Unemployment Assistance and Transition to Employment in Argentina

This article examines the impact of Argentina's Plan Jefes, an unemployment assistance program, on the probability of transiting to employment between the period May 2002 and May 2003. While the program does seem to have had positive effects and the existing work highlights the role of the Plan in terms of providing a safety net, this article complements the literature by focusing on the effect of the Plan on influencing the probability of finding a job in the wider labor market. While Argentina has a variety of passive and active labor market interventions to protect unemployed workers, at the moment, the two main programs are a passive unemployment insurance (UI) program and Plan Jefes, an unemployment assistance (UA) program. The UI system was introduced in 1991 and provides monthly income support to unemployed workers previously engaged in the formal sector.