The impact of Malta's Tapering of Benefits scheme on employment outcomes.

This article analyses the Tapering of Benefits scheme introduced in Malta in 2014, aimed at unlocking the poverty trap stalemate. Survival analysis and Cox proportional hazard models are employed to analyse the impact that the scheme has had on the job‐finding rate and the chances of retaining employment once individuals who were previously on benefits find a job. The analyses are based on high‐quality national data on the whole population of beneficiaries and their employment histories. The results show that the scheme doubles the job‐finding probability, whilst the chance of job termination drops by 11.8 percentage points for eligible individuals. Furthermore, the scheme's impact once it finally tapers out is not different from the first 36 months, showing that its impact is robust in the medium term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]