Escaping welfare? Social assistance dynamics in Sweden

Abstract

The article analyses temporal patterns in social assistance receipt in Sweden in the 2000s by looking at which circumstances facilitate versus reduce the possibilities of a person ceasing to be a recipient of social assistance. The analysis is guided by the following questions: What conditions lead people to terminate periods of social assistance receipt? Which factors are central to exits with different subsequent income patterns? How do these explain the different situations of recipients prior to termination? We focus particularly on income maintenance prior to spells of social assistance. We use event history data on monthly social assistance take-up covering the total adult Swedish population for the years 2002–2004. We adopt a gamma mixture model to control for unobserved heterogeneity. The results suggest that previous experience of both employment and social assistance receipt are important determinants for all types of exits from social assistance recipiency. A negative duration dependence is found also when unobserved heterogeneity is controlled for.