The use of active labour market policies (ALMPs) is a common approach in Europe to reintegrate the unemployed back into the labour market. But the effectiveness of these ALMPs is unestablished, as...Show moreThe use of active labour market policies (ALMPs) is a common approach in Europe to reintegrate the unemployed back into the labour market. But the effectiveness of these ALMPs is unestablished, as previous research contributes either failure or success to factors such as strategy, implementation, and continuity. An additional factor is the presence of non-Western migrants, as non-Western migrants are believed to have a greater distance to the labour market, which affects their performance on the labour market. In the Netherlands, municipalities are responsible for their own ALMP strategy. This thesis aims to find the relationship between enrolment in ALMPs and outflow of the social assistance benefit to work, for both the general population and specifically for non-Western migrants, per municipality. A fixed-effects regression for the years 2015 to 2017 in the Netherlands, that controls for unobservable differences between municipalities, show that increased enrolment in ALMPs has no significant effect on the outflow to work. An interaction effect between share of non-Western migrants in a municipality and the enrolment in ALMPs also has no significant effect on the outflow to work. This means that the effectiveness of ALMPs is weak and inelastic, both for the general population and non-Western migrants. Small changes in the short term per municipality in either the number of residents, the fraction of the social assistance benefit recipients that are enrolled in an ALMP, and the share of non-Western migrants, do not impact outflow to work.Show less
