‘Pushing buttons‘: an evaluation of the effect of Aboriginal income management on commercial gambling expenditure

The Northern Territory National Emergency Response Act 2007 was a radical intervention into the lives of Aboriginal residents of the Northern Territory, Australia. One of the intervention's key measures was income management – a scheme designed to limit the range of goods and services that may be purchased with social security payments. The aim of income management was to curb 'anti‐social behaviours' such as excessive gambling and alcohol consumption. In this paper, we specifically test the efficacy of income management in reducing the amount spent on commercial gambling. To achieve this we conduct an interrupted time series analysis with deflated monthly electronic gaming machine (EGM) expenditure data from July 2002 to July 2010 for hotels and clubs in the towns of Alice Springs and Katherine. We find a negative association between income management and EGM revenues for only one gambling venue in each town. However, local complexity in the form of segregated markets along temporal, spatial and racial lines, along with other policy confounders, may obscure the effects of the macro‐policy intervention. We conclude by making suggestions for locally‐based responses to problematic forms of risky consumption that may be more sensitive to local geographies.     

Social Worker Assessed Vulnerable Income Management

Despite the small size of the sub program, Social Worker Assessed Vulnerable Welfare Payment Recipients Income Management is often cited as a preferred approach to this type of initiative, being tightly targeted at a group of people with identified high needs, and demonstrated poor outcomes. Although the program was considered in the two recent major evaluations of income management, specific findings relating to it have tended to be overshadowed by the more general finding of an absence of positive outcomes, and indeed potentially negative effects, from compulsory income management. While the size of the sub program has made evaluation difficult, the two major evaluations of income management have nevertheless made specific findings which suggest that the program has had some positive outcomes for a highly marginal participant group. These findings, along with aspects of the operation of the program, including the role played by social workers, and a proposal to abolish the program, are discussed.     

Australia's disabling income support system: tracing the history of the disability pension from 1908 to today

This article is based on a historical‐comparative policy and discourse analysis of the principles underpinning the Australian disability income support system. It determines that these principles rely on a conception of disability that sustains a system of coercion and paternalism that perpetuates disability; this is referred to as disablism. The article examines the construction of disability in Australian income support across four major historical epochs spanning the period 1908–2007. Contextualisation of the policy trajectory and discourses of the contemporary disability pension regime for the time period 2008–now is also provided. The system was found to have perpetuated disablism through the generation of disability categories on the basis of normalcy and ableness as a condition of citizenship. Two major themes were found to have interacted with the ideology of disablism. The first theme – Commonwealth authority – set the tone for legitimising the regulation of disabled citizens. The second theme – conservative sanctioned paternalism and coercion – reflected the tensions between the paternalistic concern for income support provision while attempting to prevent idleness and welfare dependency. This article argues that a non‐disabling provision based on social citizenship, rather than responsible or productive citizenship, counters the tendency for authoritarian and paternal approaches.     

Blind‐sided by Basics: three perspectives on income management in an Aboriginal community in the Northern Territory

Income management was introduced into the Northern Territory in 2007. Despite much rhetoric around evidence based policy making and constant reviewing of income management, there has been little grounded research about Aboriginal responses at the community level to this new institution. In this article I report on the operations of income management from a longer term perspective, working with Kuninjku people and retail outlets in the Maningrida region in Arnhem Land. My argument is that from a local perspective income management is just one of a suite of new measures that have been introduced to alter the norms and values of people to correlate more closely with Australian mainstream norms. This view is based on participant observation rather than direct questioning. Income management is a low priority issue for the Kuninjku people in the current policy maelstrom that seeks to shift policy from ‘self determination’ back to a form of assimilation now heavily influenced by a neoliberal ideological agenda. Local responses vary from indifferent acceptance to resistance. I ponder the crucial policy question, how can we allow substantial financial resources to be squandered in unhelpful income management when they could be deployed productively to enhance wellbeing for Indigenous Australians?     

Conceptualising the politics of social protection expansion in low income countries: The intersection of transnational ideas and domestic politics

The growing literature on social protection in low income developing countries has tended to focus on definitional debates, policy design and impact evaluations, with relatively little consideration of the ways in which politics shape policy. This article argues that politics needs to be at the centre of efforts to understand social protection and outlines a new conceptual framework for investigating this, with a particular focus on explaining the variation in progress made by low income countries in adopting and implementing social protection. We propose that an adapted ‘political settlements’ framework that incorporates insights from the literatures on welfare state development – notably ‘power constellations’ theory, discursive institutionalism and global policy networks – can help frame political commitment to social protection as flowing from the interaction of domestic political economy and transnational ideas. Importantly, this approach situates social protection within a broader political and policy context, and highlights the influence of underlying power relations at multiple levels.     

收入不平等与个体健康——基于2005年中国综合社会调查的实证分析

文章利用2005年中国综合社会调查（CGSS2005）数据与县级社会统计资料,通过拟合多层Logistic回归模型,分析了地区收入不平等程度对个体健康状况的影响,系统检验了绝对收入理论和收入不平等理论。结果表明,即使在控制了个体收入对健康的凹陷效应之后,县级收入不平等程度仍对个体自评健康具有显著的负面影响。对收入不平等影响健康的作用机制的进一步分析表明,社会心理机制仅能部分解释不平等对健康的负面效应,而新唯物主义机制未能得到经验支持。     

The macroeconomic effects of basic income funded by a land-holding tax in Korea

We examine the macroeconomic effects of the introduction of a scheme to pay a basic income of approximately $900 per year to each citizen through a land-holding tax. Unlike other studies, we address the issue of whether a sharp increase in the land-holding tax rate intended to raise funds for a basic income scheme causes landowners to sell their land. We also use the relationship between holding assets and reservation wages to determine whether household members supply their labor in accordance with the payment of basic income. Our simulation results obtained using data for Korea show that the introduction of the basic income scheme decreases real gross domestic product, total labor demand, and social welfare by 1.3%, 0.3%, and 0.4%, respectively.     

What affects happiness: Absolute income,relative income or expected income?

This study probes the reasons why increased income does not enhance happiness based on the effects of relative income and expected income. The study analysis is based on results from the Taiwan Social Change Survey from 1999 to 2002, using an ordered probit model. The findings demonstrate that the Taiwanese people are happier with an increase in absolute income. However, the marginal effect is reducing. In addition, relative income and expected income meet the expectation, indicating that people's happiness is not only related to absolute income, but also closely associated with the average income found in society and expected income.     

Market Reform and the Widening of the Income Gap

在市场化过程中,中国出现了收入差距不断扩大的趋势,从而社会上出现了一些将收入差距扩大的原因归结为市场化改革的错误认识。本文通过对我国改革开放以来收入分配格局变化的主要特点和导致收入差距扩大的原因加以细致实证分析, 对一些模糊认识加以澄清。本文认为在个人收入差距扩大的诸多因素中,传统计划 体制遗留下来的一些制度和政策,在部门利益和地方利益驱使下新形成的有悖于市 场体制规则的制度和政策,政府对市场缺失和市场扭曲采取的不作为态度,对资本 节制和劳动保护的不足,政府对经济的过度干预,成为导致收入差距扩大和收入分 配不公的最重要因素。

关键词: 收入差距?改革?城乡?中国

In the course of marketization in China, there has been a trend for the income gap to become ever wider. Some people have mistakenly attributed the gap to market reforms. This article provides a detailed empirical analysis of the changes in income distribution patterns and the reasons for the increasing income gap to clear up such misunderstandings. We believe the most important factors in the widening of the income gap and unequal income distribution are institutions and policies inherited from traditional economic planning; newly emerging systems and policies driven by departmental and local interests that run counter to market laws; lack of government action on gaps or distortions in the market; insufficient capital regulation and labor protection; and excessive government intervention in the economy.     

加快农业产业化发展是优化农业结构和增加农民收入的现实选择--双城市农业产业化发展情况的调查

农民收入增长缓慢是农村工作面临最突出的矛盾和问题 ,实现农民增收是当前和今后农村工作的中心任务。通过农业产业化发展的实现 ,促进农村产业化经营和农民增收 ,是农村经济发展的现实选择。黑龙江省双城市的具体做法取得了很好的经验。农业产业化发展是优化农业结构和增加农民收入的现实选择。。     

The 2015 welfare reform of the National Basic Livelihood Security System in South Korea: Effects on economic outcomes

In July 2015, South Korea’s National Basic Livelihood Security System (NBLSS) was reformed for the purposes of eliminating welfare blind spots and reducing poverty. The reform is expected to affect the recipients’ economic behaviours and choices. In this study, we used changes in benefits and eligibility for the NBLSS under the customised benefit system to identify the effects of the change in the NBLSS on a proposed set of economic outcomes – income, labour supply, consumption, savings, poverty reduction. To estimate the effects, we used data from the 10th–12th waves of the Korea Welfare Panel Study and employed a difference‐in‐differences framework integrated with the propensity scores. We found that the NBLSS helps the poor to reduce financial and material hardships through income and consumption increments, but that it does not provide disincentives to the recipients from participating in the labour market or from saving.     

Tensions and contradictions in Australian social policy reform: compulsory Income Management and the National Disability Insurance Scheme

This paper explores contemporary contradictions and tensions in Australian social policy principles and governmental practices that are being used to drive behavioural change, such as compulsory income management. By means of compulsory income management the Australian Government determines how certain categories of income support recipients can spend their payments through the practice of quarantining a proportion of that payment. In this process some groups in the community, particularly young unemployed people and Indigenous Australians, are being portrayed as requiring a paternalistic push in order to make responsible choices. The poverty experienced by some groups of income support recipients appears to be seen as a consequence of poor spending patterns rather than economic and social inequalities. By contrast, Australia's National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) has been constructed as a person centred system of support that recognises the importance of both human agency and structural investment to expand personal choices and control. Here we look at the rationale guiding these developments to explore the tensions and contradictions in social policy more broadly, identifying what would be required if governments sought to promote greater autonomy, dignity and respect for people receiving income support payments in Australia.     

Neoliberal subjectivities and the behavioural focus on income management

This paper specifically addresses the behavioural focus of the income management regime, arguing that through its use of market logic and the reduction of social and political complexity, the regime is a technology of neoliberal governmentality. This paper finds that income management, whether compulsory or voluntary, blanket or Community based, regards the individual as the site of dysfunction, depoliticising and dehumanising broader socio economic historical factors in the process. Further, the focus on behavioural change creates the illusion that the market logic of income management will produce responsible citizens, which in turn obscures the possibility of redressing poverty and inequality.     

Intergenerational income mobility and inequality in South Korea

Using data from the Korean Labor and Income Panel Study (KLIPS), recent trends in intergenerational income mobility were explored, examining the relationship between income mobility and income inequality in South Korea. The study found that the intergenerational elasticity of income is about 0.2 and there is no clear‐cut trend in intergenerational income mobility. In addition, this study showed that there is no systematic relation between rising income inequality and intergenerational income mobility in contemporary Korea. Overall, the results indicate that intergenerational income mobility is irresponsive to the income inequality the respondents experienced growing up. It is assumed that education and welfare transfer programs might offset the consequences of income inequality by leading to upward mobility for children from low‐income households.     

市场化改革与收入差距扩大(英文)

在市场化过程中，中国出现了收入差距不断扩大的趋势，从而社会上出现了一些将收入差距扩大的原因归结为市场化改革的错误认识。本文通过对我国改革开放以来收入分配格局变化的主要特点和导致收入差距扩大的原因加以细致实证分析，对一些模糊认识加以澄清。本文认为在个人收入差距扩大的诸多因素中，传统计划体制遗留下来的一些制度和政策，在部门利益和地方利益驱使下新形成的有悖于市场体制规则的制度和政策，政府对市场缺失和市场扭曲采取的不作为态度，对资本节制和劳动保护的不足，政府对经济的过度干预，成为导致收入差距扩大和收入分配不公的最重要因素     

SPECIAL ISSUE： DISTRIBUTION OF NATIONAL INCOME IN A TRANSITIONAL ECONOMY Who is the predator,who the prey？ --an analysis of changes in the state of China＇s national income distribution

本文以2004年经济普查后修订的资金流量表为基础，依次从国民收入的初次分配和再分配两个阶段，分析了1992—2005年期间我国国民收入在企业、政府和居民三部门之间分配格局的变化，重点讨论了自1996年以来居民收入占比下降的原因。在分析初次分配格局时，本文将每个部门的初次分配收入占比表示为各要素分配份额按各要素收入中该部门所占比重加权得到的加权平均值。利用这一表示方式，我们校正了资金流量表中的要素分配份额，重新计算了1993—2005年间的国民收入分配格局，并推算了2006和2007年的国民收入分配格局。测算结果表明，居民部门在全国可支配收入中的占比在1996年达到最高，此后逐年降低，截止N2005年，总共下降了12．72个百分点。在初次分配和再分配阶段，居民部门分别下降了10．71和2．01个百分点。与之相对应，企业和政府部门在初次分配中的占比分别上升了7．49和3．21个百分点；在再分配阶段，居民和企业部门收入占比都下降，由此导致政府部门进一步上升3．17个百分点。我们还发现，国民收入的要素分配中劳动收入占比下降和财产收入占比下降，是居民部门在国民收入初次分配中占比下降的两个主要原因。在2005—2007年间，主要受生产水净额占比上升的影响，居民部门在国民收入中占比进一步下降了3个百分点以上．     

Economic well‐being of low‐income single‐mother families following welfare reform in the USA

This study explored changes in net disposable income for low‐income single‐mother families before and after the 1996 welfare reform in the USA. Although many studies on welfare reform have focused on employment or total family income as a way to measure low‐income single‐mother families’ economic well‐being, little is known about their net income after expenses related to entering the workforce. This study analyzed net disposable income after tax deductions and childcare costs to provide a more accurate understanding of income changes using data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation conducted by the US Census Bureau. The results revealed that while low‐income single mothers were working more after welfare reform, their net disposable income decreased during this time because their earnings were low and offset by an increase in childcare costs and a decline in means‐tested benefits, including Temporary Assistance for Needy Families benefits. Key Practitioner Message: ● To understand effects of the 1996 welfare reform on low‐income families’ economic well‐being; ● To understand comprehensive income sources and work related expenses of low‐income families; ● To provide policy suggestions for comprehensive childcare subsidies to support low‐income single mothers’ employment.     

我国中产阶层的规模、结构问题与发展对策

本文认为中产阶层不等于中等收入群体,应该从收入、职业和教育多个维度分析我国中产阶层的规模与结构。本文分析了中国综合社会调查（CGSS）2005年、2010年、2013年的数据,发现我国中等收入群体所占的比例已经较大,但真正意义上的中产阶层的比例仍然较小。中产阶层越来越集中于城市和东部地区,城乡之间、地区之间的社会结构差异越来越大,第一产业中的中产阶层发展也遇到了较大阻碍。本文认为,要壮大中产阶层,应该进一步增加居民收入,推动产业、职业结构调整,普及教育,推动农村地区、中西部地区中产阶层的发展,扶持农民工依靠技能提升、自主经营进入中产阶层。     

教育对非农就业工资收入不平等的解释研究

基于分位数回归方法和1989~2009年CHNS的入户数据,根据明瑟方程的回归结果显示,低收入组的教育收益率高于高收入组的教育收益率。通过重新构建的工资不平等程度度量变量和教育不平等以及经验差异度量变量,对离差模型的分位数回归结果显示虽然教育能够提高低收入群体的工资收入,但是教育差距并不能很好地解释收入不平等的扩大。     

Make Efforts to Develop an Olive-shaped Distribution Pattern: An Analysis Based on Data from the Chinese Social Survey for 2006-2013

Increasing the proportion of the middle income group is key to shrinking the income gap and developing an olive-shaped distribution structure in China. Data from the Chinese Social Survey for 2006 to 2013 show that the proportion of the middle income group oscillates between 27 percent and 28 percent. It is estimated that by 2020, we will have achieved an initial olive-shaped distribution structure (larger in the middle and smaller at each end) if the average income of the lower and lower middle income groups can be quadrupled and that of the middle and high income groups can be doubled. To achieve this aim, we need to ensure that residents’ incomes rise faster than GDP, continue large-scale poverty reduction, endeavor to improve the employment situation for college graduates and the new generation of migrant workers, improve the social security system, stabilize the price of goods and housing, and alleviate the pressure on the lower middle income group.