Deletion of duty to apply for assistance makes little difference Money

The municipalities of Utrecht, Groningen, Wageningen, Nijmegen, Deventer and Tilburg were granted permission three years ago by State Secretary Tamara van Ark (Social Affairs) to deal more flexibly with the rules for assistance.

One of those measures was to remove the duty to apply. This means that recipients of a benefit must accept paid work and participate in reintegration activities. No negative effect was found. Moreover, no striking positive effects were found from the experiments.

Part-time job

Providing extra support to social assistance recipients and offering them more opportunities to earn money did lead them to find part-time jobs of 12 hours a week or more a little more often. However, no experiment led to more outflow to full work, more than 27 hours per week.

The participants also voluntarily took part in the experiment, which may mean that a group that already had more job opportunities participated.

The CPB has another blow. Because the municipalities experimented with different measures at the same time, the effect per measure is limited.

–