AbstractsSociology

This project is analyzing the question of ‘how can Estonia improve its unemployment benefit program in comparison with Denmark’. The aim is to find out if Estonia, a young member of European Union, has to apply changes to the unemployment benefit system as it is very limited in comparison with Danish financial support for the unemployed. Denmark was chosen as the country with a successful social security and a substantial experience of building a welfare state. As the unemployment benefits in Denmark are generous, it was appealing to look into the motivation among the unemployed due to the reason that there started to appear cases of free-riding the Danish system. In order to analyze motivation, two theories are used: Maslow’s hierarchy of needs and Self-determent theory. They are able to help in understanding how motivation influences the search process of the unemployed and why some individuals are more determined to find a job sooner than others. The project tries to combine economical perspective with sociological. Keynesian school is used as a main viewpoint of the author in order to understand why economists do not use this school as a main tool to solve economic issues. Analyses are based on the Keynes’ theory in order to approach the unemployment complications from another perspective rather than using neoclassical theory.