This research project focuses on two main topics: the relationship between RSA (the French minimum income benefit) recipients and employment, and activation and employment support policies targeting RSA recipients.
By examining the trajectories of RSA recipients, the project seeks to address several research questions related to these two themes: To what extent do recipients achieve sustainable returns to employment? Which recipients are most likely to do so? What are their working conditions? What impact do referral and support policies have on recipients’ subsequent pathways? How do these outcomes vary according to recipients’ characteristics?
The project is conducted within the framework of a doctoral research agreement with the DREES (Directorate for Research, Studies, Evaluation and Statistics). It draws on administrative data produced by the DREES, including the Échantillon national interrégimes d’allocataires de compléments de revenus d’activité et de minima sociaux (ENIACRAMS), which enables longitudinal monitoring of recipients of minimum income benefits, and the Remontées individuelles sur l’insertion des bénéficiaires du RSA (RI-Insertion), which provides information on referral and support policies implemented for RSA recipients.
A first study challenged two common misconceptions about RSA recipients: first, that they do not work, and second, that entering employment automatically leads them to leave the benefit scheme. In fact, a substantial proportion of recipients (40%) are employed from one year to the next. However, for most of them, precarious working conditions combined with low wages prevent them from exiting the benefit scheme. In other words, the short-term effects of returning to work on recipients’ trajectories are mixed. Once this finding is established, the question of their longer-term trajectories remains open.
Among the RSA beneficiaries at the end of 2018, two out of five were employed in 2019 (DREES).
A second study identified different types of long-term trajectories by grouping recipients according to similarities in their pathways through minimum income benefits and employment, taking into account employment status, job tenure, work experience, sector of activity, and earnings. The determinants of these different trajectories were then examined.
One in five RSA recipients remains on the benefit for the following ten years (DREES).