Good intentions and Matthew effects: access biases in participation in active labour market policies

The objective of this contribution is to investigate whether active labour market policies manage to reach the most disadvantaged individuals or are subjected to Matthew effects in the shape of access biases. We investigate this question for two typically disadvantaged groups of unemployed people: the low-skilled and immigrants. Our analysis is based on a systematic review of 87 evaluations of active labour market policies (ALMPs) covering 14 different countries and a time period of 15 years (1998–2013). We use information on participants and non-participants to ascertain whether or not access biases are present in these programmes. Our results provide evidence that a Matthew effect is present only in some programmes and in conservative welfare states but not in the Nordic countries. Our conclusion is that policies are generally explicitly targeted on the most disadvantaged (good intentions) but other factors limit their participation (Matthew effects), something which explains the mixed pattern that we observe.