Making Benefits Work. Characteristics and Effects of In-Work Benefits in Different Welfare State Contexts

• Applicant: Dr. Jan Brülle
• Subject Area: Empirical Social Research
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 471332079

Ongoing changes in modern labour markets increased inequalities in earnings in many countries and led to a growth of low-wage employment and precarious household incomes. Whereas traditionally welfare states mainly catered to the needs of groups outside the labour market, the provision of social security to employed households becomes increasingly relevant. The proposed project provides an in-depth study of in-work benefits – broadly understood as public cash benefits that are paid to employees with low household incomes – and their effect on labour markets as well as individuals’ life courses in international perspective. The project will extend previous research by building comparative indicators of in-work benefit systems in a large sample of countries. Using multi-level models and EU-SILC data, it will assess effects of different characteristics of in-work benefits on employment, wages, and in-work poverty risks. These analyses based on a large sample of countries will be complemented by studying two countries in more detail – Germany and the United Kingdom – as examples of different designs of in-work benefits. The analyses will utilise data from the Panel Study Labour Market and Social Security (PASS) for Germany and Understanding Society (UKHLS) for the United Kingdom. The implications for household incomes and individual life courses are analysed focusing on claimants of in-work benefits and using sequence analyses to describe individual life-courses and statistical matching to estimate causal effects of benefit take-up. The project will contribute to a better understanding of in-work benefits and how they can contribute to providing social security for individuals with precarious employment careers in modern welfare states.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants