Investigating neighbourhood effects in welfare-to-work transitions

We analyse the existence and underlying mechanisms of neighbourhood effects in welfare-to-work transitions. The analysis is based on Luxembourg social security longitudinal data, which covers the period 2001-2015 and provides precise information at the postcode level, corresponding mostly to streets. Our identification strategy exploits plausible exogenous variations among neighbours provided by the thinness of the housing market once controlling for residential sorting. We first examine interactions among all neighbours using an individual-level analysis, before focusing on interactions among only welfare recipients using a matched-pair analysis. This second step allows us to deal with the mediating effect of welfare recipients' citizenship. The main findings highlight the existence of neighbourhood effects in welfare-to-work transitions, which are also affected by the characteristics of the neighbours, including their citizenship. These characteristics suggest that social norms and/or stigma prevail in welfare-to-work transitions over the support for welfare recipients to find a job, but not over the in-group support for welfare recipients. The matched-pair analysis provides contrasting results across citizenship for individuals from large-sized citizenship groups (interactions within the own group) and individuals from medium-sized groups (interactions between groups).