Social policy and labor supply: The impact of activating labor market institutions on reservation wages

Abstract

Activation as a social policy that facilitates transitions into the labor market continues to influence modern welfare states until today. Taking the case of Germany, we study the relationship between embeddedness of benefit recipients in activating labor market institutions and individual labor supply. Using panel data, we estimate the effects of transitions between key institutional states with different degrees of activation on reservation wages. We show that reservation wages are sensitive to activation: The transition from gainful employment into unemployment benefit receipt leads to an average 3.2 percent decrease in reservation wages. The transition from gainful employment into welfare benefit receipt - an institutional state with far more rigorous activation - leads to a stronger decrease of 4.9 percent. Mediation analyses show that the income associated with different institutional states is the predominant mechanism that drives the effect on reservation wages. However, subjective social status also partly mediates the effect.

Retraining in Social Work for Arab Academic Women: Motivation and Integration into the Field

“…Maram ascribes her choice to the structural barriers she had to deal with, and additionally, it can be understood that the social work profession is in line with the respectability and social-religious legitimacy for women (e.g., Fuchs & Friedman-Wilson, 2018).…”

“…Despite the increased employment rates among Arab women with academic degrees, it is increasingly recognized that higher education often does not serve as a sufficient trigger for change and growth and does not lead to socio-economic mobility. A high proportion of educated Arab women are employed part-time involuntarily and many others are in a state of underemployment (Fuchs & Friedman-Wilson, 2018; Meler, 2019).…”

“…In general, only 39.6% of Arab women are employed (ICBS, 2018). To reconcile these conflicts, most women study for degrees that do not carry many employment opportunities and later indeed encounter difficulties in finding suitable employment or turn to retrain as teachers after graduation (Awad et al, 2014; Fuchs & Friedman-Wilson, 2018). Yet, the need to reconcile conflicting identities begins in earlier stages, even before the prioritization of a gendered career.…”

“…The increase was in response to a policy ensuring Arabs’ access to academia, in accordance with the guidelines of the Higher Education Council from 2013, of a corrective action to reduce discrimination. Additional reasons for the increase are the relative ease of finding work in the profession and its prestige as contributing to society (Fuchs & Friedman-Wilson, 2018).…”

Economic Abuse of Palestinian Mothers in Israel: The Case of Participants in a Welfare-to-Work Program

“…Moreover, despite the aforementioned improvements, there are still deep gaps and persistent inequality between Palestinian women and their Israeli-Jewish counterparts, as well as women in other postindustrial nations (Gharrah, 2018; ICBS, 2018). The increase in employment rates of Palestinian women in Israel has been similar to the increase among Jewish women (with a rate of 79% in 2018), such that the gap between them has hardly narrowed, despite the rise in the educational level of the former (Fuchs & Friedman-Wilson, 2018).…”