POLICY VARIATION,LABOR SUPPLY ELASTICITIES,AND A STRUCTURAL MODEL OF RETIREMENT

This paper exploits a combination of policy variation from multiple pension reforms in Austria and administrative data from the Austrian Social Security Database. Using the policy changes for identification, we estimate social security wealth and accrual elasticities in individuals' retirement decisions. Next, we use these elasticities to estimate a dynamic programming model of retirement decisions. Finally, we use the estimated model to examine the labor supply and welfare consequences of potential social security reforms. (JEL J26, H55)     

Permanent or Uninterrupted Revolution: Lenin,Trotsky, and their Successors on the Transition to Socialism

In Russia, post-communist reforms to state social benefit policies have shown contradictory views of gender. On the one hand, reform showed a desire to promote gender equality between individuals, a view in which men and women alike were considered autonomous citizens. On the other hand, there was an impulse to consider women as a needy group dependent on special help from the state. This paper examines three related areas of policy: pronatalist policy, child welfare benefits, and old age pensions, in order to reveal unresolved issues in Russian social policies towards women and children.     

Gender Matters: Rethinking the Childcare Model in Hong Kong

This study aims to reveal the gendered practices in childcare under the family care model and the effects of these practices on carers in Hong Kong. Familial ideology remains a dominant welfare principle in childcare policy in Hong Kong, which assumes that family care is the best form of care provision. However, this policy assumption fails to respond to the needs in childcare arising from the social changes and development. The suggested possible solution for this issue is the shifting of the family care model to the social care model, in which childcare responsibilities are shared between the family and the state.     

Welfare reform,dependency reduction,and labor market entry

Dependency reduction requires altering the welfare incentive structure: reducing the rewards for nonwork and increasing the rewards for work. Requiring welfare recipients to work in exchange for welfare benefits reduces the attractiveness of welfare and is crucial to dependency reduction. However, most current workfare programs impose minimal requirements on welfare recipients and are ineffectual. This paper proposes methods for improving workfare as well as other reforms.     

Bottom-up childcare in a top-down welfare state: explaining cooperative organization among Swedish parents

Almost all children in Sweden spend at least some part of their early childhood in organized childcare, primarily in the form of preschools. About 10% of all preschools in Sweden are parent cooperatives, which make the childcare area an anomaly in the Swedish welfare state; no other service area has such a significant proportion of cooperative service providers. The parent cooperatives are initiated by the parents themselves, they are social enterprises created from the bottom-up. Why do parents decide to start a parent cooperative preschool in a welfare state where childcare is considered a social right and a responsibility for the state? This article will explore several different motives for starting parent cooperatives in Sweden, with special attention to the role of the public sector and political decisions. The findings are based on an extensive empiric study performed between the years 2003 and 2007.     

Transition within transition: How young people learn to leave behind institutional care whilst their carers are stuck in neutral

This paper discusses findings from a qualitative longitudinal study which explored the process of leaving long-stay institutional state care in Romania during 2002-4, a period at the heart of accelerated EU-enforced childcare reform. 28 young people were interviewed before leaving care and 17 were tracked up to 8 months after discharge. 18 practitioners were also interviewed.The findings confirmed Pinkerton's (2006) emphasis on the impact of global and national factors on the individual experience of leaving care. This study took place in a country undergoing widespread change. The care leavers' irreversible transition took place within the simultaneous professional transition of their carers and that of the community with which they needed to integrate. This insight is widely relevant in the current context of public funding cuts and changes in welfare policy in many countries, including the Central and Eastern European (CEE) countries.Bridges (2009) was used to understand the experiences of care leavers and their carers. Bridges stresses the role of the leader in creating protective conditions for traversing three unavoidable transition stages: 1. ending old identity/behaviour; 2. a neutral zone of deconstruction and transformation; and 3. a new beginning. Preparation for leaving care can be viewed as learning to end care, followed by the neutral zone which begins at discharge. When lacking family support, formal carers are the young people's main transition guides. However, their professional transition also needs management. Because of top-down, accelerated childcare reforms, the Romanian carers' transitions appeared stuck in the neutral zone, affecting preparation for leaving care. Yet, the availability of learning opportunities after discharge changed the nature of the neutral zone for most of the sample who did better than expected at follow-up. This, supported by Bridges' proposal that learning during transition influences future coping, offers a foundation for new theory.     

Welfare Reform on American Indian Reservations

Abstract

In this article we document trends in welfare caseloads and some initial experiences of service providers and welfare recipients on reservations within Arizona under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). We document the issues and concerns of state and tribal service providers as they implement the legislation on reservations that are often geographically isolated and which lack infrastructure, jobs, childcare and transportation. We also record experiences of women with children on reservations with the 1996 federal welfare legislation. These families experience similar barriers when trying to move from welfare to work as do their counterparts across the country; however, these barriers are magnified on reservations. The welfare recipients' barriers include: a shortage of employment opportunities on reservations; a lack of transportation and childcare facilities; low levels of education and job experience; and, individual and family problems. Poor families in Indian communities face additional barriers to employment because of their geographic isolation, lack of access to basic necessities (like telephones), as well as stereotypes and discrimination by employers due to ethnicity or personal/family histories.     

Unintended Consequences: The Impact of Welfare Reform in the United States on NGOs

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 dramatically transformed the structure and goals of the public welfare system in the United States. The vast body of research and evaluation generated by the 1996 welfare reforms largely overlooked nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) despite their substantial historical and contemporary involvement in the delivery of social services to low-income populations. Therefore, this paper presents a unique assessment of PRWORA's implications based on the perspective of 90 social service NGOs operating in the Detroit metropolitan area. Examination of their services, staffing, budgets, and clients reveals many changes experienced by NGOs between 1996 and 2000 related to the welfare reforms. Overall, the findings suggest an increased role for social service NGOs in the public welfare system as well as concerns regarding their capacity to adequately fulfill this growing responsibility in the future.     

The impacts of welfare reform on federal assistance to persistently poor children

During the late twentieth century, the US social safety net was transformed to incentivize work by providing generous wage subsidies for low-income workers and reducing federal assistance to able-bodied unemployed adults. Following the transformation and during the economic boom of the 1990s, welfare rolls and annual poverty rates plummeted, especially for children. Despite the economic boom, there were still many persistently poor children living with parents who did not work, and little is known about how the reforms impacted these children's finances. In this paper we compare rates of persistent child poverty before and after the welfare reforms and examine how federal assistance received by persistently poor children changed as a result of the reforms. We find that federal assistance to persistently poor children declined following the reforms, but with divergent results depending on parental employment. While persistently poor children with employed parents benefited from increased income via the Earned Income Tax Credit, those with chronically unemployed parents did not and also experienced substantial reductions in cash welfare and food stamps. These findings demonstrate how persistently poor children fared financially in the years following the reforms and suggest possible implications for the current period of high unemployment.     

The relative autonomy of the state and the origins of British welfare policy

This paper assesses the relative influence of organizational vs. class power in affecting the timing and the shape of the British welfare reforms of 1908–1911. Rather than viewing these reforms as either the outcome of the direct pressure of business or as an internal response from a newly bureaucratized state to solve social problems, this analysis finds more evidence for a perspective that emphasizes the more indirect, more mediated class biases inherent in the British state as setting the context within which action on welfare reform occurred. Specifically, I argue that state managers used their newly developed organizational capacity to shape the Liberal reforms according to their own purposes but these purposes were limited by several class-based factors. The historical conclusions point to a synthesis of the relative autonomy approaches to the capitalist state advanced in the neo-Marxist work of Poulantzas, Offe, and Block.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the 1988 meetings of the Eastern Sociological Society in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.     

Assessment of a hybrid reform path: Social and labour policies in Uruguay, 1985–2005

Since Uruguay's return to democracy in 1985, a shift in economic and social policy has radically changed the country. The outcomes have been shaped by adjustment to international circumstances “by default”, stop‐go market reforms and the inconsistent pace and content of reforms. Unlike other countries in the region, Uruguay has not followed a resolutely neo‐liberal course, but rather a hybrid one. The end result has been a liberal labour regime coupled with a three‐dimensional social policy balancing the market, the old corporatist welfare State and the new welfare state targeting specific beneficiaries.     

Lone Mother‐led Families: Exemplifying the Structuring of Social Inequality

Almost 25% of Canadian families are headed by a lone parent (Jensen 2003) and over 90% of poor lone parents are women (National Council of Welfare 2002). In Canada lone mother‐led families have been significantly impacted by two major and interrelated changes in Canada; welfare reforms that resulted in the elimination of a separate family benefit and includes the imposition of a work requirement combined with dramatic changes to the labor market. The reduction of welfare benefits and the increase in precarious or non‐standard work have created a high level of social jeopardy for lone mothers and their children. This paper explores the different realms of life where lone‐mothers are particularly disadvantaged and argues that governments need to clearly identify areas of policy intersection before the inequalities that lone mother‐led families face can be ameliorated.     

Comparing Social Work Students’ Perceptions of Risk Using Online Discussion Fora: Lessons Learned from a European Pilot Project

Comparisons of international child welfare systems have identified two basic orientations to practice; a ‘child protection’ orientation and a ‘child welfare’ orientation, which are founded upon fundamentally different values and assumptions regarding the family, the origins of childcare problems, and the proper role of the state in relation to the family. This paper describes a project which sought to compare how undergraduate social work students from three European Universities perceive risk in referrals about the welfare of children and to explore the impact of different cultural, ideological and educational contexts on the way in which risk is constructed by students. Students from Northern Ireland, Germany and Poland examined three vignettes via 10 online discussion fora each of which provided a narrative summary of their discussion. The paper presents some findings from the analysis of the qualitative data emerging from the student discussions and draws out the lessons learned in terms of how the project was designed and implemented using online discussion fora.     

Children's Welfare in the Courtroom: Preparation and Protection of the Child Witness

SUMMARY. This paper summarises recent attempts to safeguard children's welfare in the courtroom. Drawing on international research and practice developments, the paper compares programmes that prepare children for their role as witnesses with reforms designed to protect children once they testify. Benefits and disadvantages associated with both approaches are highlighted, and the paper concludes that all professionals have a responsibility to promote children's welfare in the courtroom.     

Rise and demise of orphanages in Ukraine

This analysis compares historic and current trends in Ukrainian orphanages with changes that led to the general demise of the American institutionalized child welfare system. Although significant cultural and historical backgrounds are taken into account, there are parallels drawn between similar conditions which led to the demise of orphanages in the USA and the current deinstitutionalization movements in the Ukraine. A critical comparison of the current dilemmas that face each nation in providing adequate child welfare is given. Specifically, the effects of overcrowding, new policy adjustments, critical attitudes against institutionalized childcare, the professionalization of social work, and re-channeling of financial resources are addressed.     

Schools as “Really Dangerous Places” for Indigenous Children and Youth: Schools,Child Welfare,and Contemporary Challenges to Reconciliation

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Canada (TRC) final report called attention to the damage induced by government policies and practices and outlined a pathway toward reconciliation in which education and child welfare system reforms play a central role. Drawing from 61 interviews with teachers and parents of Indigenous children in Alberta, this paper addresses the question: what do intersections between schooling and child welfare systems contribute to prospects for meaningful reconciliation between Indigenous and non‐Indigenous people in Canada? Findings suggest that, despite formal commitments to acknowledge and address colonial legacies of residential schooling, obligations to fulfill state child welfare and educational objectives continue to situate schools, for many Indigenous families, as “dangerous places.”     

Enhancing parental power and flexibility in the transition from welfare to work

Recent welfare reforms in the United States shifted the emphasis from income maintenance to preparation for employment. Many families receiving welfare benefits have members with disabilities, which can complicate the process of transition into the workforce. Rehabilitation professionals have a unique set of skills, expertise and experiences which could enhance work transition outcomes for welfare recipients. This purpose of this article is to (a) familiarize rehabilitation professionals with welfare reform changes in the United States, (b) summarize the experiences of families affected by those changes who participated in a recent study, and (c) present a service delivery model to enhance parental power and flexibility based on rehabilitation principles.     

Trading Well-Being for Economic Efficiency

Summary

In 1992, the European Union (EU) adopted the Recommendation on Childcare and became involved in childcare policy. For the first time, care services and domestic care were acknowledged as the common responsibility of all the European and national political units. The article shows the interaction between childcare policy at the European level and in three welfare states with strong male breadwinner policy logics: Germany, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom (UK). At the European and national levels, arguments prioritizing economic efficiency and equal opportunities gained ground at the expense     

Labor Force Participation,Regional Location,and Economic Well-Being of Single Mothers in Russia

This paper tests the contribution of increased labor market participation to a substantial narrowing of the gap in material welfare between two parent and single mother households in Russia in the period 1996–2003. Decomposition analysis employing the technique of Juhn et al. (Accounting for a slowdown in black–white wage convergence, Kosters (ed), 1991) and data from the Russian Longitudinal Monitoring Survey shows that increased labor market participation explains about one-third of the narrowing of the welfare gap. Changes in the regional distribution of single mother households, specifically increasing concentration in Moscow and St Petersburg, have proved critical because of the higher wages available in these cities. Thus quality of employment has been as important as increased participation in the labor market.     

The moral economy of austerity: analysing UK welfare reform

This paper notes the contemporary emergence of ‘morality’ in both sociological argument and political rhetoric, and analyses its significance in relation to ongoing UK welfare reforms. It revisits the idea of ‘moral economy’ and identifies two strands in its contemporary application; that all economies depend on an internal moral schema, and that some external moral evaluation is desirable. UK welfare reform is analysed as an example of the former, with reference to three distinct orientations advanced in the work of Freeden ( 1996 ), Laclau ( 2014 ), and Lockwood ( 1996 ). In this light, the paper then considers challenges to the reform agenda, drawn from third sector and other public sources. It outlines the forms of argument present in these challenges, based respectively on rationality, legality, and morality, which together provide a basis for evaluation of the welfare reforms and for an alternative ‘moral economy’.