Abstract
In this paper, we apply propensity score matching in order to evaluate whether sheltered employment centres improve integration of people with disabilities into ordinary firms or not. We define as a control group those disabled workers never enrolled in these centres before the last employment spell, and we consider three ‘treatment’ groups: those occasionally involved in these centres; those working in these centres in their first employment spell, and those hired by these centres in any employment spell after the first one. Our results confirm that sheltered employment centres decrease the likelihood of being hired by ordinary firms in the last employment spell. This result is the same by regions (where regulation affecting centres may be different) but with a different size. The data comes from an administrative and retrospective dataset provided by the Spanish Social Security.
The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments from Miguel Ángel Malo. The comments received from two anonymous referees have also improved the initial version of this article.
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Notes
- 1.
Vocational Rehabilitation and Employment (Disabled Persons), Recommendation (No. 168), 1983.
- 2.
This type of specific firm for disabled workers had already existed in Spain since 1968. The 1982 law was enacted to unify the extensive existing regulations regarding disabilities.
- 3.
In fact, there are no labour contracts in occupational centres. In addition, the production of goods and services in occupational centres are not directed to goods or services markets.
- 4.
With the exception of specific job positions that were considered crucial for the normal economic and productive activity of the SEC.
- 5.
Therefore, from 2001 onward, the data on employment spells in SECs are probably down-biased because we cannot identify new SECs.
- 6.
Results for the propensity scores are not included due to space restrictions. Nonetheless, they are available upon request.
- 7.
The descriptive statistics are shown in Table 5.6.
- 8.
In all cases, the common support condition is fulfilled, which means that for each individual in the treatment group, there is an individual in the control group with the same propensity score. In Fig. 5.4 (see Appendix), we present the histogram for the treatment and control groups. The reduction in the bias is shown in Table 5.8. After matching, we can observe that the differences in the characteristics between the treatment groups and the control groups are not significant.
- 9.
The observed and estimated probabilities of being in an ordinary firm for the last employment spell are shown in Table 5.9 in Appendix.
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Appendix
Appendix
Propensity score histogram by treatment status
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Cueto, B., Rodríguez, V. (2014). Sheltered Employment Centres and Labour Market Integration of People with Disabilities: A Quasi-Experimental Evaluation Using Spanish Data. In: Malo, M., Sciulli, D. (eds) Disadvantaged Workers. AIEL Series in Labour Economics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-04376-0_5
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