ABSTRACT
In most European Community countries benefit levels have become relatively more generous - help is available however long the period of unemployment - and employment protection laws have been progressively tightened. In the United States of America, unemployment benefit is less generous relative to earnings and ceases entirely after six (or at most nine) months. The amount of major earnings-related benefit per head can increase even where rates are held steady as a result of people receiving more than one benefit, upgrading to a higher benefit or through the introduction of new benefits. All these factors gave rise to some increase in benefit per recipient during the 1980s. The Welfare to Work scheme has had no appreciable effect on speeding up the numbers getting jobs. And redefining benefits as negative taxation (renaming Family Credit as Working Families Tax Credit) smacks of tricks with mirrors concealing a substantial increase in the fiscal cost of the enhanced benefit.
