Facultad de Ciencias Jurídicas y Sociales, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, Paseo Artilleros s/n, 28032 Madrid, Spain.
Soc Sci Med. 2013 Sep;93:103-12. doi: 10.1016/j.socscimed.2013.05.037. Epub 2013 Jun 19.
Non-health related policies may have consequences for health that are more important than the outcomes they were originally designed to produce. In this paper we evaluate the effects of welfare-to-work programs (WTW) on physical and mental health status and a variety of health behaviors. The paper is based on data from the minimum income program of Madrid's Government (IMI). We match the program's administrative records (39,200 households)--covering the whole history of the program from the second half of 1990 to 2001--with a specific survey of former recipients who took part in different work-related activities conducted in 2001 (2300 households). We perform propensity score matching to find that both health status--including physical and mental health problems--and behaviors outcomes were modestly better for those individuals who had taken part in work-related activities. These results offer support for the contention that welfare-to-work policies may have positive unintended health effects.
非健康相关政策可能会对健康产生比其原本预期的结果更为重要的影响。本文评估了福利就业计划（WTW）对身心健康状况以及各种健康行为的影响。本文所依据的数据来自马德里政府的最低收入计划（IMI）。我们将该计划的行政记录（39200 户家庭）——涵盖了该计划从 1990 年下半年到 2001 年的整个历史——与一项特定的调查进行匹配，该调查涉及在 2001 年参与各种与工作相关活动的前受助者（2300 户家庭）。我们通过倾向得分匹配发现，那些参与过与工作相关活动的个体的健康状况（包括身心健康问题）和行为结果都有了适度的改善。这些结果为福利就业政策可能会产生积极的意外健康影响的观点提供了支持。
