Suchergebnisse

This study examines how welfare benefit generosity impacts refugees' integration into their new country. The effects of welfare benefit generosity are identified from a policy reform that reduced welfare benefits, first for newly arrived refugees, and second for those who had been in the country for at least 10 months. The results suggest that refugees respond quickly to the benefit reduction, but men and women react on different margins. Male refugees enter employment faster when they experience a benefit reduction, whereas no effect on the labor market is found for female refugees. Even though some men succeed in finding a job, both men and women experience a drop in disposable income of 20 percent. This seems to adversely affect women as they seek more health care, are more often hospitalized, and are more often charged with property crimes. No such unintended effects are found for men.

Abstract
Denmark has accepted refugees from a large variety of countries and for more than four decades. Denmark has also frequently changed policies and regulations concerning integration programmes, transfer payments, and conditions for permanent residency. Such policy variation in conjunction with excellent administrative data provides an ideal laboratory to evaluate the effects of different immigration and integration policies on the outcomes of refugee immigrants. In this article, we first describe the Danish experience with refugee immigration over the past four decades. We then review different post-arrival refugee policies and summarize studies that evaluate their effects on the labour market performance of refugees. Lastly, we discuss and contrast these findings in the context of international studies of similar policies and draw conclusions for policy.