Essays on the dynamics of social assistance in Norway: Immigration, employment and welfare conditionality
Doctoral thesis
Permanent lenke
https://hdl.handle.net/11250/3173534Utgivelsesdato
2025Metadata
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- Institutt for sosialt arbeid [1428]
Sammendrag
Social assistance is the primary minimum income scheme in Norway. It’s meanstested and aimed at individuals and families who lack sufficient income or qualifications for other income support schemes. The first part of this thesis examines the role of social assistance in Norway, particularly for those at risk of poverty, such as immigrants and part-time workers. Unlike most other income support schemes, social assistance in Norway is financed and administered by municipalities. This results in significant variation within the country in the practice and implementation of social assistance policy. The second part of this thesis investigates how this variation impacts social assistance, focusing on welfare conditionality, benefit sanctions and social assistance generosity.
This thesis provides four single studies to advance the social assistance debate in Norway. It contributes to contemporary social policy discourses on social assistance by highlighting the increased social risks faced by immigrants and part-time workers in the Norwegian welfare state. Immigrants are increasingly becoming the dominant group of social assistance recipients, relative to their population size. Traditional regression approaches struggle to explain this pattern, but access to other benefits and integration challenges are likely key factors. The main form of non-standard employment, part-time work, is experiencing a worsening position in the wage distribution. This thesis shows that part-time workers who receive social assistance tend to have longer periods of recipiency, indicating weaker labor market attachment and lower social security coverage. The risks faced by immigrants and part-time workers is likely to be interrelated.
Norwegian policymakers are concerned about the large proportion of young social assistance recipients under the age of thirty. The policy response has been to make social assistance conditional on activation. Non-compliance with the activation requirement results in a benefit sanction (reduction) from the local welfare administration. However, this thesis finds that sanctions for passive social assistance recipients are not significantly enforced, removing the incentive effect of sanctions. The final study in this thesis applies a difference-in-difference design to the staggered implementation of the compulsory activation reform in Norwegian municipalities. It revisits the observed negative relationship between activation schemes and social assistance generosity in European minimum income support. The study shows a negative causal relationship between the introduction of local activation requirements and social assistance adequacy levels, with no effect on participation in activation programs or social assistance reception periods.
The policy implications of this thesis are clear. Social assistance in Norway has become increasingly relevant in combating social risks faced by immigrants and individuals in precarious employment. However, the main policy response has not had the intended effect of reducing social assistance reception for the group affected. Meanwhile, the poverty-alleviating role of social assistance in Norway is decreasing. To fulfil the intended role of social assistance, future policy agendas should focus on sufficient social investment and robust measures for poverty reduction.