‘Scarier than another storm’: values at risk in the mapping and insuring of US floodplains

How do people respond to the ways in which insurance mediates environmental risks? Socio‐cultural risk research has characterized and analyzed the experiential dimension of risk, but has yet to focus on insurance, which is a key institution shaping how people understand and relate to risk. Insurance not only assesses and communicates risk; it also economizes it, making the problem on the ground not just one of risk, but also of value. This article addresses these issues with an investigation of the social life of the flood insurance rate map, the central technology of the U.S. National Flood Insurance Program (NFIP), as it grafts a new landscape of ‘value at risk’ onto the physical and social world of New York City in the aftermath of Hurricane Sandy. Like other risk technologies, ubiquitous in modern societies as decision‐making and planning tools, the map disseminates information about value and risk in order to tame uncertainty and enable prudent action oriented toward the future. However, drawing together interview, ethnographic, and documentary data, I find that for its users on the ground, the map does not simply measure ‘value at risk’ in ways that produce clear strategies for protecting property values from flooding. Instead, it puts values‐beyond simply the financial worth of places‐at risk, as well as implicates past, present, and future risks beyond simply flooding. By informing and enlarging the stakes of what needs protecting, and from what, I argue that plural and interacting ‘values at risk’ shape how people live with and respond to environmental risks that are mediated by insurance technologies.     

Social health protection in Cambodia: Challenges of policy design and implementation

The Government of Cambodia is implementing ambitious reform initiatives to improve the country's social health protection system. In January 2018, it was announced that the Health Equity Fund (HEF), which is fully subsidized by a joint government‐donor initiative for the reimbursement of user fees for the poor at public health facilities, is to be expanded to some segments of informal workers belonging to associations, as well as to commune and village chiefs. Since 2017, the National Social Security Fund (NSSF) has provided social health insurance for formal economy workers in enterprises with eight employees or more. In January 2018, it was expanded to civil servants and all employees regardless of the size of the enterprise. However, this article highlights that the new ambitious reforms are not accompanied by careful planning as regards funding, service delivery, human resources and institutional design. This article therefore aims to examine key policy issues and challenges for Cambodia's ambitious reform of its social health protection system in terms of resource generation, population coverage, strategic purchasing and governance.     

参加医疗保险对农村居民健康的影响——基于CHARLS 2015数据的实证分析

基于CHARLS 2015数据,采用倾向得分匹配法实证分析参加医疗保险对农村居民健康的影响。研究发现:参加医疗保险对农村居民的日常活动能力和自评健康影响不显著,参加医疗保险对农村居民认知能力具有显著的正向影响。据此提出,应进一步提升社会医疗保险保障水平、扩大社会医疗保险保障范围、促进商业医疗保险有序发展、推进"三医"高效协同联动等,以充分发挥医疗保险的健康保障功能,从而进一步提升参加医疗保险对农村居民健康的正向影响。     

Moving On From Supportive Housing (MOSH): Development and evaluation of a transitional skill-building curriculum for providers helping residents exit homeless services

This article describes the development and evaluation of MOSH (Moving On From Supportive Housing), a transitional skill-building curriculum for providers helping residents exit homeless services to mainstream housing without embedded supports. In this evaluation, we assess the feasibility, acceptability, fit, and potential efficacy of the MOSH curriculum to improve proximal provider-level outcomes, including self-efficacy to provide MOSH-related independent living skills and supports. Homeless-services providers (N = 49) from a range of programs and settings participated in the training. Findings from focus groups and pre- and posttest surveys indicate high levels of overall satisfaction with the training. The majority of trainees perceived the training to be useful to their work and potentially useful for service recipients, felt the training would fit well within their existing day-to-day work, and said they were very likely to use MOSH skills in such work. Statistically significant improvements in self-efficacy regarding all skills but one were also found. MOSH holds promise as an intervention that can enhance provider practice and promotion of independent living skills in homeless services. Although these initial findings on MOSH are encouraging, further research will be needed to evaluate provider knowledge gains and effective use of these skills in practice.     

Working to get fired? Unemployment benefits and employment duration

In many countries, jobseekers are entitled to unemployment benefits (UBs) only if they have previously worked a minimum period of time. This institutional feature creates a sharp change in the disutility from unemployment at UB eligibility and may distort the duration of jobs. In this paper, we evaluate this eligibility effect using a regression discontinuity approach. Our evidence is based on longitudinal social security data from Portugal, where jobseekers are required to work a relatively long period to collect UBs. We find that monthly transitions from employment to unemployment increase by 10% as soon as the eligibility condition is met. This result is driven entirely by transitions to subsidised unemployment, which increase by 20%, as non-subsidised unemployment is not affected. The effects are even larger for the unemployed with high UB replacement ratios or those who meet the eligibility condition from multiple short employment spells. These transitions deserve greater attention from UB agencies and public employment services.     

Health insurance literacy: A mixed methods study of college students

Objective: This study examines the health insurance literacy, or the ability to use health insurance effectively, of college students. Participants: A total of 455 students from a large, public university completed an online questionnaire in November 2016. Methods: A questionnaire examined students’ knowledge of commonly encountered health insurance terms and ability to apply that knowledge to determine cost-sharing in a clinical setting. Results: The majority of students were able to correctly identify the most commonly encountered terms, but could not identify terms related to plan types and options. Eighty-eight percent of students could not determine their cost-sharing for two presented scenarios. Approximately half of the students indicated they had been confused about their health insurance plan, with one-quarter of students stopping or delaying medical care due to confusion. Conclusions: Outreach and education for students should target specific deficits in knowledge such as those identified in this study.     

Understanding Cumulative Risk Perception from Judgments and Choices: An Application to Flood Risks

Catastrophic events, such as floods, earthquakes, hurricanes, and tsunamis, are rare, yet the cumulative risk of each event occurring at least once over an extended time period can be substantial. In this work, we assess the perception of cumulative flood risks, how those perceptions affect the choice of insurance, and whether perceptions and choices are influenced by cumulative risk information. We find that participants' cumulative risk judgments are well represented by a bimodal distribution, with a group that severely underestimates the risk and a group that moderately overestimates it. Individuals who underestimate cumulative risks make more risk‐seeking choices compared to those who overestimate cumulative risks. Providing explicit cumulative risk information for relevant time periods, as opposed to annual probabilities, is an inexpensive and effective way to improve both the perception of cumulative risk and the choices people make to protect against that risk.     

科技保险的困境—一个制度供求非均衡分析

现阶段，我国步入了创新驱动引领升级的关键时期，科技创新受到了整个社会的空前重视。科技保险作为分散和转移科技风险的重要手段，可以为科技创新提供有力的风险保障。目前，我国科技保险工作已经进入全面推广阶段，虽然取得了一定的成效，但整体运行并不理想，科技企业参保率低，科技保险缺失严重。究其原因，主要在于制度供给不能适应科技企业对科技保险的需求，科技保险制度供求非均衡，在现行的科技保险制度下积聚着大量的潜在利润，而这些潜在利润既是科技保险制度非均衡的原因，又是科技保险制度创新的动力。     

Reproducing authoritarian neoliberalism in Turkey: urban governance and state restructuring in the shadow of executive centralization

ABSTRACT

The implosion of popular struggles against the erosion of economic and democratic rights in the Middle East has thrown into sharp relief the co-constitutive character of neoliberal reforms and authoritarian state practices. This article zooms in on this relationship, and traces the consolidation of a core component of authoritarian statisms by examining how the ruling AKP government in Turkey has facilitated executive centralization. This process refers to a form of state restructuring whereby key decision-making powers are increasingly concentrated in the hands of the central government while democratic avenues to contest government policies are curtailed through legal and administrative reforms, and the marginalization of dissident social forces. I unpack the mechanisms of executive centralization in Turkey by exploring the transformation of urban governance under AKP rule, which has promoted a spectacular degree of state-led commodification of land and housing while simultaneously recentralizing key decision-making powers. The investigation demonstrates that executive centralization in urban governance has paved the way for the swift implementation of contested urban transformation projects marked by a non-participatory approach to urban ‘renewal’, the reconfiguration of the state’s redistributive function vis-à-vis low-income households, and a tendency to exacerbate existing patterns of inequalities in the housing market.     

社会保险制度中社会风险的产生、内涵及应对*

社会风险是社会保险制度存在的前提，没有社会风险，就不会有社会保险。从风险、风险社会及社会风险这些相关概念出发，全面阐述社会保险制度中社会风险的产生及其发展路径，发现社会保险制度上所应对的社会风险是一种中度危险的风险事故，有着自身特定的制度内涵。在此基础上，从作为技术途径的保险原则与社会保险权之权利规则的两个视角分析了社会保险制度对社会风险的应对原理、机制与优势。