan²,

McKenzie³

et al. 2012

Policy Research Working Papers

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Galasso et al (2004), in Argentina, as well as Levinsohn et al (2014), in South Africa, find that a program that awards young people vouchers giving employers the right to claim a bonus has a positive impact. Nevertheless, the authors of both studies found no trace of any demand on the part of the firms to actually capitalize on the voucher.…”

Section: Additional Unexpected Effectsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Active Labor Market Policies

2016

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. The Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in Bonn is a local and virtual international research center and a place of communication between science, politics and business. IZA is an independent nonprofit organization supported by Deutsche Post Foundation. The center is associated with the University of Bonn and offers a stimulating research environment through its international network, workshops and conferences, data service, project support, research visits and doctoral program. IZA engages in (i) original and internationally competitive research in all fields of labor economics, (ii) development of policy concepts, and (iii) dissemination of research results and concepts to the interested public. Terms of use: Documents inIZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.IZA Discussion Paper No. 10321 October 2016 ABSTRACTActive Labor Market Policies * Active labor market policies are massively used with the objective being to improve labor market outcomes of individuals out of work. Many observational evaluation studies have been published. In this review, we critically assess policy effectiveness. We emphasize insights from recent randomized controlled trials. In addition, we examine policy effects that have not been the primary object of most of the past evaluations, such as anticipatory effects of advance knowledge of future treatments and equilibrium effects, and we discuss the actual implementation of policies. We discuss the importance of heterogeneity of programs and effects and examine the extent to which potential participants are interested in enrollment.We also discuss the assessment of costs and benefits of programs.JEL Classification: J08, J64

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“…For example, Dar and Tzannatos (1999) cover 72 evaluations but only find Hungary and Poland among non-developed countries, and have evaluations for their programs based on matching participants with non-participants. The heavily cited update of this work by Betcherman et al (2004) added 39 additional evaluations from developing and transition countries, of which only 4 drew on randomized experiments, and of which only one (Galasso et al, 2004) was published in an academic journal. The typical evaluation during this period using propensity score matching, attempting to compare participants in an ALMP to non-participants, using a relatively small number of cross-sectional observed characteristics to compare the two groups.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? A Critical Review of Recent Evidence

McKenzie¹

2017

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Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Terms of use: Documents in How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? A Critical Review of Recent Evidence mArch 2017Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author. Jobs are the number one policy concern of policymakers in many countries. The global financial crisis, rising demographic pressures, high unemployment rates, and concerns over automation all make it seem imperative that policymakers employ increasingly more active labor market policies. This paper critically examines recent evaluations of labor market policies that have provided vocational training, wage subsidies, job search assistance, and assistance moving to argue that many active labor market policies are much less effective than policymakers typically assume. Many of these evaluations find no significant impacts on either employment or earnings. One reason is that urban labor markets appear to work reasonably well in many cases, with fewer market failures than is often thought. As a result, there is less of a role for many traditional active labor market policies than is common practice. The review then discusses examples of job creation policies that do seem to offer promise, and concludes with lessons for impact evaluation and policy is this area. JEL Classification:O15, J08, J68

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Assisting the Transition from Workfare to Work: A Randomized Experiment

Cited by 35 publications

References 24 publications

Soft Skills or Hard Cash? The Impact of Training and Wage Subsidy Programs on Female Youth Employment in Jordan

Soft Skills or Hard Cash? The Impact of Training and Wage Subsidy Programs on Female Youth Employment in Jordan

Active Labor Market Policies

How Effective Are Active Labor Market Policies in Developing Countries? A Critical Review of Recent Evidence

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