Search

On the one hand, unemployment is known to have detrimental effects on individuals' mental health. On the other hand, poor mental health reduces re‐employment chances quite drastically, creating a vicious cycle. Active labour market policies (ALMPs) such as training programs or wage subsidies have been shown to ameliorate negative effects on mental health and improve labour market integration on average for the general unemployed population. In the context of individuals with severe mental health issues, however, it is unclear whether these interventions can be expected to deliver similar positive effects. In fact, one may argue that they have the potential to worsen employment prospects of individuals by adding additional stress to their pre‐existing mental health problems. Hence, this paper estimates the long‐term causal effects of ALMPs on the labour market integration of individuals with self‐reported severe mental health issues and compares estimates to individuals without such issues using unique combined survey and administrative data. Effects are estimated using the innovative double machine learning method and show that ALMPs do not only improve labour market integration of unemployed individuals with severe mental health issues, but they do so more effectively than for other unemployed individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Direct job creation has long been a classic instrument of labour market policy, pursuing a number of potential goals. Recently in Germany, policies of this type have come under growing pressure. This is partly due to the increasingly scarce resources available for job creation measures. Taken together with the continual policy reforms of the past few years and the growing pressure on public employment agencies to promote measures of non-subsidized labour market inclusion, this means that the area of direct job creation has come under close scrutiny and forced to justify its approach. In this article, we present our arguments for a further development of local authority concepts with a programmatic segmentation under the headings of ‘structurally effective direct job creation’ and ‘socially inclusive direct job creation’. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this article we argue that Germany has significantly changed its approach to labour market policies (LMPs) during the past decade; in many instances Britain has served as a model to learn from. In a first step, we identify the core institutional arrangements of the conservative approach to LMP in Germany and contrast them with the liberal approach, using the UK as an example. Secondly, we trace the development and nature of changes in German LMP since the 1990s. We show that the policy has increasingly incorporated elements of, and to a considerable extent shifted towards, a liberal approach. Thirdly, we review competing theoretical approaches that might explain this turn in LMP and conclude that changed interpretative patterns have been crucial to understand the overall shift. Fourthly, utilizing the policy transfer framework, we show that in regards to the specific policy instruments German policy-makers have learnt from the experiences in the UK. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]