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The Origins of Unemployment Insurance: Lessons for Developing Countries

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Abstract

Since the beginning of the twentieth century, programmes to aid workers who have lost their jobs have become a predominant feature of labour markets, but the controversy surrounding these programmes — severance pay, unemployment insurance and unemployment assistance — is as great today as it was when the programmes were first established. Though most industrialized countries established unemployment insurance programmes nearly a century ago, many countries in the developing world have no unemployment insurance systems in place and only limited programmes of unemployment compensation.

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Notes

  1. I. Mares (2001) ‘Firms and the Welfare State: When, Why and How Does Social Policy Matter to Employers?’, in P.A. Hall and D. Soskice (eds), Varieties of Capitalism: The Institutional Foundations of Comparative Advantage (Oxford: Oxford University Press).

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  2. J. Alber (1981) ‘Government Responses to the Challenge of Unemployment: The Development of Unemployment Insurance in Western Europe’, in P. Flora and A. Heidenheimer (eds), The Development of Welfare States in Europe and America (New Brunswick: Transaction Books).

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  3. P. Lindert (2004) Growing Public: Social Spending and Economic Growth since the Eighteenth Century, vol. 1 (New York: Cambridge University Press).

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  4. Alber (1981) and I. Gibbon (1911) Unemployment Insurance: A Study of Schemes of Assisted Insurance (Westminster: P.S. King and Son).

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  5. As quoted in Korpi (2004) citing N.F. Christiansen and K. Petersen (2001) ‘The Dynamics of Social Solidarity: The Danish Welfare State, 1900–2000’, Scandinavian Journal of History 26(3): 179.

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  6. G.H. Ince (1937) Report of Unemployment Insurance in Australia, The Parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia, 22 February.

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  7. A. Alcock (1971) History of the International Labour Organisation (London: Macmillan), p. 108.

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  8. S. Blaustein (1993) Unemployment Insurance in the United States: The First Half Century (Kalamazoo, MI: W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research).

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  9. See, for example, M. Vodopivec (2006) ‘Choosing a System of Unemployment Income Support: Guidelines for Developing and Transition Countries’, World Bank Research Observer 21, and I. Gill and N. Ilahi (2000) ‘Economic Insecurity, Individual Behavior and Social Policy’, paper prepared for the regional study, Managing Economic Insecurity in Latin America and the Caribbean (Washington, DC: World Bank).

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© 2008 International Labour Organization

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Berg, J., Salerno, M. (2008). The Origins of Unemployment Insurance: Lessons for Developing Countries. In: Berg, J., Kucera, D. (eds) In Defence of Labour Market Institutions. The International Labour Organization. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230584204_5

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