The Impacts of Welfare Conditionality

Sanctions Support and Behaviour Change

Peter Dwyer, Lisa Scullion, Katy Jones, Jenny McNeill, Alasdair B.R. Stewart

• Publisher: Policy Press
• Year: 2022
• Print ISBN: 9781447320111
• eBook ISBN: 9781447343745
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politica e relazioni internazionali
• Subtopic: Politica sociale

Should a citizen's right to social welfare be contingent on their personal behaviour?

Welfare conditionality, linking citizens' eligibility for social benefits and services to prescribed compulsory responsibilities or behaviours, has become a key component of welfare reform in many nations.

This book uses qualitative longitudinal data, from repeat interviews with people subject to compulsion and sanction in their everyday lives, to analyse the effectiveness and ethicality of welfare conditionality in promoting and sustaining behaviour change in the UK.

Given the negative outcomes that welfare conditionality routinely triggers, this book calls for the abandonment of these sanctions and reiterates the importance of genuinely supportive policies that promote social security and wider equality.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-Title Page
• Series Page
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• List of Figures and Tables
• List of Abbreviations
• About the Authors
• Acknowledgements
• One Introduction
• Two Conditionality in the UK welfare state
• Three Welfare conditionality and behaviour change
• Four From welfare to work? The effectiveness of welfare conditionality in moving people into paid employment
• Five Welfare conditionality and problematic or antisocial behaviour
• Six Unintended outcomes? The wider impacts of compulsion and benefit sanctions in social security
• Seven Ethical debates
• Eight Conclusions
• Methods appendix
• References
• Index