economic inactivity

I W k C di li d il In Work Credit: policy detail • A payment of £40 a week if -Stop receiving out-of-work benefits and start job of 16+ hours Were a lone parent when stopped receiving out of work benefits -Were a lone parent when stopped receiving out-of-work benefits -Have received out-of-work benefits for at least 12 months • Receive IWC while in work for maximum of 52 weeks Receive IWC while in work for maximum of 52 weeks -Send payslips to JC+ to maintain eligibility -Can receive IWC multiple times if cycle from work to out-of-work benefits for 12+ months • Not taxable, and does not reduce tax credits or HB/CTB • NB now worth £60/wk in London, and available to "partners" with children © Institute for Fiscal Studies 2006/7 tax and benefit system, assuming NMW. 1 child. © Institute for Fiscal Studies y , g No childcare, CT = £15.86/wk 2006/7 tax and benefit system, assuming NMW. 1 child. © Institute for Fiscal Studies y , g No childcare, CT = £15.86/wk

Gender inequality continues to shape Wales’s economy and society, influencing who works, how they work, and the opportunities available to them. Women are still more likely to experience barriers to employment and progression, face pay gaps, work in lower-paid or insecure roles, and shoulder the majority of unpaid caring responsibilities. These inequalities are deeply rooted in structural issues such as gender stereotyping in education, occupational segregation, and societal expectations based on traditional gender roles.

This research explores the employment and employability of women in the Welsh economy through an analysis of key statistical sources, including the Annual Population Survey, Census 2021, and other official datasets. It presents an up-to-date picture of women’s participation in the labour market, the challenges they face, and the factors influencing their employment experiences.

Adopting an intersectional feminist perspective, the study examines how gender intersects with other characteristics to shape outcomes and compares current data with pre-pandemic trends to assess ongoing impacts. The findings aim to inform evidence-based policymaking across government—highlighting that gender equality must be central not only to employability and skills strategies, but to wider economic and social policy in Wales.

The current provision of social security and employment support in Scotland and the wider UK do not effectively recognise mental health. Key concerns are: • The use of sanctions is ineffective and can exacerbate mental health problems. • Welfare conditionality gives little or no consideration to mental health problems and should not have been reinstated during the Covid-19 pandemic. • Claimants with mental health problems are not effectively supported by existing employment services. This set of recommendations has been prepared to ensure that the UK social security system does not subject individuals with mental health problems to a one-size-fits-all approach to conditionality, and that personalised distinct employment support for people with mental health problems is available to all.

The current provision of social security and employment support in Scotland and the wider UK do not effectively recognise mental health. Key concerns are: • The use of sanctions is ineffective and can exacerbate mental health problems. • Welfare conditionality gives little or no consideration to mental health problems and should not have been reinstated during the Covid-19 pandemic. • Claimants with mental health problems are not effectively supported by existing employment services. This set of recommendations has been prepared to ensure that the UK social security system does not subject individuals with mental health problems to a one-size-fits-all approach to conditionality, and that personalised distinct employment support for people with mental health problems is available to all.

This paper uses unique data for the economically inactive to calculate elasticity estimates of the reservation wage and exit probability with respect to state benefits and the arrival rate of job offers, and finds that the inactive react in similar ways to benefit increases as the unemployed.

The goal of this paper is to evaluate a "couples-based" policy intervention designed to reduce the number of Australian families without work. In 2000 and 2001, the Australian Government piloted a new counseling initiative targeted towards couple-headed families with dependent children in which neither partner was in paid employment. Selected women on family benefits (who were partnered with men receiving unemployment benefits) were randomly invited to participate in an interview process designed to identify strategies for increasing economic and social participation. While some women were interviewed on their own, others participated in a joint interview with their partners. Our results indicate that the overall effect of the interview process led to lower hours of work among family benefit recipients in the intervention group than the control group, but to greater participation and hours in job search and in study or training for work-related reasons. Whether women were interviewed with their partner or not had no effect on the level of economic and social activity of participants.

Long-term social assistance recipients are a disadvantaged group with loose labour market attachment, and they are therefore in dire need of an 'alternative route' into employment. Differing types of social capital (bonding, bridging, and trust) could improve job opportunities, and perhaps especially so for social assistance recipients with poor health. The current paper uses a linked survey-register data material on a cohort of Norwegian long-term social assistance recipients, which holds rich information on both health status and social capital at baseline (2005). Linear probability models are estimated, with differing operationalizations of wage income (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013) as the outcome. Three main empirical findings appear. First, both mental and somatic health status is highly consequential for labour market attachment among social assistance recipients in Norway. Second, rather few social capital indicators are associated with employment probability, with three noticeable exceptions: loneliness, active organizational membership, and social trust all show a statistical relationship with employment. Third, there is some indication that people with ill health profit less from both bridging social capital and social trust, compared to people with good health status. In conclusion, health status matters a lot and social capital matters a little for labour market attachment among long-term social assistance recipients.

Long-term social assistance recipients are a disadvantaged group with loose labour market attachment, and they are therefore in dire need of an 'alternative route' into employment. Differing types of social capital (bonding, bridging, and trust) could improve job opportunities, and perhaps especially so for social assistance recipients with poor health. The current paper uses a linked survey-register data material on a cohort of Norwegian long-term social assistance recipients, which holds rich information on both health status and social capital at baseline (2005). Linear probability models are estimated, with differing operationalizations of wage income (2005)(2006)(2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013) as the outcome. Three main empirical findings appear. First, both mental and somatic health status is highly consequential for labour market attachment among social assistance recipients in Norway. Second, rather few social capital indicators are associated with employment probability, with three noticeable exceptions: loneliness, active organizational membership, and social trust all show a statistical relationship with employment. Third, there is some indication that people with ill health profit less from both bridging social capital and social trust, compared to people with good health status. In conclusion, health status matters a lot and social capital matters a little for labour market attachment among long-term social assistance recipients.

This report was commissioned by Belfast City Council with the aim of better understanding economic inactivity trends in the Council area, within the wider context of the Northern Ireland (NI) labour market. While economic inactivity has been a long-standing issue in NI, changes to the inactive population throughout the UK following the Covid-19 pandemic
has once again brought the issue to the forefront. In addition, wider economic and demographic challenges have pointed to the economically inactive as a potential labour supply. This research aims to highlight the types of economic inactivity within Belfast and how this structurally differs not only from the NI average but also the UK average. The paper discusses the social, economic and policy implications of high inactivity rates and offers some place-based policy questions to be addressed in any striving towards more inclusive labour markets in Belfast and NI.

The 2021 census shows that the working age population in Newry, Mourne & Down district continues to grow though the growth is expected to slow up over the next decade. This will almost certainly add to the pressures currently being felt in the local labour market and experienced by firms through the twin challenges of staff recruitment and retention. A result of this is a growing focus not only on the low number of unemployed but also economically inactive.

This report looks at the current labour market in Newry, Mourne and Down [in 2022] and the opportunities that exist there as well as the continuing challenges of increasing labour force participation. The research includes a series of focus groups and interviews with those outside the labour market and the particular barriers that find to entering it in this local labour market.

Voluntary programme for lone parents aimed at improving their job readiness and supporting them into employment, which ran between 1998 and 2011. Programme replacing all New Deal programmes including the NDLP, and mandatory in some cases (e.g. after a period of time on Jobseeker's Allowance). Lone parents on Income Support with a child over the age of 12 months old must attend an interview at the Jobcentre every six months to discuss the possibility of returning to work (although they are not obliged to seek or take up work). The partial or complete withholding of a benefit for failing to uphold the obligations of receiving it. The remit of the work was to conduct a wide-ranging summary and structured critique of the literature, but not a systematic review. The review considers a wide range of academic and grey literature, also drawing on key statistical publications and policy documents where appropriate. Literature was sourced through a series of database searches using relevant keywords, as well as from cross-references within the literature, recommendations and the authors' previous work in this area. The search process aimed to identify original empirical work (qualitative, quantitative, or both), meta-analyses and reviews, pertaining to the appropriate: population (lone parents); geography (principally UK, ideally Scotland specifically, and with some international studies for comparison); and outcomes (poverty, employment, job characteristics, living conditions, health and wellbeing). Literature that fell within the scope of the search was appraised for quality, to establish that the methodology was robust and appropriate to the research question, and that the conclusions drawn from the data and results presented were valid. Suitable literature was then categorised by type and organised around key themes, along which the review was structured. For more detailed information about search strategy, terms used, databases searched and so on, see Appendix 2.

This paper uses unique data for the economically inactive to calculate elasticity estimates of the reservation wage and exit probability with respect to state benefits and the arrival rate of job offers, and finds that the inactive react in similar ways to benefit increases as the unemployed.

The Employment Research Institute of Edinburgh Napier University was commissioned to carry out research on employment inequalities in Northern Ireland on behalf of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland. The motivation for the research is to inform the work of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland in updating the 2007 Statement on Key Inequalities in Northern Ireland, which identified employment as one of the areas where inequalities exist and need to be addressed. The work investigates inequalities in employment across the nine equality grounds defined in Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998: gender, age, religious belief, political opinion, racial group, disability, sexual orientation, marital status and dependant status.

The Employment Research Institute of Edinburgh Napier University was commissioned to carry out research on employment inequalities in Northern Ireland on behalf of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland. The motivation for the research is to inform the work of the Equality Commission for Northern Ireland in updating the 2007 Statement on Key Inequalities in Northern Ireland, which identified employment as one of the areas where inequalities exist and need to be addressed. The work investigates inequalities in employment across the nine equality grounds defined in Section 75 of the Northern Ireland Act 1998: gender, age, religious belief, political opinion, racial group, disability, sexual orientation, marital status and dependant status.

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The U.K. government has recently committed itself to an ambitious 80 per cent employment rate target. Recognising that achieving this aspiration will require significant numbers of the economically inactive to (re-)engage with the labour market, the government has enacted various policy reforms seeking to encourage those on the fringes of the labour market to do so. The present paper uses unique survey data to examine three factors relevant to these issues, namely the desire to work, minimum acceptable wages and the distance the inactive are prepared to travel to work for a given minimum acceptable wage offer.

The team would like to express its gratitude to Liz Such and Kris Chapman of the Department for Work and Pensions for their invaluable guidance and support in managing the research. We also acknowledge the input of the members of the Employment Zones Evaluation Steering Group who provided useful comments and suggestions on an earlier draft of this report. Particular thanks go to the Jobcentre Plus and Employment Zone (EZ) managers and staff who helped the research team to undertake the fieldwork within tight timescales, and for giving their time to participate in interviews and focus groups. Similarly, the 60 employers, 18 stakeholders and 121 EZ customers interviewed for this study deserve our thanks.

Les évolutions démographiques des PSEM constituent une dimension essentielle de l'analyse de leur devenir dans le cadre de l'intégration euro-méditerranéenne. En dépit d'une transition démographique bien avancée dans la plupart d'entre eux, ils devraient connaître une forte augmentation de leur population durant les deux décennies à venir. Nous envisageons ici de traiter de la dynamique démographique de deux pays du Maghreb : le Maroc et la Tunisie. Après avoir présenté les principales caractéristiques et tendances en cours, nous nous intéresserons aux relations complexes qui lient disparités socio-économiques et modification des comportements démographiques. Nous appréhenderons quelques aspects des disparités de développement existant au sein de chacun de ces deux pays. Nous nous appuierons pour cela sur une analyse de certains indicateurs socio-économiques ventilés par milieu de résidence et, parfois, par région. Cette démarche nous permettra d'aborder les limites du schéma traditionnel d'explication de la transition démographique (schéma liant fécondité et développement par une relation inverse) et de mettre en évidence l'existence d'un schéma « atypique » d'explication de la transition démographique dans lequel une part non négligeable de la baisse de la fécondité est imputable

I wish to thank my family especially my husband Mike, and children, Heather and Bethany, for all their support and encouragement throughout, and to many friends particularly to Ros and Lisa. I owe gratitude to Dundee City Council (latterly Tayside Regional Council) for its support in undertaking this work, especially Peter Bates (then Social Work Director), for believing in the potential benefits of undertaking such a study. Lastly, I owe gratitude to the work of Irene Flynn and colleagues, without whom I would not have achieved the transcription of hours of tape recorded interviews.

A longer version of this paper has been written for The Political and Social Economy of Care Project at the United Nations Research Institute on Social Development and is due to appear on their website shortly. Please don’t quote this paper without permission from the author, thanks. Please note: this paper replaces the one billed for the conference as I am unable to attend for family reasons.

This paper presents a comparative analysis using EU-SILC data of the correlation between mothers' employment during adolescence and their children's probability of being workless (i.e. either unemployed or inactive) at about 30 years of age in 19 European countries. By estimating various multilevel logit models, the paper shows that, on average, having had a working mother is associated with a reduction in the probability of being workless of about 25 to 35 percent for daughters and 20 to 25 percent for sons. Crosscountry differences in these correlations are much larger for daughters than for sons, in particular for daughters with children, and do not reflect the usual country groupings. Our results suggest that mothers' employment not only influences preferences for labor market participation, but also some attitudes or skills that favor their children's successful integration into the labor market. Moreover, the observed correlation between mothers' employment and their daughters' labor market outcomes is lower in contexts where the burden of childcare falls more on women, highlighting that the presence of constraints on women's choices may conceal mothers' influence on daughters' preferences.

Informal Caring and Labour Market Outcomes Within England and Wales * This paper focuses on the links between informal care provision and labour market activity at the sub-national level. Within-country analysis of this issue has been very limited to date despite the wide regional variations in informal care provision that often exist. This issue is important in the context of policy decisions in Wales and other parts of the UK because of relatively high levels of informal caring in certain areas, especially in the South Wales Valleys. In particular, given that these areas typically have the lowest economic activity and employment rates, labour market differences can be exacerbated by the provision of informal caring by people of working age. Despite the wide variations in informal care provision, it is found that labour market outcomes do not differ markedly by different care categories across spatial areas within England and Wales. However, the analysis reveals that labour market outcomes for males as well as females are heavily influenced for those who provide high levels of caring, especially in the South Wales Valleys. For example, the largest impact of caring on the probability of not working for males and for part-time work for females is seen in this area.

This article presents a unique analysis of how activation agencies in the Netherlands cope with partially disabled employees on the basis of tailor-made individual assessments, representing and executing the shift towards a policy paradigm in activation to work-a synchronic instead of diachronic approach to disability and employability. We focus on two aspects of the administrative process of implementing the new policy: transparency and conditionality. Questions are: do individualised, customised assessments of disability benefits, in contrast to standardised ones, contribute to transparency in assessing partly disabled employees, and how do these workers experience and cope with the conditionality of the benefits? The experienced reality of the targeted partially disabled workers is elaborated upon to understand the implementation of an individualised system. We conclude that the gap between social policy and its implementation needs reconsideration.

Recent controversy has surrounded the relative value of public and private sector remuneration. We propose a comprehensive measure of Total Reward (TR) which includes not just pay, but pensions and other 'benefits in kind', evaluate it as the present value of the sum of all these payments over the lifetime and compare it for the highly educated in the UK public and private sectors. Our results suggest that TR is broadly equalised over the lifecycle for highly educated men while highly educated women have a clear TR advantage in the public sector by the end of their career. We suggest that the current controversy over public-private sector pension differentials and the perennial issues of public/private sector pay gaps requires a lifetime perspective and that the concept of TR is appropriate.

individual characteristics and promoted by employment policies in Europe, addressing employability in the domain of disability is only meaningful when considering individuals in their environments. The results also show that disability systems encourage forms of employability but still appear to favour access to inactivity through "incapacity for work".

(formerly BIS) funded the pre-employment training element of the sector-based work academy (sbwa) using the Adult Skills Budget. They also funded the delivery of the sbwa, including Work Coach time, and project management and evaluation costs of the sbwa trial. This area is now overseen by the Department for Education.

This report covers findings from a small-scale qualitative study commissioned to understand more about how Decision Makers (DMs) make judgements in the minority of Employment and Support Allowance (ESA) cases where they potentially face conflicting evidence or are unsure which outcome should be awarded. For the purpose of this summary these cases will be referred to as 'borderline'. The research involved 10 group discussions with DMs across 5 Benefit Centres (BCs) and 10 depth interviews with Atos Healthcare Professionals (HCPs) responsible for conducting Work Capability Assessments (WCAs), which took place in September and October 2011. The research explored overall views on the role of the DM, the types of cases that tended to be borderline and the approaches to reaching a decision on these, relationships between Atos and Benefit Centres and the training and guidance available for DMs.

ABSTRACTThis paper examines the relationship between age and training in the 15 European Union countries (EU-15) that were member states prior to the 2004 enlargement. The analysis is carried out using European Union Labour Force Survey data. We report cross-country comparisons of the training undertaken by older people (aged 50–64) and younger people (aged 20–49). We extend previous research by adding an analysis of the training undertaken by non-workers as well as that of workers. We also consider whether training is work-related, whether it is undertaken during normal work-hours and the time spent in training. Our results show that across the EU-15 not only are older people less likely to participate in training in general but, more importantly, they are less likely to participate in work-related training. Our evidence suggests that there is considerable scope for raising the training rates of older people and particularly older people who are out of work.

Care is crucial to the functioning of economic and social life. During the Covid-19 pandemic the centrality of care has been dramatically exposed and underscored, not only in terms of increased caring for those with the virus both within the home, in hospitals and nursing homes, but also as a result of government lockdown measures requiring people to stay home, with non-essential workplaces, schools and childcare settings closed. Even pre pandemic, many countries were facing a care crisis due to the impacts of an ageing population, cuts to public services and social protection systems, and the effects of climate change. If not addressed, current deficits in care provision and its quality will create a severe and unsustainable global care crisis. Essential Nature of Care Caring, in its multiple manifestations, is a basic human capability serving a fundamental human need. Being cared for is not only vital for survival in infancy, early childhood or at times of illness or vulnerability, but is necessary for human development and wellbeing throughout our lives. Despite its centrality there is great ambivalence about caring in most societies. Care is often thought of, and treated, as an essentially private matter despite the fact that the public sphere cannot function without the care institutions of society. i The reality of the dependency and interdependency of humans as affective, relational beings stands in sharp contrast to the core concept of self-interested individualism which underlies most economic theory. The assumption that the prototypical human is an autonomous agent (an able bodied, independent, rational, white, heterosexual male) who is able to choose from an array of options limited only by budget constraints has long been criticised by feminist economists who argue that this focus on individual autonomy directs attention away from the connectedness and complexities of interdependent relationships as well as ignoring the limited autonomy of children, the elderly and others who critically depend on the decisions of others. ii Furthermore, this theoretical framework poorly characterises the lives of those whose economic circumstances are structured by factors beyond their personal control and hides the reality that many people have limited opportunity to self-determine their lives. The emphasis on choice, rather than on the conditions that underlie choices, can mislead by giving the impression that outcomes can be adequately understood without looking at key structural circumstances. This includes how cultural perceptions and social norms on gender roles influence economic life-such as prohibitions on women's full participation in economic life (for example, until 1973 women in Ireland were barred from public sector employment when they got married), gendered legal and social institutions (for example, the right to vote) and through direct and indirect discrimination (for example, the gender pay gap and occupational segregation by gender). The contradictions of self-interested individualism, the constraints of choice and the persistent pervasiveness of traditional gender roles all coalesce around issues of care. Relational Nature of Care There are two other distinctive aspects of care that distinguish it from other forms of work-intrinsic motivation and relationality. Caring labour is usually intrinsically motivated insofar as it is usually done for reasons other than money, even in situations of paid care. We tend to conceptualise care as something which involves a sense of commitment or obligation to the person being cared for and it is this feature that simultaneously makes caring labour both so valuable and so undervalued. Historically, and currently, women carry a disproportionate amount of care work-most of which is either low paid or unpaid. The knock on effects of this assumption of a reserve army of unpaid carers is not only felt in the present in terms of time out of paid employment for child or elderly care, but it reduces earnings over a lifetime. This so called 'motherhood penalty' means that mothers in general earn less than other women contributing to a gender pensions gap. Research shows women who are mothers get paid about 3 per cent less per child than their female counterparts who are childless. In the US, there is a larger difference in pay between women who are mothers and women who are not, than between women who are not 2 THE CARE ECONOMY The Care Economy Care comprises all activities that enhance people's physical and emotional health and well-being thus sustaining human life and the reproduction of the workforce and societies. The care economy represents a fundamental contribution to economic production in creating jobs, directly and indirectly, and in enabling other sectors of the economy to function adequately. The care economy can be conceptualized in its broadest terms to include the health and education sectors whilst also encompassing two specific areas of activity-direct, personal and relational care activities such as childcare and elderly care and indirect care activities such as domestic work. For the purposes of this chapter we are focusing primarily on childcare and social/adult care. Policy issues in relation to education and health sectors are discussed in Chapters 15 and 16, respectively. A key distinction can be made between paid and unpaid care work. Paid care work usually takes place in more formal settings and is performed for pay or profit and comprises a wide range of personal service workers, such as nurses, teachers, doctors and personal care workers, including those employed in nursing homes, and informal workers such as au pairs or cleaners. The majority of care workers in the informal economy work under poor conditions, for low pay and have limited, if any, employment protection e.g. childminders, au pairs, cleaners and others working in households. In contrast, unpaid work can be defined as all non-market, non-remunerated activities including both relational work and direct care of persons, such as children or the elderly, and indirect care, such as cooking, cleaning or fetching water. Without investing time, effort and resources in these essential daily tasks, communities, workplaces and economies would cease to function. Such care and domestic tasks vary in physical effort and time-intensity, which in turn depend on location (often more challenging in developing countries and rural locations), socioeconomic status, age and stage in the life course, marital status and number of children. In addition to underscoring the centrality of care to a functioning economy the pandemic has exposed the gender inequalities in the distribution of care work. Across the world, unpaid care work is disproportionately carried out by women and girls, especially by those from groups who, as well as gender discrimination, experience discrimination based on race, ethnicity, nationality, sexuality and caste. Women undertake more than threequarters of unpaid care and make up two-thirds of the paid care workforce. vi The unequal distribution of care work as well as non-substitutability of some forms of care has significant gender implications erecting a critical barrier to gender equality and women's economic and social empowerment. It undermines the health and well-being of predominantly female care workers and limits their economic prosperity by fuelling gender gaps in employment and wages. It also leaves women time-poor, unable to meet their basic needs or to participate in social and political activities. In theory, the care economy can have a positive effect on gender inequality both as an important source of women's employment and in terms of 'releasing' women into the labour force through the public provision of care. But because the paid care work force tends to be highly segregated by gender and characterised by low pay and poor working conditions it only exacerbates the gender pay gap and gender divisions. Further, it does nothing to address the unequal distribution of unpaid care work between women and men. Formally categorised as nonmarket work, unpaid care work is not included or counted in countries National Accounting Systems (e.g. GDP). Time Use Survey data shows that women spend on average three times longer on unpaid work than men. This varies among countries, ranging from 1.5 times longer in North American countries to 6.7 times longer in South Asian countries, and in no country is unpaid work equally shared by women and men. Evidence shows that as countries get richer, the hours people spend on unpaid work fall, particularly in relation to domestic chores, with greater access to improved household technologies, labour-saving devices and resources to pay for domestic help. In contrast, in poorer countries, unpaid care work tends to be linked to subsistence requirements, with the provision of food, shelter, fetching water and caring for family members often much more labour-intensive and time consuming. The importance of measuring and addressing unpaid care work to advance gender equality has been acknowledged in Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) Number 5 through the adoption of Target 5.4 which states that countries should 'recognise and value unpaid care and domestic work through the provision of public services, infrastructure and social protection policies and the promotion of shared responsibility within the household and the family as nationally appropriate'. Globally countries are at varying stages of nationalizing and assessing capacity to produce and use the statistics needed to monitor SDG progress and gender-responsive SDGs prioritization. A key challenge is the lack of disaggregated data by gender but also in terms of intersectionality (that is, understanding inequalities as also intersecting across age, ethnicity, race, disability status, migratory status and sexual orientation). The SDGs are discussed in detail in Chapter 6 Unpaid care...

individual characteristics and promoted by employment policies in Europe, addressing employability in the domain of disability is only meaningful when considering individuals in their environments. The results also show that disability systems encourage forms of employability but still appear to favour access to inactivity through "incapacity for work".

Design and print: Yogi Communications We wish to thank Natasha Hirst for her photographs of case studies in which positive efforts have been made to remove the obstacles which contribute to the disability employment gap. Grateful thanks are also due to Anna Shearer, Floating Harbour Films, for creating the cover picture and to Grace Krause for editorial assistance. We gratefully acknowledge the comments made on earlier drafts of this report by Diana Kloss, Chair of the Council for Work and Health; Genevieve Smyth and College of Occupational Therapists. All errors and omissions remain the responsibility of the authors.

Publication Information Millar, M and Crosse,R. (2016) Lone Parents and Activation, What Works and Why: A Review of the International Evidence in the Irish Context. The UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre, National University of Ireland, Galway. Publisher UNESCO Child and Family Research Centre, National University of Ireland, Galway Link to publisher's version http://www.childandfamilyresearch.ie/media/ilascfrc/reports/M illar-and-Crosse-Activation-Report.pdf

The aim of this paper is to present the ex ante SocioEconomic Impact Assessment of a European Social Science Research Infrastructure (RI) named EuroCohort that will provide, over the next 34 years, a longitudinal study of the well-being of children and young people across Europe.

There is considerable support in the literature for the idea that volunteering helps improve employability and acts as a route to employment. Policy initiatives are consistent with this message. We analysed longitudinal evidence from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) to test this theory. Our analysis found that volunteering has a significant, but weak, effect on employability in terms of entry into work. The frequency of volunteering, however, makes a difference to its effects on employment outcomes. The effects also vary according to demographics. The evidence on job retention is weaker, and volunteering appears to have zero or even negative effects on wage progression. While the BHPS has limitations for this kind of analysis, we suggest that too much has been made of the link between volunteering and employability, and indeed that intention is infrequent among volunteers.

Regression analysis indicates that age, sex, family type, labour force status and income, among other factors, are independently related to providing any care and care of 20 or more hours per week in any one year, after the influence of other factors-including caring provision in the previous year-have been taken into account.

This paper identifies the growing gap between the spheres of paid employment and social care for people with learning disabilities. Social inclusion and independence remain closely associated with paid employment; social exclusion and dependency with receipt of care. The paper argues that, as employability and supported employment programmes increasingly select only the most able, and social care is ever more restricted to those in most need, an expanding number of people with learning disabilities are occupying a third or in-between sphere where the opportunities for work or care are limited. The paper draws on research undertaken for Scottish Government and interviews with policy makers and practitioners at national and local scales. The paper presents a critique of the array of employment programmes, arguing that their narrow and outcome-focused approach excludes most people with learning disabilities from opportunities for employment. 'Local Area Co-ordinators' present in many areas in Scotland provide personal support and 'brokerage' to facilitate access to, in some cases, employment and, perhaps more importantly, to other 'work' experiences (including voluntary work) and community capacity building. The 'progressive localist' network building work of Local Area Coordinators can potentially bridge the gap between the spheres of employment and social care, and in doing so contest the deterministic relation between social inclusion and paid employment.

Non-take-up, i.e. individuals not applying for a benefit they are eligible for, is a widespread problem limiting the reach of welfare and protection systems. This paper seeks to understand it by means of a theoretical framework comprising two levels of analysis: the claimants’ individual characteristics in relation to the information barriers they face, and the administrative logic and functioning regarding the communications strategy used by public institutions. To test the hypotheses of these two levels of analysis, the paper analyses the B-MINCOME pilot scheme, a cash transfer programme implemented in the city of Barcelona between 2017 and 2019. Findings indicate that, although claimants’ characteristics may play a significant role, the administrative functioning and the communications strategy are fundamental in determining take-up rates. The conclusions briefly address some of the technical and moral concerns raised by non-take-up.