Welfare Conditionality in the OECD and in Latin America: A Comparative Perspective

Herwig Immervoll (), Florencia Antía (), Carlo Knotz () and Cecilia Rossel ()
Additional contact information
Herwig Immervoll: OECD, Paris
Florencia Antía: Universidad de la República, Uruguay
Carlo Knotz: Bremen International Graduate School of Social Sciences
Cecilia Rossel: Universidad de la República, Uruguay

No 17869, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Cash benefit programmes have increasingly emphasised conditionality and “demanding” forms of activation in recent decades. Behavioural requirements are now a key element in reforms of unemployment benefits (UB) and related out-of-work benefits in high-income OECD countries, and they are the defining feature of Conditional Cash Transfer (CCT) programs in many emerging economies, notably in Latin America (LA). In existing research, developments in the two regions have been studied separately from each other, limiting our understanding of commonalities and differences as inputs into policy debates and theory development. We address this gap using three comparative and longitudinal databases on benefit conditionality rules and policy trajectories in Europe, North America, Australasia, and LA. Behavioural requirements varied markedly across regions. They were initially less stringent for LA’s CCTs than for UB programmes in OECD countries, but the gap has narrowed as requirements in LA’s CCT programmes became more demanding. The strictness of requirements was more volatile in LA than in other regions. Although strictness initially varied strongly across LA, the region recently saw faster convergence than high-income OECD countries.

Keywords: welfare conditionality; OECD; Latin America; comparative analysis; activation; unemployment benefits; CCT (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I38 J08 J65 J68 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp17869.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp17869

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().