Work Incentives and Welfare Provision

This title was first published in 2000:  Examining in detail current unemployment debates within Western welfare states, this book seeks to verify or refute the view that non-work is increasingly chosen by work shy individuals - the 'pathological' theory of unemployment. Drawing from a range of disciplinary perspectives - from social philosophy and the history of philosophy, to occupational psychology and feminist economics - this interdisciplinary analysis reveals that the 'pathological' theory of unemployment, with its reliance on a deficient depiction of human nature and its disregard of non-pecuniary work incentives and empirical evidence on benefit fraud, cannot be upheld.