Working Life, Well-Being and Welfare Reform: Motivation and Institutions Revisited

SummaryThis article revisits the relation between economic institutions and motives to work. It proposes moving away from a dominant polemical focus on the impact of a single source of security (income support), towards a multi-factorial analysis based on control over working life as a source of well-being and motivation to work. Drawing on surveys of two urban constituencies in São Paulo, Brazil, it is found that income security supports an Aristotelian principle of work motivation as individual development. However labour market institutions and opportunity levels affect this link. Implications include a need to consider the distribution of economic control as a key aspect of both human and economic development.