The Comparative Unemployment Benefit Conditions & Sanctions Dataset

Unemployed workers wishing to receive unemployment benefits have to be available for suitable jobs and often also be actively seeking such jobs. If they fail to comply with these conditions, they may lose parts or all of their benefits. Countries differ with respect to how they define what a suitable job is, how intensely unemployment benefit claimants have to look for new work, and how severely noncompliance is punished. In recent decades, there has also been a significant increase in the strictness of unemployment benefit conditions and sanctions. The Comparative Unemployment Benefit Conditions & Sanctions Dataset provides information on the strictness of job-availability and job-search requirements as well as benefit sanction rules in 21 advanced democracies in Europe, North America, and Australiasia and their changes between 1980 and 2012. The creation of this dataset was made possible by a generous grant from the Crafoord Foundation (Crafoordska stiftelsen) as well as lots of help, advice, and support from numerous contributors, country experts, and interested scholars. The work on this dataset was conducted at the Department of Political Science at Lund University.