1. Tightening eligibility requirements for unemployment benefits. Impact on educational attainment.
- Author
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Cockx, Bart, Declercq, Koen, and Dejemeppe, Muriel
- Subjects
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UNEMPLOYMENT insurance , *SCHOOL dropouts , *HIGH school dropouts , *EDUCATIONAL finance , *EDUCATIONAL attainment , *JOB hunting , *SECONDARY education - Abstract
• Belgian youths with little or no work record are entitled to unemployment benefits. • This favorable scheme reduces the returns to education. • Tighter eligibility conditions were implemented for some groups of job seekers. • These stricter conditions increase degree completion and decrease dropout. • The effects are significant only in higher education and not in high school. Imposing stricter eligibility conditions on unemployment insurance (UI) may increase the returns to education investment because these make the consequences of unemployment more severe. In most countries, entitlement to regular UI hinges on completing a qualifying period of work and social contributions. In Belgium, this requirement also exists but is relaxed for education-leavers in that they can substitute time actively searching for a job for employment during the qualifying period. We evaluate the impact on degree completion and dropout of a 2015 reform that withdrew this weaker requirement from graduates aged 25 or over and from high school dropouts younger than 21. We find that the reform significantly increased degree completion and reduced dropout for students in higher education but not for those in high school. We argue that the higher prevalence of behavioral biases among the lower-educated could explain these contrasting findings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]
- Published
- 2023
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