Author Description

Background Welfare-to-work programmes have replaced passive welfare recipiency as a means of fighting poverty in many developed countries during the latest decades. There is a belief that placing welfare recipients into subsidised jobs and/or strengthening their skills and knowledge will help them acquire steady jobs. There has, however, been no systematic review of the effects of such programmes on employment, earnings and welfare payments searching systematically for studies from all parts of the world. Objectives To estimate the effects of work programmes, including elements such as job search assistance, job search training, subsidised employment, job clubs, vocational training, etc. on welfare recipients. Employment and economic self-sufficiency. Search strategy We searched the following electronic databases: C2-SPECTR, Cochrane Library, MEDLINE, EMBASE, PsycINFO, Sociological Abstracts, Cinahl, Caredata, Eric, BIBSYS, SIGLE, IBSS, PAIS, and Social Science Citation Index. References from included primary reports and relevant reviews were scanned and content experts were contacted. A number of possibly relevant websites were searched. Selection criteria Randomised controlled trials, quasi-randomised trials, or clusterrandomised trials of welfare-to-work programmes. Data collection and analysis Studies were evaluated independently by two reviewers according to a data extraction form. The GRADE system was used for quality assessment. Outcomes on employment, earnings, welfare payments, and proportion on welfare were included in meta-analyses. Main results Randomised controlled impact evaluations of welfare-to-work programmes came almost exclusively from the United States. A total of 46 programmes with more than 412 thousand participants were included in this review. Participants were randomised to intervention or control group, and we report follow-up outcomes from the end of the intervention and up to six years. Overall, 60.9 percent of intervention participants w