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While there has been much research on welfare exit and entry into employment, less research has looked at return to government assistance. Applying survival analysis on data from a national government assistance programme in Singapore, we found two important factors of welfare return to which activation programmes need to pay greater attention. First, return was more likely if former beneficiaries accumulated a higher number of types of arrears rather than higher dollar values of arrears. This new finding contributes to the emerging literature on bandwidth tax, and suggests the importance of designing programmes that relieve mental accounting due to debt and poverty. Second, return was more likely if respondents had an infant or toddler child. This points to the importance of a range of support policies including affordable and accessible childcare, exemption from work requirement in receipt of welfare, and family leave for low-wage workers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In pursuit of sustainable, human capital-centric growth, Singapore initiated a lifelong learning policy of SkillsFuture Credit (SFC) which enables citizens to advance their skills in an autonomous and flexible manner. However, the results so far indicate that the SFC outcomes are not aligned with the policy goals it set out to achieve, as the participation rates remain subpar, and program implementation is dotted with fraudulent claims. This study aims to gauge the effectiveness of SFC both in achieving its primary policy goals and an overarching objective of building a culture of lifelong learning in Singapore. In doing so, this study relies on perspectives of the main stakeholders of SFC using the framework of policy feedback and policy-learning effects. The findings show that while most respondents are satisfied with the SFC, low participation rates are largely driven by structural barriers of time and financial cost. In addition, there exists a mismatch between the government-driven pragmatism rhetoric in lifelong learning and the personal aspirations of respondents towards self-development. Policymakers may benefit from the findings of this research by recalibrating their approach through investing in more diverse, high-quality courses, ensuring the value of the course certificates for employability, and improving the outreach efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using fixed effects regressions, this study examined the transactional effects of different types of economic status on the physical and mental health of low‐income persons in Singapore. Among the economic variables considered, unemployment and arrears had the most significant effects. This signals the physical and psychological distress of being out of work and possessing arrears while income is low. The insignificant effects of poor health on household earnings suggest possible earnings supplementation by other household members. The findings imply the fruitfulness of dually improving employment prospects and health, work activation that takes into consideration mental health effects, increasing affordability of health services in liberal welfare systems, improving mental bandwidth through reducing arrears accounts, and short lag time from application to receipt of assistance. These implications point to a larger question on health and welfare systems in an increasingly uncertain economic environment for households in poverty. Key Practitioner Message: • Employment and health are inter‐related: employment assistance incorporating physical and mental health interventions and vice versa can be more effective than either alone; • Compared with decreasing arrears amounts, reducing the number of arrears can more effectively relieve mental distress; • Effects between economic distress and health materialise quickly; minimising the lag time between application and receipt of assistance will provide great relief. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]