Adult workers in theory or practice? Lone mothers' participation in active labour market programmes in Germany

Abstract

"This paper examines lone mothers' participation in active labour market programmes in Germany. Since the 2005 Hartz IV employment and welfare policy reforms, expectations that non-employed parents receiving means-tested benefits should be ready for employment or labour market programme participation have grown stronger. However, discretion for programme assignments is left to individual caseworkers. As a consequence, it is not clear to what extent the formal policy orientation towards an adult worker model of the family is reflected in practical policy implementations. Thus, lone mothers' participation in active labour market programmes is studied empirically here on the basis of large-scale administrative data, using event-history analysis. Findings are that lone mothers are treated as adult workers with respect to workfare and training programmes even when their children are still quite young. As soon as their youngest child is 3-5 years old, lone mothers' transition rates into these programmes are as high as for childless single women. In the case of programmes that provide more direct pathways into regular employment, like job subsidies and in-firm training programmes, however, participation rates for lone mothers of young children are substantially lower than for childless single women." (Author's abstract, IAB-Doku) ((en))

Cite article

Zabel, C. (2012): Adult workers in theory or practice? Lone mothers' participation in active labour market programmes in Germany. In: Journal of Comparative Social Work, Vol. 7, No. 2, p. 1-21.