Publication Type
Journal Article
Version
acceptedVersion
Publication Date
9-2021
Abstract
While there has been much research on welfare exit and entry into employment, less research has looked at return to government assistance. Applying survival analysis on data from a national government assistance programme in Singapore, we found two important factors of welfare return to which activation programmes need to pay greater attention. First, return was more likely if former beneficiaries accumulated a higher number of types of arrears rather than higher dollar values of arrears. This new finding contributes to the emerging literature on bandwidth tax, and suggests the importance of designing programmes that relieve mental accounting due to debt and poverty. Second, return was more likely if respondents had an infant or toddler child. This points to the importance of a range of support policies including affordable and accessible childcare, exemption from work requirement in receipt of welfare, and family leave for low-wage workers.
Keywords
Welfare return, activation, debt and arrears, infant and toddler child, bandwidth tax
Discipline
Asian Studies | Public Economics | Social Welfare
Research Areas
Applied Microeconomics
Publication
Social Policy and Society
First Page
1
Last Page
16
ISSN
1474-7464
Identifier
10.1017/S1474746421000518
Publisher
Cambridge University Press
Citation
NG, Irene N. Y.; TAN, Jian Qi; MATHEW, Mathews; HO, Kong Weng; and TING, Yi Ting.
The importance of considering debt and young children in activation: A survival analysis of return to welfare. (2021). Social Policy and Society. 1-16.
Available at: https://ink.library.smu.edu.sg/soe_research/2518
Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-No Derivative Works 4.0 International License.
Additional URL
https://doi.org/10.1017/S1474746421000518