International Journal of Social Welfare最新文献

Based on longitudinal data from four waves (2011, 2013, 2015, and 2018) of the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study, we examined savings and savings changes among older couples in China using hierarchical linear models, explored any cohort differences, and analyzed the effects of the accessibility of the employee pension and the number of children on parents' savings. The results indicate that the savings of older couples continued to increase in old age, but the growth slowed down with age. For the cohort born before 1940, savings declined in later years. The cohorts born after 1940 had higher savings, but their savings grew less in later years. Older adults with access to the employee pension saved more and faster. Older adults with more than two children had lower savings, while those from younger cohorts were less impacted.

The social media platform WeChat is increasingly used by individuals with severe mental disorders (SMDs). However, few studies have examined WeChat use of adults with SMDs and its association with social participation in the Chinese context. This mixed-methods study examined the effects of WeChat use on this population's social participation. The results indicate that WeChat use was positively and significantly associated with social participation among older adults with SMDs, helping them maintain contact with family, relatives, friends, community residents, and mental health professionals. Owing to different life stages and associated social expectations, younger adults with SMDs were mainly concerned with employment or family obligations and were less likely to use WeChat for social interactions with friends and community residents. WeChat can be a useful tool to encourage social participation among older adults with SMDs; age-related expectations for participation need to be considered in the design and delivery of intervention services.

Enhancing social participation among low-income households has long been regarded as a component of building an inclusive and equitable society. This study examines the association between China's Dibao program and social participation among beneficiaries. Furthermore, it explores the heterogeneous effects between urban and rural groups as well as across age groups. We analyzed panel data from 2015 to 2017 and combined propensity score matching and differences-in-differences methods to examine the effects of Dibao on recipients' social participation in participatory governance (PG) service co-production (SC), and relational participation. This study demonstrates that receiving Dibao greatly enhances beneficiaries' social participation, PG, and SC, but has minimal impact on relational involvement. According to heterogeneity analysis, urban and middle-aged recipients are significantly affected by Dibao. Future reforms of Dibao and similar welfare programs need to tailor based on geographic differences and demographic diversity to enhance recipients' social participation.

Nonstandard employment is typically associated with reduced opportunities for workers to accumulate human capital via job training. One policy response is to require equal access to training for nonstandard employees. In this study, we investigate the impact of a 2007 Korean labor-market reform that required such access for nonstandard employees. Using a difference-in-difference methodology, we find that, overall, the reform reduced the incidence of employer-provided training for both regular and nonregular workers. At the employer level, the negative effect for regular workers attenuates over time, implying some type of adaptation or evasion by employers that preserves differential rates of training. Although the main effects on training were negative, we find considerable heterogeneity in outcomes. Specifically, the presence of a union is associated with a significantly greater probability of postreform training for nonregular workers, while the presence of performance-pay systems is associated with a significantly lower probability for nonregular workers and a higher probability for regular workers. Ultimately, these results imply that the success of labor-market reforms that seek to improve nonstandard job quality depends upon employer and labor-market characteristics. Such reforms may be most successful in situations where unions can help assure compliance with legislative intent.

This paper argues that public policies, including minimum income schemes (MIS), should devote specific attention to large families, in terms of both benefits' generosity and targeting, to avoid unfair penalizations. Adopting a child-centered approach to the definition of family size, and using a unique administrative-survey linked database, this study provides two main contributions for the Italian case. First, it documents the consumption-based absolute poverty outcomes according to sibling size, highlighting that large families are overexposed to this specific type of economic deprivation. Second, it investigates to what extent the household size and the number of children tend to be a penalizing factor for social benefit receipt. A key finding is that large families in absolute poverty are penalized in terms of both entitlement and generosity of MIS with the peculiar equivalence scale adopted by the scheme playing a crucial role.

Much research has shown that implementation behavior of frontline workers and the outcomes of public policies depend on encounters between frontline workers and citizens. However, relatively little is known about the agency of citizens in these encounters. This paper focuses on administrative burdens and psychological responses to stress as possible determinants of citizens' encounter behavior—defined as “behavioral efforts citizens employ during and in preparing for interaction with public authorities in order to master the demands of the public encounter.” Combining a framework categorizing citizens' state-encounter behavior and theory about administrative burdens, we ask whether citizens' behavior reflects their perceptions of administrative burdens, and whether learning, psychological and compliance burdens prompt different encounter behaviors? We use data from surveys among a representative sample of 1460 Danish citizens regarding encounters with tax and home care authorities. We find that perceived administrative burdens affect citizens' behavior, but contrary to expectations, we do not find that burdens discourage citizens from engaging with authorities. Higher perceived burdens tend to prompt activist behavior. Moreover, different types of burdens affect behaviors differently.

In the context of constraining services and support within public home care, this contribution analyses how older adults and home care workers experience and navigate administrative burdens. Relying on focus groups, interviews, and a survey conducted in the province of Québec (Canada), we demonstrate that older adults face an increasing number of administrative burdens designed to alter, delay, and restrict access to public services while homecare workers experience a loss of discretion in their practice due to the introduction of administrative requirements with dubious purposes. As such, administrative burdens play a vital role in the hidden politics of the welfare state and contribute to foster cynicism and a loss of faith in essential public services.

In many countries, large families with three or more children have high income poverty rates. In this article, we aim to understand why this is the case by examining the relevance of family structure, socio-economic characteristics, and welfare state transfers targeted at this family form. For our analyses, we use cross-sectional data from three waves (2017–2019) of the Austrian European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions dataset. Our results, based on descriptive statistics, logistic regressions, and decomposition analyses, confirm the higher poverty risk of large families compared with smaller families. However, when differentiating between poor and non-poor families, it is not the family type that seems to be relevant in explaining the poverty risk, but rather the parental work intensity, the age of the youngest child, the place of residence, being a single-parent household, and the parental migration background. Moreover, cash transfers from the welfare state, in particular family benefits, contribute to reducing poverty for a significant number of large families. Policy makers are therefore well advised to either further increase the cash transfers targeted at large families, and/or to improve the employability and ultimately the work intensity of parents in large families in order to reduce their income poverty risk.

The relationship between work–family and family–work conflict and attitudes toward having children has been established; however, how it varies by different national cultural dimensions remains unclear. This study seeks to address this gap by examining the moderating effects of two cultural dimensions, individualism–collectivism and indulgence-restraint, across a sample of 40 countries and regions. Data from the 2012 round of the International Social Survey Program (ISSP) are utilized, encompassing 30,613 participants (M = 43.33 years old; SD = 13.22). Multilevel modeling is employed to integrate individual-level and country-level factors and examine the cross-level moderating effects. The findings demonstrate that both work–family conflict and family–work conflict are positively associated with negative attitudes toward having children. Moreover, these relationships between work–family and family–work conflicts and negative attitudes toward having children are more pronounced in individualistic societies compared with collectivist societies. Furthermore, these relationships are stronger in restrained societies as opposed to indulgent societies. These results underscore the significance of addressing work–family and family–work conflict both at the policy and practice levels and emphasize the need for considering cultural dimensions.

An extensive literature has shown that the rules that govern access to social safety net programs create undue administrative burdens for citizens in accessing the programs. In this paper, we contribute to this literature by describing the experience of older adults with one US social safety net program, the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program. Our study gathered data from a total of 267 older adults through interviews and focus groups. Many of our respondents had recently experienced several financial, health, and life crises which affected their ability to seek information, memorize important details, and plan adequately. The main finding of the study is that older adults often experience multiple challenges whose effects tend to amplify each other, affecting their decision-making abilities. The findings suggest that policies that simplify eligibility processes, reduce the amount of paperwork, and minimize the number of client-caseworker encounters, have the potential to facilitate greater program access.