Studies on Growth with Equity

What Works: Promoting Pathways to Decent Work

This report analyses how income support and ALMPs can come together to tackle a significant set of barriers limiting access to decent work in emerging and developing countries.

The ILO's What Works reports provide comprehensive analyses of Active Labour Market Policies (ALMPs) and their integration with income support mechanisms to enhance employment outcomes in emerging and developing countries. The first report, What Works: Active Labour Market Policies in Latin America and the Caribbean (2016), evaluates the effectiveness of ALMPs across various demographic groups, highlighting that successful outcomes depend significantly on specific implementation factors. Key findings indicate that training programmes, employment subsidies, and support for self-employment and micro-entrepreneurship yield positive results when tailored to the local context and target populations.

Building upon these insights, the second report, What Works: Promoting Pathways to Decent Work (2019), delves into the synergistic effects of combining ALMPs with income support. It presents a conceptual framework illustrating how this integrated approach addresses barriers to decent work, such as poverty and skills mismatches. The report includes a country mapping that showcases diverse implementations of combined policies outside high-income nations. Empirical analyses, including impact evaluations from Mauritius and Uruguay, demonstrate that joint provision enhances participation in ALMPs, thereby improving employment outcomes. Moreover, income support plays a crucial role in protecting individuals during job transitions, preventing them from falling into poverty and enabling active engagement in labour market programmes.

Collectively, these reports underscore that the effectiveness of ALMPs is contingent upon meticulous design and implementation. They advocate for strategic integration of income support to bolster the efficacy of ALMPs, ultimately promoting sustainable employment and improved livelihoods in emerging and developing economies.