While unemployment payments can help protect recipients against health deterioration during forced unemployment, welfare benefits don't, finds an international study by a Cornell University epidemiologist.

Examining data from the United States, Britain and Germany, she says, "In all three countries, unemployed persons who received welfare or similar benefits reported negative health effects since losing their jobs, even when factors such as previous health, education and household income were controlled for in the analysis."

The researcher, Eunice Rodriguez, a Cornell associate professor in the university's Department of Policy Analysis and Management and its Sloan Program in Health Services Administration, adds: "The jobless who received unemployment insurance payments or similar entitlement benefits, on the other hand, did not show this negative health effect. Rather, their perceptions of their health were not different from those of full-time working people."

The unemployed who received welfare-type benefits might not only bear a heavier weight of disadvantage than those who don't need them, says Rodriguez, but also might experience additional stress from the stigma of receiving social welfare services.

She analyzed data on almost 31,500 people in the three countries, available in the "Household Panel Comparability Project" database. Rodriguez's findings are published in the September issue of the American Journal of Public Health .

Safety nets can play an important role in helping people during critical periods of their lives and in preventing an accumulation of disadvantage that could have adverse health effects, Rodriguez says. This study, however, provides powerful evidence that such need-based benefits as welfare are not effective in maintaining the health status of the unemployed, while such entitlement benefits as unemployment insurance payments are. She points out that previous studies have shown that adverse health often follows unemployment and that mortality rates have been shown to increase with rising unemployment rates in the United States and Britain. "Since we find that entitlement benefits can be effective in maintaining the health status of the unemployed but needs-based benefits aren't, researchers and policymakers should monitor the possible health effects of changes being considered in public assistance programs," Rodriguez concludes.

"In order to have a protective effect on health, formal social support systems should not only provide sufficient economic provisions but should do so while alleviating the additional sociological and psychological impacts of unemployment and the stigma associated with receiving means-tested benefits."

The study was supported, in part, by the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation and the European Commission.