WISE - What Influences Social assistance Exits ?

The project aims at understanding the dynamics of social assistance, in particular the determinants of beneficiaries' exits and the sustainability of their exit from social assistance toward the labour market. The overall research framework is built in order to answer the question 'What influences working-age people sustainable exit from social assistance in Europe?' in an innovative way. The WISE Phd project aims at contributing to the literature on social assistance dynamics by using mixed methods to gain a deeper understanding of beneficiaries' transitions out of social assistance. In particular, the project aims at investigating the institutional and individual factors that favour working-age beneficiaries' exit towards a sustainable form of exit by (1) analysing cross-country institutional labour market and policy configurations, (2) by focusing on the case of Luxembourg to deepen the understanding of the relation between institutional and individual factors and (3) by disentangling the effect of individual heterogeneity and welfare dependency in explaining prolonged stay into social assistance and the underlying mechanisms.