 Unemployment insurance and unemployment assistance: a comparisonWayne Vroman No 24084, Social Protection Discussion Papers and Notes from The World Bank Abstract: This report examines the two most common programs that provide cash compensation to unemployed workers: unemployment insurance (UI) and unemployment assistance (UA). It compares them in two areas: costs and labor market disincentives. The cost analysis first derives a framework for examining costs, and then applies the framework to both UI and UA programs. Costs are estimated for several countries, but particular attention is given to Australia, Canada and the United States. A major finding is that UA is not necessarily less costly than UI even though UA conditions eligibility on household income and assets. One must examine the specifics of a country's situation to make a cost comparison. The analysis of labor market disincentive effects reviews much of the relevant literature. It notes that the disincentive effects are present for both UI and UA but that the disincentives are different for the two types of unemployment protection programs. Keywords: Economic Theory&Research; Youth and Governance; Environmental Economics&Policies; Social Protections&Assistance; Labor Markets (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wbk:hdnspu:24084 Access Statistics for this paper More papers in Social Protection Discussion Papers and Notes from The World Bank 1818 H Street, N.W., Washington, DC 20433. Contact information at EDIRC. |
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