New conditionality in Australian social security policy

The past two decades have witnessed the application of new forms of conditionality to Australian social security policy. This paper argues that a distinctive feature has been the attempt to link receipt of government benefits to parental behaviour in order to address concerns about the welfare of children. With a view to providing a framework that can help to inform debates regarding the merits of these new forms of conditionality, this paper outlines the historical antecedents and philosophical framework of new conditionality. The paper also examines three pertinent Australian social security initiatives: the Maternity Immunisation Allowance, the Improving School Enrolment and Attendance through Welfare Reform Measure, and Compulsory Income Management. The paper concludes with some consideration of the potential pitfalls of new conditionality.     

Intensity,moderation, and the pressures of expectation: Calculation and coercion in the street-level practice of welfare conditionality

This article offers a street-level perspective on welfare conditionality as it was practiced in contracted-out UK activation programs between 2008 and 2015. Drawing on observation and in-depth interviews, the article illustrates the ways that behavioral conditionality provided street-level workers with the means to intensify or moderate activation for particular claimants. Responding to arguments about the curtailment of street-level discretion, the article argues that in the particular context of target-driven, work-first, and otherwise highly constrained services, discretion resided in the ability to intensify or moderate conditionality and its coercive potential—in decisions about how, on whom, and to what extent it would be applied. The article argues that attending to this form of discretion provides an alternative frame through which to view the differentiated treatment typically understood as “creaming” and “parking.” In so doing, the article problematizes accounts that draw clear lines between calculative, normative, and dispositional forms of street-level reason and practice. It shows how advisors' responses to the “street-level calculus of choice” were articulated in terms of expectation, where attempts at future-oriented calculation necessarily entailed making other forms of speculative and normative judgement about claimants and their situations. The article thus contributes to an understanding of both the causes and meaning of differentiated treatment in conditional welfare services.     

The Current Situation of Retirement Income Provisions in Japan: Social Security Pension Schemes and Corporate Pension Plans

Japan has been faced with rapid population ageing for decades. This has continuously reduced the level of social security pension benefits. Based on this it is often said that corporate pension plans should play a wider role forward in providing retirement benefits. However, we also have to know that there is a limit to what corporate pension plans can do in place of the social security pension schemes. In this paper we extract lessons from the history of social security pension schemes in our country and try to define the roles of corporate pension plans and social security pension schemes. In conclusion we should keep adequacy of social security pension benefits even if the contribution rate becomes a bit higher. Corporate pension plans just enrich people's life in retirement. We have to remember that corporate pension plans were not certain means for reducing the poverty in old age and that for this reason social security pension schemes by social insurance were invented.     

Public support for the social rights and social obligations of the unemployed: Two sides of the same coin?

In light of the ever‐growing shift towards activation in European welfare states, the present article examines the relationship between citizens’ welfare generosity (i.e., support for social rights) and welfare conditionality (i.e., support for social obligations) with regard to the unemployed. Using data from the 2014 Belgian National Elections Study, we found that generosity and conditionality appear to be two sides of the same coin. The two factors are negatively correlated, and most of their respective attitudinal drivers are quite similar in strength, yet opposite in direction. In addition to self‐interest and conventionally recognised ideational beliefs, such as egalitarianism and individualism, beliefs about welfare deservingness – an explanatory factor that has remained understudied in the field – are particularly influential in shaping people’s welfare preferences. A stronger emphasis on criteria of deservingness such as control, attitude and reciprocity considerably lowers support for social rights and strengthens support for social duties.     

New avenues to be opened for social protection in the Arab world: the case of Egypt*

This article looks at social protection in the Arab world. Giving the example of Egypt, it asks why poverty is so widespread and why – despite the country's numerous social protection systems – social risks are a major contributing factor to it. It concludes that reforms are due. The existing systems are well funded but inefficient and more to the benefit of the better‐off than the poor. A reform approach is proposed which builds on both conventional and more innovative strategies: campaigns should be launched to raise public awareness of social risks; social assistance spending should be increased; and the operating public pension schemes should be reformed. At the same time, new avenues have to be opened to meet the specific needs of informal sector workers who have extreme difficulty in being covered by social insurance or social assistance. To this purpose, micro‐insurance is a promising approach for the Arab‐world region.     

Activation in the Austrian Social Assistance Scheme – Unproductive Pressure and Low Support

Activation is an essential part of social assistance schemes. This article provides an insight into the implementation of activation in the Austrian social assistance scheme by analyzing the work requirements and support offered in two provinces, Upper Austria and Styria. The main questions addressed include: Does social assistance require everyone to look for employment? What kind of requirements do social assistance offices set, what support do they offer and to whom? To what extent do those activation measures lead to a job search? The analysis draws on survey results for 1,071 claimants and recipients in the two provinces. It is shown that social assistance does not require all respondents to search for employment, and that activation actually depends on province as well as personal circumstances. Items are formed by identifying low and high conditionality in terms of support and pressure based on 11 questions. Current practice incorporates supportive forms of activation to a lesser degree than efforts to force people to find work, due to pressures from the caseworker. Although high conditionality is not found to affect the job search activity, the job search requirement itself fosters people's search for employment.     

Unemployment and economic security for young adults in Finland,Norway and Sweden: From unemployment protection to poverty relief

In this study, we investigated if there has been a displacement in the type and coverage of welfare services available for young unemployed adults in Finland, Norway and Sweden over the last two decades. This question is important because a number of studies have argued that the generous unemployment benefits and extensive labour market intervention found in the Nordic welfare states shield young people from the most severe consequences of economic inactivity. In this article, we instead show that during this period, less generous means‐tested unemployment and social assistance benefits have become the most important form of income protection for young people. In evidence, earnings‐related unemployment benefits now cover only 10 per cent of unemployed Swedes and Finns and 45 per cent of unemployed Norwegians aged 24 years or younger. This development marks a significant change in our understanding of unemployment protection for young people in Nordic countries.     

Penal and welfare conditionality: Discipline or degradation?

This paper aims to complement analyses of welfare conditionality by examining what can be learned from studies of conditional punishment in the criminal justice system. Drawing on a range of recent studies, I explore lived experiences of the conditionality attendant on penal forms of supervision; penal forms that have expanded rapidly in recent decades. I argue that, to paraphrase Stan Cohen, such supervision is as much about the dispersal of degradation as it is about the dispersal of discipline. Indeed, in contemporary western societies, both in punishment and in welfare systems, I suggest that conditionality functions less to discipline poor and marginalised people and more to disqualify them from the entitlements of ordinary citizenship. In so doing, conditionality constructs them as denizens, thus serving to limit the liabilities for the state that arise from social inequalities. Extending Delroy Fletcher and Sharon Wright's metaphor, the abusive slaps now meted out in concert by both hands of the penal state are as much about degrading and denying the entitlements of “needy” denizens as they are about influencing their conduct. But crucially, even within the increasingly restrictive context created by these developments, penal practitioners can and do provide care and assistance.     

Street‐level discretion,emotional labour and welfare frontline staff at the Australian employment service providers

Despite the current controversial debates about discretion in public bureaucracies in general, and in welfare agencies in particular, the current literature on street‐level bureaucracy mainly assumes that discretion is a distinctive feature of the daily work of public servants. Nonetheless, a pertinent question has not specifically been asked in this literature, that is, given the context of privatisation and increased welfare conditionality in the welfare sector that are seriously challenging welfare frontline staff's commitment to social justice and human rights‐based practices, what are forms of street‐level discretion likely to contribute to improving the quality of welfare services? In this study, we attempt to address this question by exploring discretion displayed by welfare frontline staff in four Australian employment service providers. We argue that emotional labour, especially when being informed by critical empathy, is an important and effective form of street‐level discretion that welfare frontline workers can perform to better support welfare recipients and minimise the punitive aspects of welfare policy.     

Work,welfare, and wellbeing: The impacts of welfare conditionality on people with mental health impairments in the UK

The personal, economic, and social costs of mental ill health are increasingly acknowledged by many governments and international organisations. Simultaneously, in high-income nations, the reach of welfare conditionality has extended to encompass many people with mental health impairments as part of on-going welfare reforms. This is particularly the case in the UK where, especially since the introduction of Employment and Support Allowance in 2008, the rights and responsibilities of disabled people have been subject to contestation and redefinition. Following a review of the emergent international evidence on mental health and welfare conditionality, this paper explores two specific issues. First, the impacts of the application of welfare conditionality on benefit claimants with mental health impairments. Second, the effectiveness of welfare conditionality in supporting people with experience of mental ill health into paid work. In considering these questions, this paper presents original analysis of data generated in qualitative longitudinal interviews with 207 UK social security benefit recipients with experience of a range of mental health issues. The evidence suggests that welfare conditionality is largely ineffective in moving people with mental health impairments into, or closer to, paid work. Indeed, in many cases, it triggers negative health outcomes that make future employment less likely. It is concluded that the application of conditionality for people with mental health issues is inappropriate and should cease.     

A comparative study of social assistance systems in Macao and Hong Kong

This article compares social assistance systems in Macao and Hong Kong. It finds that Macao delivers a higher level of social assistance benefits, whereas Hong Kong has a larger group of social assistance beneficiaries. The Hong Kong Government spends a larger amount on social assistance provision and imposes tougher controls on the recipients, compared to Macao. The results of the comparison indicate that Macao and Hong Kong differ markedly in the type of productivist welfare regime they belong and challenge the assertion that the two welfare systems form a distinct welfare model.     

Patterns of social assistance receipt in Sweden

This article analyses the situation of Swedish-born people who became first-time receivers of social assistance in 1987 and 1992. The macroeconomic situation at the time of entry was rather different for the two cohorts and the number of new entrances increased by almost 50%. Much of the increase consisted of young adults and experience of social assistance has been shown to be fairly widespread among persons under the age of 25. Bridging the period when individuals are supported by their parents to their becoming established as wage earners has become an important function of social assistance in Sweden. The pattern of social assistance receipt is rather heterogeneous across new recipients. The complex pattern of receipt means that the duration of social assistance can appear to vary depending on one's choice of perspective. On the one hand, the median duration of social assistance receipt is as low as two years when an eleven-year follow-up period is applied. On the other hand, among people who receive social assistance during a given year, as many as half had entered receipt more than four years earlier.     

Trapped in poverty? A study of the dibao programme in Shanghai

As the secondary means of income redistribution in Chinese society (the primary means being taxation), the Minimum Living Standard Guarantee (MLSG) programme or dibao has been the object of both praise and criticism. The programme helps the government to channel its limited financial resources to the persons who need it most. While it covers the necessities of life, however, it does not enable its recipients to escape from poverty. It has also been criticized for its exorbitant administrative costs and heavy workload. This study uses a qualitative longitudinal design to identify changes across interview intervals and uncover the internal dynamics of the dibao programme. The research findings enrich the current literature on social assistance in China. Forty households receiving dibao in Shanghai were interviewed. Our findings show that most dibao recipients are laid-off workers – casualties of the massive economic reforms of the 1990s – and the younger members of their families. The assistance they receive helps with their daily expenses, but is insufficient to raise them out of poverty.     

Social assistance and minimum income benefits in old and new EU democracies

Nelson K. Social assistance and minimum income benefits in old and new EU democracies Int J Soc Welfare 2010: 19: 367–378 © 2009 The Author, Journal compilation © 2009 Blackwell Publishing Ltd and the International Journal of Social Welfare. In this article, social assistance developments are analysed in a large number of European Union (EU) member states, including European transition countries and the new democracies of southern Europe. The empirical analysis is based on the unique and recently established SaMip Dataset, which provides social assistance benefit levels for 27 countries from 1990 to 2005. It is shown that social assistance benefits have had a less favourable development than that of unemployment provision. Hardly any of the investigated countries provide social assistance benefits above the EU near‐poverty threshold. Social assistance benefit levels have not converged in Europe. Instead, divergence can be observed, which is due mainly to lagging developments in eastern and southern Europe.     

Punitive benefit sanctions,welfare conditionality,and the social abuse of unemployed people in Britain: Transforming claimants into offenders?

A defining feature of U.K. welfare reform since 2010 has been the concerted move towards greater compulsion and sanctioning, which has been interpreted by some social policy scholars as punitive and cruel. In this article, we borrow concepts from criminology and sociology to develop new interpretations of welfare conditionality. Based on data from a major Economic and Social Research Council-funded qualitative longitudinal study (2014–2019), we document the suffering that unemployed claimants experienced because of harsh conditionality. We find that punitive welfare conditionality often caused symbolic and material suffering and sometimes had life-threatening effects. We argue that a wide range of suffering induced by welfare conditionality can be understood as ‘social abuse’, including the demoralisation of the futile job-search treadwheel and the self-administered surveillance of the Universal Jobmatch panopticon. We identify a range of active claimant responses to state perpetrated harm, including acquiescence, adaptation, resistance, and disengagement. We conclude that punitive post-2010 unemployment correction can be seen as a reinvention of failed historic forms of punishment for offenders.     

Long-term Care Policies in Italy, Austria and France: Variations in Cash-for-Care Schemes

Cash benefit provisions have been at the core of many recent reforms in the long-term care sector in Europe. The respective schemes, however, vary widely in terms of the definition of entitlements, the level of benefits, and the ways in which benefits can be used by recipients. This article investigates cash-for-care schemes in three European social insurance countries. It asks whether the diversity of these schemes indicates different paths or just differences in the pace with which the respective policies address the risk of dependency. A characterization of the three schemes and a discussion of the implications for care work arrangements lead to the conclusion that the context and timing of long-term care reform processes are in fact quite variegated. All three countries have histories of cash schemes and of applying the cash approach to support – and to some extent relieve – traditionally strong family obligations. Differences predominate in terms of linking cash to employment, although some convergence is apparent in the effects on qualifications, working conditions and wages in care work.     

Frontline implementation of welfare conditionality in Norway: A maternalistic practice

Welfare conditionality is both ambitious and ambiguous for the frontline workers who put policy into practice. Since January 2017, the Norwegian frontline service should require social assistance benefit recipients under the age of 30 to participate in some sort of work-related activation, so-called mandatory activation. Drawing on qualitative interviews with frontline workers at local offices in the Norwegian Public Welfare Service (NAV), we investigate how the requirement is implemented in a context of a professionalised social welfare service. Mandatory activation is arguably a paternalistic measure. Drawing on Bernardo Zacka's concept of moral dispositions and Laura Specker Sullivan's concepts of maternalism, our findings indicate that at the frontline, mandatory activation policies are implemented by maternalistic decision making, emphasising the interpersonal relation between trained caseworkers and clients. The caseworkers use their discretionary powers in the implementation of conditionality and sanctions by emphasising care and support as embedded in the strict rules.     

The impact of social security reform on the labor market: The case of Colombia

This paper simulates the effects of three increasingly bolder reforms in the Colombian social protection system: the equalization of salaried and self-employed labor contributions; the removal of payroll taxes, parafiscales; and the complete delinking of social protection benefits from labor status. We collect nationally representative information concerning individual willingness to pay for several packages of social security benefits; identify and quantify – for the first time – three specific distortions caused by existing social security and social assistance systems; and simulate the gains that social protection reforms would bring about in terms of reduced labor distortions. We find that workers in Colombia, regardless of occupation, have a very similar willingness to pay for the full insurance package – below 20% of their labor earnings – and very similar valuation of social protection services – about 50% below par. Labor distortions are large, as expected from very high labor costs, but we quantify an implicit formality tax and informality subsidy ranging between 2 and 27 percent of different representative workers’ earnings. Critically, the long-discussed reforms in Colombia – including the elimination of parafiscales – will not reduce substantially the multiple distortions in its labor market.     

Meeting (or not) at the street level? A literature review on street‐level research in public management,social policy and social work

This literature review analyses the adoption and development of a street‐level perspective in public management, social policy and social work. The last years have seen a prominent revival of a perspective based on Michael Lipsky's street‐level bureaucracy approach in the debates conducted within all three disciplinary fields. Based on 71 key publications in public management, social policy and social work, the review analyses the adoption of the street‐level bureaucracy approach during the period 2005–2015, pointing out the main themes of the debate within, as well as overlaps and differences between, the three disciplines. The findings show the potential of better integrating the different perspectives and taking stock of the articulated debate. Lastly, the review discerns a common viewpoint for further street‐level research, emphasising its importance for the critical analysis and understanding of street‐level work as a vital dimension of responsive and accountable institutions and as a decisive moment to shape positive policy outcomes on the ground. Key Practitioner Message: ? The use of discretion by frontline practitioners and their role as policy actors on the ground has become an important focus of research; ? This literature review shows that the debate has gone far beyond discussing discretion as an all‐or‐nothing issue, pointing out both positive and negative aspects of discretion and developing comprehensive frameworks to explain the use of discretion at the street‐level; ? However, street‐level research has traditionally rather neglected the notion of professionalism. The social work literature brings in the perspective of professionalism; more research efforts are needed to better explore and explain how professionalism matters in relation to challenges and dilemmas of different policy and practice fields.