Aiming to keep poor Mexican families at the breadline (but no higher): The effects of minimum wage,tax, and social policy changes between 1994 and 2012

Welfare policy in Mexico has been transformed in recent decades. During the years of the import‐substitution industrialization economic strategy and the hegemonic party political regime, social policy was based on social insurance programs of limited coverage to urban formal sector workers and their families. In the mid‐1990s, an unprecedented expansion of social protection through social assistance programs was triggered, along with social insurance reform. This article assesses the effects at the household level of social policy changes, in combination with changes in taxes and the minimum wage, which also impact the welfare of the population. The research applies “model families” to establish effects of social, tax, and minimum wage policy changes across population groups, and their combined potential to combat poverty. Findings show that although taxation and social policy changes increased redistribution towards poor families, their capacity to lift and keep them above poverty thresholds was limited by the drop in the real value of the minimum wage and by strict targeting mechanisms, which exclude families that do not meet eligibility criteria but still fall below poverty lines. Social policy expansion merely subsidized the drop in real minimum wage, and poor families at best remained at similar income levels. Hence, the logic of the design of welfare policy changes can be characterized as aiming to keep poor families on the breadline, but no higher.     

Social Welfare in Vietnam: A Curse or Blessing for Poor Children?

Despite a rapid increase in economic growth accompanied by the rise of living standards over the last two decades in Vietnam, there is still a considerable proportion of the population that lives in poor and vulnerable conditions. Children in particular are disproportionately affected by poverty. The country employs a broad range of social protection programs that tend to be regressive in effect rather than supportive of the poor. The present paper evaluates the social welfare scheme in Vietnam in terms of child poverty. We use the Vietnam Household Living Standards Survey (VHLSS) 2006 and identify and quantify child poverty in monetary as well as multidimensional terms. We consider the link between social welfare receipt and poverty and evaluate coverage, exclusion, and inclusion errors. Furthermore, we use benefit incidence analysis to evaluate the impact of social welfare on monetary child poverty. Findings suggest that coverage of the social welfare scheme is limited and that the scheme suffers from considerable exclusion and inclusion errors. Furthermore, we find that social welfare only slightly reduces the incidence and depth of monetary poverty.     

Child welfare services in the United States and Sweden: different assumptions, laws and outcomes

The child welfare systems in Sweden and the United States were dramatically reformed beginning in the early 1980s. After 10 years, the different results of these reforms are quite striking. These child welfare systems have different methods for preserving families in crisis; different assumptions about the roles of birth parents, foster parents, and adoptive parents; and different goals for children who will not go home. Each of these areas is explored and recommendations made for re-examining child welfare services in both countries.     

The Impact of a Restructured Canadian Welfare State on Atlantic Canada

The Canadian welfare state, like welfare states elsewhere, has undergone significant reform and restructuring. This paper examines what has occurred and the impact it has had on Canada's poorest and most underdeveloped region, the Atlantic provinces of Nova Scotia, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland. Although the central and western regions have also experienced a reduction in federal expenditures, no other region has been more negatively affected by federal fiscal and social policy reform and downsizing. Health care and education have experienced the worst cuts. The significant loss of federal government transfers to this region has ruptured a historic social contract. This in turn has triggered a radical restructuring and downsizing of provincial and municipal public administrations, commensurate with job losses in important sectors of the labour market, such as universities, hospitals and schools. In the last five years the rate of unemployment and poverty has risen sharply, personal and household incomes have declined, and entire communities are on the brink of extinction owing to out-migration. The irony, however, is that for Atlantic Canadians the retrenchment of the federal state has led to greater public willingness to consider social democratic political parties and policy alternatives that are not only different from prior fare, but which do not represent a flight to a rather unsatisfactory past.     

Work, welfare and the attack on the welfare state: the mixing of politics and policy

This article considers the current ideological and political attack against the floor of benefits for poor families in the United States. It examines a number of punitive approaches to the treatment of families on welfare that were developed in the United States in the late 1980s and the 1990s and contends that such policies will not effectively deter the dysfunctional behavior of some of the poor. Rather these policy developments reflect an attack on current national policies of developing an income maintenance floor that seeks to economically sustain poor families, albeit often inadequately. The article contends that current welfare proposals by conservatives and social liberals are not satisfactory for dealing with the problems of the welfare poor and offers suggestions for dealing with these deficits. It also notes that criticisms of welfare state protection for the poor raised in the United States are much more categorical than those raised in Sweden.     

Are Poor Neighborhoods Resource Deprived? A Case Study of Childcare Centers in New York*

Objective. Many social scientists believe poor mothers are better off in middle‐class than in poor neighborhoods, partly because the latter are deprived of important institutional resources. We test whether poor neighborhoods are more likely to lack one critical institutional resource, the childcare center. Methods. We use geocoded data on all licensed centers in the City of New York, address matched to Census tracts. We estimate logit models of presence of center in tract, testing for the linear and nonlinear effects of tract poverty level after controlling for residential instability, joblessness, ethnic makeup, and other demographic factors. We complement the analysis with documentary, interview, and ethnographic data on centers in one poor and one nonpoor neighborhood in the city. Results. We find (1) that the probability of presence of a childcare center does not decrease as poverty level increases; (2) the relationship depends strongly on funding source, with privately funded centers being less likely and publicly funded ones more likely to be present in poor neighborhoods; and (3) at least two factors affect why poor neighborhoods are more likely to have certain centers, the local state and the (often neglected) nonprofit infrastructure. Conclusions. The findings suggest that poor mothers are not necessarily better off in middle‐class neighborhoods in this respect. The market assumptions underlying the initial hypothesis should be modified. More empirical research on the effect of the nonprofit sector on the prevalence of neighborhood institutions is needed.     

The Emperor's new clothes: South Africa's attempted transition to developmental social welfare and social work

This article critically interrogates the depth and quality of change of post‐apartheid welfare policy and social work practice towards a social development paradigm against the background of inequality and poverty in South Africa. It asks several questions: what kind of welfare system has the current welfare dispensation created? How far has it moved from a residual, ameliorative system to an institutional developmental system, in keeping with the developmental welfare paradigm? To what extent can residual provisions be transformed into developmental processes? What conditions are necessary for this to happen? The answers to questions such as these provide the basis for assessing South Africa's new developmental processes. The article highlights the fundamental contradictions in social development policy imperatives, which call for a marriage of economic and social considerations, and the internal contradictions across and within various welfare policies. Further, it argues that the government does not have the political will to bear the costs of the substantive change that the move towards developmental social work requires, choosing instead limited, individually targeted and ameliorative measures, such as increased social security spending. Thus, it suggests that ideological critique, consciousness raising and participation in public policy debates remain crucial for those who seek long‐term solutions to inequality and poverty in South Africa.     

What families in poverty consider supportive: welfare strategies of parents with young children in relation to (child and family) social work

In current European Welfare states, Child and Family Social Work has been assigned a pivotal role in constructing a route out of (child) poverty. The direction, processes and outcomes of these interventions are, however, rarely negotiated with the families involved. Based on a retrospective biographical research with parents of young children who experienced financial difficulties over time, this paper therefore seeks to uncover and understand how parents give meaning to welfare which strategies they accordingly develop and how these perspectives and welfare strategies interact with Child and Family Social Work interventions. We aim to acquire knowledge about how interventions are constructed, interpreted and being used as potentially supportive levers in realizing the well‐being of parents and children in poverty situations and explore how they may influence families' routes out of poverty. Drawing on Lister's analytical framework of agency within the bounds of structural constraints, our research provides insights in the essentially complex, multi‐layered and paradoxical nature of support and suggests that support cannot simply be perceived as synonymous to mobility out of poverty.     

Poverty, welfare problems and social exclusion

This article investigates whether, and to what degree, poverty is linked to other types of welfare problems and, in larger perspective, whether the situation can be understood in terms of social exclusion. Two different measures of poverty – income poverty and deprivation poverty – and 17 indicators of welfare problems were used in the analysis. It was shown that income poverty was rather weakly related to other types of welfare problems, i.e. the most commonly used measure of poverty seems to discriminate a section of the population that does not suffer from the kinds of problems we usually assume that poverty causes. Deprivation poverty, identifying those who most often had to forgo consumption of goods and services, did correlate strongly with other types of welfare problems. Hence, people living under poor conditions do suffer from welfare problems even though this section of the population is not always captured by income poverty measures. The final analysis showed that the types of welfare problems that were most likely to cluster were deprivation poverty, economic precariousness, unemployment, psychological strain and health problems. Whether these types of accumulated welfare problems, from a theoretical perspective, can be seen as indicators of social exclusion is more doubtful.     

"Work for those that can, security for those that cannot":The United Kingdom's new social security reform agenda

Following its election victory, the Labour government embarked on a programme to reform fundamentally the United Kingdom's post-war welfare state. The reforms are outlined in a number of government policy consultation papers and are intended to address neo-liberal concerns about the welfare state, although neo-liberal panaceas have been rejected in favour of a "third way". Strongly influenced by Mead, Layard, Giddens and Field, the government's welfare reform package is premised on a conception of citizenship that emphasizes equally the importance of "entitlements" and "obligations", especially the obligation to work. We argue that this reform approach is inherently flawed: it presumes that the poor are without work because they lack appropriate incentives, not because they lack jobs that will lift and keep them out of poverty. We argue that the government's welfare reform strategy is contradictory: while it aims to ameliorate poverty, the emphasis on obligations and compulsion may have the effect of reinforcing existing economic and social divisions. In approaching the second millennium, there is a clear need for a robust interventionist approach to welfare which emphasizes the right to a satisfactory standard of living.     

The state of the German social insurance state: Reform and resilience

At the core of the German system of welfare provision stand social insurance schemes whose central role contributes to Germany being labelled a social insurance state. In recent decades, Germany has been experiencing major social policy reforms that are often evaluated as paradigm changes. These changes have been reflected in analyses that sometimes even questioned common classifications of the German welfare state. The article sheds light on recent developments that have affected the German system of social insurance. It focuses on four aspects of social insurance: benefits, financing, governance, and coverage. Although confirming many earlier analyses of reforms in detail and sharing assessments of changes such as retrenchment and marketization, the article nevertheless stresses that social insurance remains structurally intact and that the work–welfare nexus underlying welfare provision has been reinterpreted but not surrendered.     

Aging and social welfare in transition: the case of the United States

In the United States at the end of the twentieth century, government policies regarding elderly people appear to be in transition. In part this reflects the traditional American ambivalence between radical individualism and collective assistance - especially in the form of tax-supported public welfare provided through government agencies - for those unable to earn or save for their own support. But in part this reflects new concerns about the growth of welfare "entitlements" for elderly people and the presumed "generational inequity" of public support for the aged at the expense of funds for children and young families. We review 1) the changing demography of the United States elderly population, 2) the complex and ambivalent history of welfare policy in the United States and 3) the evidence for tensions and conflicts between older and younger Americans in the context of politicized "generational inequity" debates, with special attention to changing government health care policies. We conclude that in American society, particularly in terms of federal assistance to the aged, there is considerable public support for current policy measures, and - contrary to the predictions of many - it is not likely that there will be dramatic policy changes in the near future.     

Poverty among Working Families: New Insights from an Improved Poverty Measure

Objective . This article examines poverty among working families with children using a refined experimental poverty measure based on recommendations by the National Academy of Sciences Panel on Poverty and Family Assistance. Methods . Using data from the 1998 Current Population Survey, this research constructs an experimental poverty measure that takes into account noncash government benefits as well as job-related expenses, elements not included in the current official measure of family income. Results . We find that current statistics based on the official poverty line understate the extent of economic hardship, particularly among full-time working families with children, because expenses, such as child care costs, tend to outweigh noncash benefits, such as food stamps, that these families may receive. Furthermore, without the recent expansion of the Earned Income Tax Credit, poverty among full-time working families would be even higher. Conclusions . These findings highlight challenges faced by many families, especially those with adults moving off welfare and into the labor market.     

Welfare state dissatisfaction and support for major welfare reform: Towards means-tested welfare or a universal basic income?

This research note investigates how people combine their views on two radically opposing welfare reforms: a universal basic income and a fully means-tested welfare state. Using data from the 2016–2017 European Social Survey, we found that support for transformative welfare reform is rooted in perceptions of the performance of the current system. The preferred direction of reform, however, strongly depends on the specific aspects of the welfare state people are happy or unhappy with. At the country-level, we show that underperforming welfare states—in terms of higher poverty rates and lower social spending—increase popular demand for transformative welfare reform, in either direction. These findings are of crucial importance for ongoing debates about the future of the welfare state.     

Poverty and welfare in Denmark

From 1945 to the 1980s, Denmark was characterized by the absence of poverty or at least by the lack of any debate over poverty. However, by the mid-1980s, the presence of new forms of poverty made it impossible for politicians and social scientists to neglect poverty as an issue. The re-emergence of poverty did not clarify its extent, but it is widely agreed that poverty now is related to social exclusion and marginalization from the labour market. Empirical evidence is given that shows a poverty incidence of about 8%; the extent of marginalization is calculated to include 20-25% of the population of working age. The existence of poverty can be seen as a critique of the Scandinavian welfare state project, which was developed explicitly to fight and eliminate poverty. The article concludes with a discussion of the latest welfare state development in Scandinavia and possible future trends, summarized as welfare pluralism. The further implementation of the concept of welfare pluralism holds both positive and negative prospects for the poor, since it opens up both a more differentiated yet possibly also more stratified distribution of welfare     

GAUGING NEW ZEALAND'S SUCCESS AT POVERTY REDUCTION IN THE NEW MILLENIUM

This paper presents the results of the New Zealand Poverty Measurement Project's analysis of the effects of the 1990s social reforms in New Zealand on the incidence and severity of poverty, and assesses the impact of five social and economic policies introduced by the Labour‐led coalition governments since 1999: New Zealand superannuation, income‐related rents on state houses, active labour market policies for an employment‐rich economy, the Primary Health Care Strategy and the planned income support policy to reduce child poverty. Superannuation is assessed as both adequate and sustainable, rents for state houses are found to be affordable, and GDP growth and employment have increased incrementally as unemployment and benefit numbers have decreased. The Primary Health Care Strategy is an innovative initiative that will increase affordable access to general practitioners, but it and the proposed child assistance initiatives are too new to be adequately assessed. Of the challenges that remain, policy priorities should centre on housing alternatives, including home ownership for low‐income households not in state houses; income support for poor households, particularly those with children; and multi‐sector development of education and training aimed at lifting economic and social capacity.     

New Fathers' Labor Supply: Does Child Health Matter?*

Objective. We estimate the effect of poor child health on the labor supply of fathers post‐welfare reform, using a national sample of mostly unwed parents and their children—a group at high risk of living in poverty. Method. We control for a rich set of covariates, include state fixed effects, and test for the endogeneity of child health by estimating bivariate probit models. Results. We find that having a young child in poor health reduces the father's probability of being employed by four percentage points. The effect appears to be strongest among fathers who cohabit with, but are not married to, the child's mother. Conclusion. The results suggest a potential source by which young children with serious health problems may receive lower levels of health investment than their healthier peers—their fathers' reduced likelihood of being employed.     

Racial Disparities in Welfare Dependence and Financial Independence: Links to Human Capital,Local Economy,and State Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Policies

This secondary data analysis examined racial disparities in associations betwen welfare dependence/financial independence and human capital, local economy, and state TANF policies. A sample of 6,737 parents was extracted from the public-use data set titled “National Longitudinal Survey of Youth.” Results showed that restrictive TANF policies reduced African Americans’ likelihood of welfare use and increased likelihood of their financial independence. Multinomial logistic results also showed that, among Hispanics, employment growth in neighboring counties promoted welfare use; whereas among Caucasians such growth promoted financial independence. County poverty increased (a) Caucasians’ likelihood of welfare use and (b) Hispanics’ likelihood of being working poor; it decreased Caucasians’ and African Americans’ likelihood of financial independence. Across ethnic groups, education reduced likelihood of welfare use and working poor status; across minority groups, education increased likelihood of financial independence, but among Caucasians it decreased such likelihood. Across ethnic groups, occupational skills hindered dependence and improved odds of employment (regardless of welfare or poverty status). This study concluded the studied TANF policies and job markets were not color-blind. Interventions this study implies include less-restrictive TANF policies, generous support services, TANF staff cultural-competence training, and antidiscrimination rules. Research investigating particular TANF policies’ and services’ effects by ethnicity might prove useful.     

From welfare state to welfare society: toward a viable system of welfare in Japan and England

Laratta R. From welfare state to welfare society: toward a viable system of welfare in Japan and England
Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 131–141 © 2009 The Author(s), Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. This article compares the impact that public welfare reforms during the 1980s and 1990s had, and are still having, on the relationship between statutory organisations and the non‐profit sector in two developed countries, England and Japan. The author argues that the failure of these reforms clearly shows that, although non‐profit organisations may not be able to effectively replace the state in the provision of welfare services, they can contribute, working closely with the statutory organisations, to the shaping, financing and delivery of public services in a variety of ways. It is also interesting to note that, while the public welfare reforms of the late 1990s in England produced a shift away from a culture based on privatisation and contracting‐out toward a partnership culture of collaboration between state and non‐profit entities, similar reforms in Japan have resulted instead in an uncertain area of deregulation and privatisation.     

Effectiveness of Social Welfare Programmes in East Asia: A Case Study of Taiwan

Using the 2008 Family Income and Expenditure Survey, this study examined the effectiveness of social welfare programmes in Taiwan. The empirical evidence shows that most types of social welfare spending were limited in 2008. However, the social welfare programmes that were in place substantially reduced income inequality in Taiwan. Using the Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development (OECD) poverty threshold, the results reveal that 14 per cent of the sample's families were poor in terms of market income, but this figure decreased to 7 per cent after government intervention. Income inequality in Taiwan was similar to that of other East Asian countries such as Japan and South Korea, but Taiwan spent much less money on social welfare programmes than OECD countries, and therefore Taiwan's reduction of poverty was much lower as well.