Benefit sanctions not only affect the behavior of sanctioned persons but also of their partners - who are often more likely to take up a job, thereby compensating for the income loss
People who receive unemployment insurance or means-tested welfare benefits are required to follow certain rules, such as actively searching for work and accepting suitable job offers. If they fail to comply, their benefits can be reduced through a sanction. Previous research has mainly focused on the individuals who are sanctioned and has shown that sanctions tend to increase their chances of finding a job.
Our new study looks beyond the individual and examines couples receiving welfare benefits in Germany. We analyse what happens when one partner is sanctioned: how it affects both partners’ chances of finding a job, and whether it changes the likelihood that the other partner is sanctioned later. We also examine differences by gender and by whether the couple has children.
As expected, a sanction increases the sanctioned person’s probability of entering employment. But the effects do not stop there. When the sanctioned individual is a man, his female partner is also more likely to find a job. In contrast, when the sanctioned individual is a woman, we do not observe an effect on her male partner’s employment.
Sanctions also reduce the probability that the other partner is sanctioned in the future. This suggests that households respond to the initial income loss by complying more closely with benefit rules, possibly to avoid a second cut in household income.
We further examine whether these effects differ depending on the presence of children. Among couples with children aged three and older, women show a particularly strong employment response when their partner is sanctioned, compared with women in childless households. By contrast, partner sanctions do not significantly increase men’s transitions into employment, whether or not children are present.
Why do these gender differences arise? Several explanations are possible. Caseworkers may increase monitoring of women after a sanction, while men may already face stricter oversight beforehand. Differences in bargaining power within households may also lead women to shoulder a larger share of the adjustment. Finally, because women typically provide more childcare, their job search costs are higher, which may shape how households respond to sanctions.
Overall, our findings show that welfare sanctions are not purely individual measures. They affect other household members as well, and these spillover effects depend strongly on gender roles and family structure. As a result, sanctions may be more severe than they appear when evaluated only at the individual level. Policymakers designing sanction regimes should therefore take household interactions explicitly into account.
© Gerard J. van den Berg, Arne Uhlendorff, Markus Wolf, and Joachim Wolff
Gerard J. van den Berg is Professor of Economics at the University of Groningen, Netherlands, and IZA@LISER Research Fellow
Arne Uhlendorff is CNRS research director at CREST (Centre de Recherche en Economie et Statistiques), Professor at Ecole Polytechnique, France, and IZA Research Fellow
Markus Wolf is Researcher at Institute for Employment Research, Germany
Joachim Wolff is Researcher at Institute for Employment Research, Germany
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https://wol.iza.org/articles/impact-of-monitoring-and-sanctioning-on-unemployment-exit-and-job-finding-rates by Duncan McVicar
https://wol.iza.org/articles/job-search-monitoring-and-assistance-for-the-unemployed by Ioana E. Marinescu
https://wol.iza.org/articles/determinants-of-housework-time by Leslie S. Stratton
https://wol.iza.org/articles/measuring-poverty-within-the-household by Caitlin Brown, Rossella Calvi, Jacob Penglase, and Denni Tommasi
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