ABSTRACT
The best available study of British experience with welfare to work schemes prior to Labour’s election victory in 1997 was commissioned by the Joseph Rowntree Foundation. As a direct result, welfare to work policies are critical to the economic and social strategy being pursued by the Blair government in the United Kingdom. In March 1998 the Blair government published a consultative paper on welfare reform that set out a number of key principles that ought to guide the development and adaptation of the British welfare state. Welfare reform in general and welfare to work in particular are at the very center of New Labour’s domestic policy agenda. In theory welfare-to-work is any policy intervention that encourages or facilitates a transition from benefits to paid employment. The challenge for the future is to invest in more sophisticated evaluation efforts so as to produce convincing evidence about what aspects of policy work best for which people in what circumstances.
