Background to the Research

• The motivations and behaviour of the long-term unemployed has been an area of controversy in social research. A number of qualitative studies are providing evidence of the complexity of these decision-making processes and exposing the limitations of economic theory in terms of explaining these processes.
  

Research Approach

• The author draws on data from qualitative research projects, the NI component of which was carried out in Coleraine in order to explore the decision-making process of unemployed and low income men and women and to examine the finding that not all forms of income are treated as equal.
  

Main Findings

• Unemployed people who took part in the research had high commitment to employment, even where wages will yield the same amount of money as benefits.
• There was a high level of search activity among the long-term unemployed in the research.
• Barriers to taking employment caused by the social security system were evident, particularly in respect of non-standard forms of employment.
• There was a significant degree of resistance to relying on in-work benefits.
• There was a gap between what people say they need financially from work and what they do (when applying for particular jobs)
• People did not think about all sources of income in the same way; there was a fundamental difference in the value attributed to money from earnings to money from means-tested benefits.
• Sums of money that are numerically the same are not necessarily worth the same amount: the value of a sum of money depends on its capacity to help achieve long-term household expenditure and social objectives.
• Families attached weight to the ways in which relying on different sources of in-work income could have different consequences. There was a perceived risk involved in accepting a low paid job supplemented by an unknown and uncertain quantity of benefits.
• Financial stability was highly rated by families. In order for a sum of money to effectively help attain household expenditure objectives it had to be stable and predictable. The value of money is regulated by more than simple arithmetic and quantity; it is regulated by sources, timing and predictability.
• The assumption of rational choice under conditions of certainty, which underpins traditional labour market supply theory, does not appear to be valid on the basis of the empirical evidence. Uncertainty derives from imperfect knowledge and particularly from being aware that one has imperfect knowledge and from the degree of control which a person has over the various components of the income package.