Poverty and material deprivation among European workers in times of crisis

Many EU countries are faced with abysmal public debts and high unemployment, and may have to reduce their social expenditure and deregulate their labour market, which should lead to an increase in ‘working poverty’ (i.e., an increase in the number of working men and women who live in a low‐income household, or in a household that cannot afford certain goods and services considered essential for a decent life, respectively). However, working poverty remains an under‐analysed phenomenon in Europe. Moreover, the vast majority of existing definitions used in Europe are based on a relative income poverty line and the EU's official definition of ‘in‐work’, which raises concerns about the robustness of existing findings. This article first examines how the socioeconomic situation has evolved in seven EU Member States that have fared differently. In addition, the article examines whether the use of non‐monetary poverty indicators and of an encompassing definition of ‘working’ has an impact on the conclusions drawn. An attempt is made to identify the main macro‐level determinants of changes in ‘working poverty’ and to better understand their impact at the micro‐level.     

浅析人口城市化与城市社会问题

目前,我国已经进入到城市化快速发展的阶段。随着城市经济的发展以及人口的迅速增长,城市贫困、社会分化、心理失调、以及环境污染等城市社会问题也逐渐浮现,而有效的缓解以上问题是城市的建设者与管理者必须要面对的解决的。     

Poverty and anti-poverty measures in China

During three decades of rapid economic development and governmental anti-poverty measures, China achieved considerable success in poverty alleviation. However, because poverty remains a severe problem, this research analysed the causes and implications of poverty as well as the associated social policies, based on official statistics and survey data. Three decades of successful anti-poverty measures, have largely reduced ‘absolute poverty’, yet ‘relative poverty’ is still severe and substantial challenges remain, caused by the changing socioeconomic circumstances. To enhance poverty alleviation, relevant social policies should be reformed, including changing the underlying approach from addressing absolute poverty to addressing relative poverty, increasing the beneficiary coverage and raising the level of benefits, increasing public funding and improving the relevant administrative systems.     

The State, Institutional Transition and the Creation of New Urban Poverty in China

Since the 1990s, the introduction of a market economy and the process of rapid urbanization have been accompanied by a new urban poverty related to lay‐offs and unemployment as well as by large‐scale rural–urban migration, which is different from the traditional urban poverty of the ‘Three Nos’ (no relatives or dependants, no working capacity and no source of income). This article focuses on new urban poverty in China under market transition and discusses the causes of poverty creation. Instead of considering Chinese new urban poverty only as a result of market mechanisms, it argues that the state as the manipulator of institutions and policies does matter in the creation of new urban poverty, and that the cleavages between the old and new institutions further intensify it. Specifically, the following aspects of the creation of new urban poverty are examined in detail: the adjustment of industrial policy, the reform of state‐owned enterprises, evolution of the household registration system, and the transformation of the welfare state.     

Help or hindrance? Social policy and the ‘social determinants of health’

In recent years, public health research has become increasingly focused on issues of social inequality and social disadvantage. This is because social issues, such as poor housing and unemployment, have been found to impact health significantly, and are now referred to as ‘the social determinants of health‘. As a result of this shift, public health is now principally concerned with what are historically considered to be social policy issues. This paper discusses the confluence of public health and social policy; it examines the opportunities and risks posed by this convergence for those working in social policy seeking to reduce poverty and inequality. We argue that, while much can be gained in the two fields by working more closely together, there remain fundamental differences in perspectives and approaches. In order to maximise benefits, these points of difference need to be thought through sooner rather than later.     

POVERTY,IDEOLOGY AND EMPLOYABILITY: CANADIAN AND AUSTRALIAN POLICIES FOR LOW-INCOME MOTHERS

A similar trend is apparent in Australian and Canadian programs to enhance work incentives and program effectiveness, but the Canadian provinces are increasingly insisting that low-income mothers with school-age children enter the workforce rather than accept social benefits to care for their children at home. There is no Canadian counterpart to the Sole Parent Pension or Parenting Allowance, although the provinces pay higher rates of social assistance to needy families than to individuals. Furthermore, there is little public support for the idea that low-income mothers should care for school-aged children at home at the taxpayer's expense. This paper discusses the similarities and differences in rhetoric and policies for low-income mothers, and seeks reasons for the stronger social support for mothering at home in Australia. Although the current discourse of economic rationalism suggests that enhancing work incentives and ‘employability’ will bring prosperity, this paper illustrates that neither paying mothers to care for their children at home nor pushing them into the workforce has reduced family poverty. To make employability programs more effective, governments need to deal with low female wages, the shortage and high cost of child care, and the lack of full-time permanent jobs.     

Leadership and Listening: The Reception of User Voice in Today's Public Services

Over the last decade leadership has become a watchword in public service provision, especially in its association with the seemingly ubiquitous ‘delivery’ agenda. As leadership styles change in response to developments in the contemporary public service environment, it has become imperative for service providers to find ways to listen to service users. However, listening is itself widely recognized as an underdeveloped public sector competency. This article addresses the relationship between leadership and listening. Using findings from recent research, it identifies a ‘listening gap’ in public services, before pointing to ways in which this gap might be better understood and subsequently narrowed. In doing so, it seeks to present new ideas about the essential balance between ‘leadership’ and ‘listening’, and how this can be struck in today's public service environment. First, the nature of the user voice is examined. By talking to service users who have communicated their views in different ways in each of three different services (housing, social care and leisure), the article seeks to understand the nature of users' ‘projects’ in the expression of their views. These projects are compared with those of public service leaders. Second, the congruence (or incongruence) of these projects is considered through a comparison of the world views of both users and leaders. Finally, aspects of the context are considered in the discussion of the way public service organizations might go about defining the relationship between leadership and listening.     

Local approaches to counter a wider pattern? Urban poverty in Portland,Oregon

A model U.S. city, Portland Oregon's progressive policies are often credited with making it highly livable, with a vibrant urban core. Yet these policies have not protected Portland from broader trends that have increased urban poverty over the past several decades in the U.S., including social welfare cuts and the shift in the economy to the service sector. In terms of poverty dynamics and social policies, we argue that while regional planning and other progressive policies have helped protect Portland from extremely high concentrated poverty present in many large U.S. cities, it has still experienced growing social dislocations associated with national and macro-level social and economic factors. These trends suggest both the possibilities and limits of local policy, regional planning, and activism for ameliorating the deleterious consequences of social welfare retrenchment and franchise capitalism for vulnerable urban populations, and highlight the importance of the broader social policy context and economic change for understanding urban poverty and the experiences of the urban poor.     

Pawns or Pioneers? The Logic of User Participation in Anti‐poverty Policy‐making in Public Policy Units in Belgium

Since anti‐poverty policy‐making in Belgium is embedded in a logic of user participation, social policy has shown interest in employing users with experience of poverty as experts in public policy units in order to implement and monitor anti‐poverty policies. In this article, we discuss this recent development as a relevant case for contemporary public service delivery in the European context. In the light of the ambiguous practices of user participation in Belgium, the enacted logic of involving service users in public service delivery is discussed, and potential risks and opportunities identified: do these individuals function as pawns or as pioneers? In search of opportunities for the implementation of anti‐poverty policies, we explore different ways in which public policy units can act upon the participation of employed service users in public service delivery. On the level of public service delivery, we argue that the participation of expert users risks their use as a mere blind, de‐responsibilizing those who work in public policy units in providing high‐quality services and being responsive to all service users including those living in poverty. On the level of these individual experts, we argue that the employed service users risk becoming pawns, acquiring a tragic‐optimistic outlook on life. We conclude that enabling service users to participate as pioneers requires the joint and mutual responsibility of the employed service users and those who work in public policy units for implementing and monitoring anti‐poverty strategies rather than exclusive responsibility assigned to individual service users.     

Public Policy and Inequalities of Choice and Autonomy

Choice by service users has been promoted in social policy across many developed welfare states, often on the grounds that it will incentivize providers to enhance quality and efficiency. But this instrumental motivation for the promotion of choice overlooks the possibility that choice, understood in the deeper sense of autonomy, has intrinsic value, as suggested by egalitarian and capability‐based theories of social justice. This article argues that the narrow motivation of choice policies leads to a focus on services rather than outcomes for individuals and fails to address deep‐seated inequalities in the opportunities people have for real autonomy. We test this concept using newly collected data for the UK. Our empirical findings indicate that disabled people are more likely to experience constrained autonomy in all respects, while being from a low socio‐economic group and/or lacking educational qualifications is a risk factor across several components. We conclude that improving the ‘choice’ agenda for policy requires: (1) adopting a more sophisticated concept of ‘choice’ such as the conceptualization of ‘choice as autonomy’ outlined here; (2) developing a better understanding of existing inequalities in autonomy, such as we begin to explore in our empirical results; and (3) tackling these inequalities through, for example, the removal of obstacles to active decision‐making by providing effective support and advocacy, especially for disabled people, and addressing the major structural barriers – poverty, ill health and geographical inequality – which place significant restrictions on the autonomy of those who are already disadvantaged.     

Identifying and Explaining Different Poverty Trajectories Using a Group‐based Trajectory Analysis – A Case Study of South Korea

In this study, we propose a group‐based trajectory analysis to examine why and how people fall into and out of poverty despite spiralling public expenditure on anti‐poverty policies. By analyzing the poverty experiences of 1,001 low‐income households between 1999 and 2008 in Korea, we identify five groups based on their poverty trajectories: exiting, declining, slowly rising, rapidly rising and chronic. Household members in each group demonstrate heterogeneous labour market experiences, educational levels and demographic factors. The exiting group has a high proportion of full‐time workers, high school graduates, and younger and male‐headed households, whereas the chronic group has more part‐time workers, high school dropouts, and older and female‐headed households. Among the declining, slowly rising and rapidly rising groups, educational background, age and sex are factors that differentiate the poverty dynamics of household members. Lastly, a number of social policies for helping low‐income households to leave and stay out of poverty are proposed.     

Beyond Symptoms: Crime Prevention And Community Development

Crime and crime prevention are currently ‘hot’ political and social issues. Fuelled by public calls for ‘solutions’, the responses by politicians and planners are typically ‘quick‐fix’ with emphasis on management of particular problems as, and where, they arise. We argue for longer term strategies aimed at dealing with the political, social, economic and cultural factors associated with crime. In doing so, we explore the potential of community development to contribute to crime prevention, particularly ‘community’ or ‘street’ crime and violence. Theoretical and practice intersections between community development and certain crime prevention approaches are identified – notably those which link crime and violence with dis‐empowerment, poverty, inequality, exclusion, the learning of violence within families and communities, and lack of opportunity for children and young people to develop their potential. We conclude that there is plenty of evidence to support the view that community development processes should be used more frequently in crime prevention programmes.     

Poverty,Government Policy and Public Opinion in Britain and Israel: A Comparative Analysis

What are the effects of public opinion on social welfare policies? To what extent is increased financial strain associated with stronger support for anti‐poverty policies? This article tests welfare state theory by comparing poverty, government policy and public opinion on poverty in the UK and Israel, based on rich and detailed comparable survey data on the conditions of the poor in both countries. The results show that, despite similar levels of income poverty and inequality, the poor have a considerably lower standard of living in Israel than the UK. There is considerably greater public support for the poor in Israel but limited government action to end poverty, whereas in the UK there is more limited public support for the poor but significant government action on poverty and exclusion. In both countries there appears to be only a limited connection between social solidarity with the poor and the political elite's rhetoric and action.     

Subjective Well‐being Poverty of the Elderly Population in China

Poverty is represented not only by objective well‐being indicators which include income and consumption levels, but also by subjective indicators which reflect what a person feels. It is estimated in this article that the incidence of subjective well‐being poverty (SWP) among the Chinese rural elderly population in 2006 was 9.7 per cent, about 4.2 times as much as that of the country's total rural population in the same year, which was 2.3 per cent. Over 16 per cent of the rural elderly population and 11.5 per cent of the urban elderly population rated their life satisfaction as poor or very poor. In terms of SWP, senior citizens, especially those who live in rural areas or who are women or very aged, have become a special group among the poor in China. This article suggests that China's social policies for the new stage take into account the issue of absolute poverty and also that of SWP. A multi‐dimensional strategy system targeting the issue of poverty needs to be established, and a policy system to address poverty reduction as well as old age security and care should be implemented.     

Service Users with Experience of Poverty as Institutional Entrepreneurs in Public Services in Belgium: An Institutional Theory Perspective on Policy Implementation

In this article, we report on a qualitative and interpretative research project in which we gained in‐depth knowledge about dynamics in ten federal public policy units in Belgium where a service user with experience of poverty was employed. Starting from an institutional theory perspective, it was argued that these service users with experience of poverty can possibly feature as institutional entrepreneurs or agents of change who initiate a critical reflection in the mindset of fellow social administrators about taken‐for‐granted practices, routines and rationales. In order to fulfill this ambition, we equally stressed that service users with experience of poverty should be able to perform two other roles as well: to provide direct support to citizens, especially those living in poverty during their contacts with a public policy unit, and to formulate concrete propositions to change some of the policy units' internal procedures. Our research findings reveal that these two roles provide a necessary breeding ground for further interaction and (in)formal dialogue between service users with experience of poverty and fellow social administrators about the quality and accessibility of service delivery. However, installing this shared responsibility proves to be a valuable but also gradual process, and we argue that it is therefore undesirable when service users with experience of poverty act as so‐called ‘heroes’ in changing these taken‐for‐granted institutional practices, routines and rationales.     

Anglo‐Australian and non‐Anglophone middle classes: ‘foreign accent’ and social inclusion

Building on the concept of ‘multicultural middle class’, this paper explores social inclusion of professionally educated and employed non‐Anglophone immigrants in Australia. We focus specifically on the perceptions and implications of ‘foreign accent’ in the interaction between two groups of middle‐class Australians: non‐Anglophone immigrants and Anglo‐Australians. ‘Non‐Anglophone immigrants’ are defined as those who arrived in Australia as adults, grew up speaking a language other than English, and therefore usually speak English with a ‘foreign accent’. ‘Anglo‐Australians’ are defined as people born in Australia who grew up in families/households where only English was spoken, therefore speaking with a ‘native Australian’ accent. Through a survey of a targeted sample of respondents, the two groups were asked about their intergroup communication, wider interaction (e.g., intermarriage, friendships and working together) and mutual perceptions. Our findings indicate high levels of agreement between the two groups that Anglophone/non‐Anglophone communication is minimally hindered by comprehension problems due to foreign‐accented speech and cultural differences. Although the positive picture that emerges may reflect specific experiences and attitudes of middle‐class professionals and may not be generalisable, increased contact of the 'multicultural middle class' with its Anglo‐Australian counterpart is likely to be a factor in dissociating foreign accent and negative stereotyping.     

Renewing the Social Vision of Care

Care is a fundamental condition of human existence, an inherently social activity. Yet surprisingly, care has only recently begun to receive serious attention from social researchers and the public. Despite the fact that care has become a public issue over the past twenty‐five years or so, current thinking in policy and advocacy for carers has developed an overtly narrow and self‐limiting focus with a strong emphasis on the plight of primary or sole carers, with care being seen predominantly as a burden. From looking at Australian policy on carers, it may be concluded that care is essentially understood as a private, individual concern, a one‐way activity in which the active agent, the carer, does something to the other, passive, recipient. The challenge posed in this paper is to move beyond this approach to that of a more social conception of care. Following a review of the uses of the terms ‘care’ and ‘carers’ in the current Australian policy context, a discussion of the meaning of the term ‘care’ is presented and an alternative understanding of the term, with the potential of recognising and promoting care as a complex, social outcome is advanced.     

Performance Management,Caseloads and the Frontline Provision of Social Services

Caseloads and performance management are important working conditions of workers delivering public social services in street‐level organizations. The literature on these working conditions argues that high caseloads and performance management have considerable consequences for workers' performance in terms of the quality of services they provide and the results they realize. This article empirically investigates and compares these consequences, drawing on the results of a quantitative study of frontline workers in 14 local welfare agencies in the Netherlands. These workers are responsible for the delivery of welfare‐to‐work policies to social assistance recipients. The findings show that high caseloads do, indeed, have a detrimental effect on workers' performance, whereas the impact of performance management is more modest, though confirming some of the findings reported in other studies on performance management. The results also show that by focusing service provision on a proportion of their caseload, workers are able to reduce the negative impact of high caseloads somewhat. Overall, the article finds that the negative impact of high caseloads is more pervasive than that of performance management. The article concludes that the recent focus in the literature on performance management and its consequences for public services should not turn scholars' attention away from the ‘traditional’ public administration problem of high caseload sizes.     

Emotional kinship care and neutral non‐kinship care — the struggle between discourses

In this paper, social workers' ideas of kinship care and non‐kinship care as foster placement alternatives for vulnerable children are analysed and discussed. The study is based on group interviews with Swedish social workers, using a discourse analytic approach. The interviews took two vignettes of children who needed an immediate and long‐term placement because one of the parents had killed the other parent, as their point of departure. Domestic violence is a common social problem across countries, and controversies about placement alternatives become even more apparent when discussing lethal violence. The analysis revealed three main discourses: ‘emotional kinship care’, ‘neutral non‐kinship care’ and ‘a real family’. The emotional kinship care discourse also revealed two competing sub‐discourses: ‘emotions as glue that binds’ and ‘emotions as obscuring a child perspective’, displaying a struggle concerning the advantages and risks that social workers connected to kinship care. In this paper, the results and their implications for vulnerable children are discussed.