“The potential of education 
is underused”

Currently some 265,000 people are receiving welfare benefits in Switzerland. One third of them only require financial assistance temporarily, for up to a year at most, and another third get back on their feet again within three years. But 63 per cent of people who receive long-term welfare benefits are known to have impaired health, according to a study carried out in 2014 by the Social Policy City Initiative. These individuals are often too ill to work, yet they generally have no entitlement to an invalidity pension. The figures demonstrate very clearly that people who receive welfare benefits for a long time are under tremendous psychological strain, and this stress can cause further illnesses. A vicious circle develops in which a person needs welfare benefits because they are ill. And a person becomes ill because they are poor.

Not necessarily. I think this problem has always existed. The Federal Statistical Office has been keeping detailed statistics on benefits since 2005. So we’ve had very good, accurate figures for nearly 20 years. They show that the number of people receiving benefits increased up to 2017 but has been decreasing again since then. We think this development came about because the invalidity and unemployment insurance systems took a stricter approach during the second decade of this century. This meant that many people who had previously obtained benefits from these insurance systems, which come into play first, became dependent on welfare benefits.

We had feared that the figures would rise during the COVID-19 pandemic, but in fact they declined, and this trend has continued after the crisis. One of the factors at play here is the economic situation and the current shortage of workers. It’s easier to find a job nowadays than it was ten years ago. Another factor is the expansion of the social insurance systems during the pandemic, with developments such as the expansion of short-time working and the extension of the daily benefits paid by the unemployment insurance system.There was a change in society’s attitude during the COVID-19 crisis. Before then the generally held view was that anyone who was basically “normal” would manage on their own, and that we needed to apply maximum pressure on the others to get those who were thought to be lazy into work. The legislation was tightened in many places, and particularly the legislation applying to foreigners. This view changed during the pandemic. We realised that anyone can be affected.

Switzerland is a prosperous country and can afford a relatively comprehensive social welfare system. That’s why there is no visible precariousness here. In the USA the welfare network is far less comprehensive and as a result the country has an enormous homeless problem. And compared with Switzerland, there are seven times more people in prison in the USA. For these reasons, too, welfare benefits are an efficient instrument in economic terms. Subsistence support is a cost-effective tool.

Around half of all welfare benefit recipients have not completed vocational training, which makes it very difficult for them to find work in the short and medium term. In the past, many of these people were simply written off or forced back somehow into the labour market. In 2018 we worked with the Swiss Federation for Adult Learning to launch a training campaign, and we are now expanding this project to give all welfare benefit recipients the chance to receive basic or further training. The potential of education has been underused in the past. Yet it has been shown that education can promote health and help people to cope independently with everyday life. 

I would like society to stop ostracising people who are receiving welfare benefits. These benefits should be seen as something to which people are entitled when they’re not doing well. As a society we must accept that some people need support for a certain length of time – and during this time we must provide them with assistance so that their situation can stabilise and they can be reintegrated into the labour market and in social terms.