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Tax expenditures are widely used by French governments as employment and social policies. Such programmes together amounted to more than 1.3 points of GDP in 2011. Thanks to a systematic review of academic policy evaluations, we assess the efficiency of the different parts of such policies, showing that at least €6 billion is used for policies whose cost is greater than €62,500 per year and job created, and €0.5 billion for policies whose cost is greater than €160,000 per year and job created. We examine the replacement of these tax expenditures by direct public funding for (publicly or privately delivered) "quality" jobs addressing specific social needs. We discuss the conditions under which at least comparable employment performances could be achieved (factoring in the crowding out of privately funded jobs and the properties of created jobs in terms of the service provided or the characteristics of suppliers and consumers) as well as any positive economic and social externalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Personal services have attracted considerable attention from policy makers in France, with a view to achieving two objectives: creating jobs and reintegrating those individuals furthest removed from the labour market. Attempts to achieve these objectives have tended to emphasise job quantity at the expense of job quality, which, despite the avowed efforts of employers and regulators, remains poor. How can this discrepancy be explained? The article analyses the series of mechanisms at work. While some of these mechanisms are the same as those at work in all personal services, others vary according to the activity in question. Care activities, for example, are caught up in a ‘vicious circle’, while those employed in domestic services are caught in a ‘precarity trap’. The fact that these two areas of activity belong to different ‘worlds of production’ means that the prospects for improving job quality are greater in one (care activities) than in the other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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