27 October 2009 – Publication of DWP research report 601: The impact of Pathways to Work on work, earnings and self-reported health in the April 2006 expansion areas
A DWP research report No 601, “The impact of Pathways to Work on work, earnings and self-reported health in the April 2006 expansion areas” is published today.
Introduction
Pathways to Work (or ‘Pathways’) aims to support incapacity benefits customers in seeking work. It was piloted in three Jobcentre Plus districts in October 2003, and a further four districts from April 2004. The programme was then extended nationwide in a number of stages. The first three expansions took place in October 2005 (four districts), April 2006 (six districts) and October 2006 (three districts). Following these expansions, Provider-led Pathways was rolled out to cover the remaining 60 per cent of the country.
An analysis of administrative data on benefit receipt in the first two sets of expansion areas (Bewley et al., 2008) indicated that Pathways had a very similar impact on benefit receipt to that found in the pilot areas. This report uses survey data to look at work, earnings and self-reported health outcomes from Pathways, thus providing evidence on the consistency of its impact on a range of measures in different areas.
Results
This study did not find a statistically significant impact from Pathways on any of the work, earnings and self-reported health outcomes considered in the April 2006 expansion areas. By contrast, within the pilot areas, the analysis of survey data showed that Pathways increased the proportion of customers who were in paid work around 19 months after they made an enquiry about claiming incapacity benefits. It also reduced the likelihood that they reported having a health problem that affected their day-to-day activities a great deal.
This report considers the possible explanations for the failure to detect statistically significant effects in the April 2006 expansion areas.
Possible explanations for differences from Pilot areas results
Firstly, the sample used in the pilot areas included individuals enquiring about incapacity benefits rather than only those who actually made a claim, as was the case in the April 2006 expansion areas. This meant that the impact in the pilot areas included the ‘deterrent effect’ as well as the effect of participating in the programme. This was not the case in the April 2006 expansion areas, so any apparent impact from Pathways could be expected to be smaller. DWP is undertaking further analysis to seek to establish whether Pathways had a deterrent effect.
Secondly, any analysis that is based on drawing samples at random from a population can only give an estimate of the true impact of a programme. Therefore, it is unsurprising that there was some variation in the observed impact of Pathways between the pilot and April 2006 expansion areas. Differences between the areas in the observed and unobserved characteristics of survey respondents may have meant that Pathways had a greater chance of being effective in some locations, e.g. if customers faced fewer barriers to work, or had a greater propensity to participate in the voluntary elements.
Finally, there may have been differences, between the pilot and April 2006 expansion areas, in the resources devoted to implementing Pathways which contribute to the differences in its effectiveness. Further research could give an indication of the relative contribution of each of these factors to the apparent variation in the impact of Pathways between the pilot and April 2006 expansion areas.
Notes to editors:
- DWP Research Report Number 601, The impact of Pathways to Work on work, earnings and self-reported health in the April 2006 expansion areas, is published today on DWP’s website.
- The study was commissioned by DWP and conducted by the National Institute for Economics and Social Research (NIESR) and Policy Studies Institute (PSI). The authors are Helen Bewley, Richard Dorsett and Sergio Sallis.
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