Unemployment has been shown to be an important economic determinant of health and wellbeing. There is substantial scope for improving population health and addressing health inequalities through this pathway. Welfare state policies, including efforts to address unemployment, therefore have the potential to bring substantial health benefits. Cross-country comparative analysis will be highly beneficial for providing insights to identify and value how welfare state policies modify the effect of unemployment on health and wellbeing, since this will examine both the variation in welfare state types and expenditures between countries, in addition to the variation in expenditures within country.
Comparative analysis can use broad categories to define welfare state types. Additional insights can be gained by analysing specific welfare state expenditures. The OECD collects data on welfare state expenditures that separates passive labour market policies, such as the net income replacement rate in unemployment, and active labour market policies, such as training schemes to improve employability. These data will be added to a multi-country dataset that combines household panel surveys to enable detailed cross-country comparative analysis of how the welfare state context modifies the causal effect of unemployment on health and wellbeing.
To enhance the policy relevance of the findings, effects will be estimated in terms wellbeing years (WELLBYs) and quality adjusted life years (QALYs) as recommended within The Green Book guidance for policy evaluation in government produced by HM Treasury. Existing contacts within the policymaking community will be used to maximise the potential for the research to inform policy decisions.
