Blaming the benefit: The costs of the distinction between active and passive programmes

The subject of income maintenance for those out of work is generally regarded a technical issue to be left to the appropriate official and other experts. This chapter presents the analysis of one particularly influential report on benefits for the unemployed to start to draw out the wider issues in a consideration of the functions that a benefits system might fulfil. Unemployment insurance and related benefit systems were originally designed to provide temporary income support to the unemployed during the process of finding a new job. The analysis of unemployment benefits is introduced by several sentences outlining the objectives in providing such benefits: the rationale for unemployment insurance benefits is to relieve people who have lost a job through no fault of their own from immediate financial concerns, and thus allow efficient job search. The effect of the benefits system then becomes one among many factors to be taken into account.