Can we estimate the impact of the Choices package in Pathways to Work?
Working Paper No. 60
Stuart Adam, Antoine Bozio and Carl Emmerson
This methodological working paper was produced by researchers from the Institute for Fiscal Studies and forms part of the independent evaluation of Jobcentre Plus Pathways to Work. Pathways provides extra support, obligations and incentives for people on incapacity benefits. As part of the programme, a variety of work and health-related services, known collectively as the Choices package, was available to customers to help them move back towards work or help them manage their health condition, such as New Deal for Disabled People and the Condition Management Programme.
The aim of this research was to explore whether it was possible to estimate the impact of the Choices package using propensity score matching. The report concludes that it was not possible to produce reliable causal estimates of the impact of Choices for two main reasons: One – the data available from survey and administrative records give conflicting accounts of whether an individual participated in Choices. Two – more fundamentally – as participation in the programme is voluntary, it is difficult to know how far different outcomes for participants and non-participants are caused by Choices and how far they reflect pre-existing (and unobserved) differences in the type of people who choose to participate, e.g. individual motivation and expectations. In addition, Choices is composed of numerous programmes which were likely to attract rather different kinds of people and therefore, the degree and direction of bias might vary between programmes.
April 2009
ISBN 978-1-84712-497-5
Can we estimate the impact of the Choices package in Pathways to Work?
