This research study describes the results of a social welfare experiment in the municipality of Nijmegen. The current, relatively strict, social welfare benefits policy of the Participation Act was compared with two alternative, more unconditional, forms of welfare. With this alternative approach, participants experienced more autonomy, gained confidence, and were able to earn more additional income than usual. This PhD thesis describes the effects of this approach on trust, health, and participation (a.o. informal care and volunteering). A key finding is that positive effects were mostly observed for subgroups among participants in the alternative model, especially for more vulnerable individuals. These include, for example, people with a migration background (more positive effect on perceived health and participation) or a relatively low education level (more positive effect on well-being). It seems therefore that the mainstream system does not work very well for vulnerable groups. Since these vulnerable groups were underrepresented in the experiment, stronger effects are to be expected if the experimental approaches were rolled out across the entire social welfare benefits population. Another important finding is that the more unconditional and trust-based approaches led to an increase in trust in local politics. In one case, this was partly due to the fact that participants felt they received better treatment than in the mainstream system.