Tempering the mobility-dampening effects of safety net policies with lump-sum unemployment payments

During the first half of the twentieth century, when public social assistance programs were threadbare, there was a massive migration of African Americans, many of whom were low-skilled, to cities in the northern and western United States, where demand for low-skilled labor was relatively high. There is no reason to believe that the culture of the low-skilled native-born population is an insuperable obstacle to geographical mobility… We ought to temper the mobility-dampening effects of safety net policies by embracing lump-sum unemployment payments, relocation vouchers, and other mobility-enhancing policies.

Editor’s Note: Help for relocation are an usual practice for employers, in case of skilled workers, and job centres around the world, in case of low-skills, low-wages unemployed workers, notwithstanding the existence of a safety net.

Chosen excerpts by Job Market Monitor. Read the whole story at 

via The Geographical Mobility of the Less-Skilled | National Review Online.