Advanced Search

Journal Navigation

Journal Home

Subscriptions

Archive

Contact Us

Table of Contents

CiteULike is a free service for managing and discovering scholarly references - click here to get started.

Sign In to gain access to subscriptions and/or personal tools.
Acta Sociologica
This Article
Right arrow Free Full Text (Free PDF) Free
Right arrow References
Right arrow Alert me when this article is cited
Right arrow Alert me if a correction is posted
Services
Right arrow Email this article to a friend
Right arrow Similar articles in this journal
Right arrow Similar articles in Web of Science
Right arrow Alert me to new issues of the journal
Right arrow Add to Saved Citations
Right arrow Download to citation manager
Right arrowRequest Permissions
Right arrow Request Reprints
Right arrow Add to My Marked Citations
Citing Articles
Right arrow Citing Articles via HighWire
Right arrow Citing Articles via Web of Science (1)
Right arrow Citing Articles via Google Scholar
Right arrow Citing Articles via Scopus
Google Scholar
Right arrow Articles by Brännström, L.
Right arrow Articles by Stenberg, S.-A.
Right arrow Search for Related Content
Social Bookmarking
Add to CiteULike   Add to Complore   Add to Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us   Add to Digg   Add to Reddit   Add to Technorati   Add to Twitter  
What's this?

Does Social Assistance Recipiency Influence Unemployment?

Macro-level Findings from Sweden in a Period of Turbulence

Lars Brännström

National Board of Health and Welfare, Sweden, lars.brannstrom{at}socialstyrelsen.se

Sten-Åke Stenberg

Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University, Sweden, stenake{at}sofi.su.se

Has the frequency of unemployment a tendency to increase the number of social assistance recipients, or does the relationship work the other way round? This article utilizes Swedish monthly data on aggregated open unemployment and means-tested social assistance recipiency in the period 1991—2004 and proposes a multiple time-series approach based on vector error-correction modelling in order to distinguish between theories about the direction of influence. First, we show that rates of unemployment and receipt of social assistance are co-integrated. Second, we demonstrate that adjustments to the long-run equilibrium are made through adjustments to the receipt of means-tested social assistance. This indicates that the frequency of social assistance recipiency reacts to changes in unemployment rather than vice versa. It is also shown that lagged changes in the number of social assistance recipients do not predict changes in rates of unemployment in the short term. Together, these findings demonstrate that the number of social assistance recipients does not increase the number of unemployed.

Key Words: multiple time-series analysis • social assistance • spillover effects • Sweden • unemployment

Acta Sociologica, Vol. 50, No. 4, 347-362 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0001699307083977
Add to CiteULike CiteULike   Add to Complore Complore   Add to Connotea Connotea   Add to Del.icio.us Del.icio.us   Add to Digg Digg   Add to Reddit Reddit   Add to Technorati Technorati   Add to Twitter Twitter    What's this?


This article has been cited by other articles:


Home page
 Acta SociologicaHome page
M. Pfeifer
Public Opinion on State Responsibility for Minimum Income Protection: A Comparison of 14 European Countries
Acta Sociologica, June 1, 2009; 52(2): 117 - 134.
[Abstract] [PDF]