Work and the Social Safety Net: Labor Activation in Europe and the United States

During the first two decades of the twenty-first century, the United States and much of the developed world were rocked by three successive economic shocks, each one more severe than the one before. Real relief from these economic shocks, of course, can only come from a restored economy--with balanced strength across many sectors and regions. Safety-net programs can also help alleviate this suffering. They provide urgent financial help and, when properly designed, can assist, motivate, or nudge recipients to seek and accept new employment. When necessary, they can help recipients to learn new skills and engage in other socially preferred behaviors. That is, they can "activate" the unemployed and underemployed.

Work and the Social Safety Net: Labor Activation in Europe and the United States describes how in the 1990s and early 2000s many European countries adopted policy reforms aimed at activating those recipients apparently able to work. These policy reforms were put to the test during the Great Recession and its aftermath. This volume reviews the experiences from both Europe and the United States during this period, and includes two chapters apiece on unemployment insurance, social assistance, disability, public employment services, and political economy. Work and the Social Safety Net identifies policies for activating recipients of safety-net programs while still preserving a strong social safety net--as a guide during the economic recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic and future downturns.

Douglas J. Besharov is a professor at the University of Maryland's School of Public Policy, where he teaches courses on poverty, welfare, children and families, policy analysis and logic models, program evaluation, and performance management. He is a former president of the Association of Public Policy Analysis and Management, where he also directed its program on international policy exchanges, and co-Editor-in-Chief of the Oxford University Press International Policy Exchange series.

Douglas M. Call is the deputy director of the University of Maryland School of Public Policy's Center for International Policy Exchanges and Welfare Reform Academy. He is also a lecturer at the University of Maryland School of Public Policy, teaching graduate courses on program evaluation and poverty measurement and alleviation, and supervising student projects in the capstone course.