International Journal of Social Welfare最新文献

This article examines Iran's welfare regime and pays close attention to the gendered and religious dimensions of Iranian social policies. Despite the formal recognition of social security coverage as a citizenship right, Iran’s welfare system remains uneven in its coverage. About half of Iran's population benefits from state-provided social insurance programs, with others dependent on community support and social assistance. Simultaneously, while there have been notable advancements in educational attainment and reproductive health among women, a significant proportion of women are not attached to the labor market and rely heavily on family and state social assistance rather than on social insurance coverage. Emphasizing the role of religion, this article illuminates the country's social policy landscape and the multifaceted factors underpinning or hindering its welfare formation.

The fact that a considerable number of people in rich societies do not have the means to obtain the minimum necessities raises legitimate questions for policy. Older adults are especially vulnerable because of deteriorating health, rising costs of medical care and loss of labour income. We use administrative panel data over the period 2012–2021 and a budget-based poverty line to estimate the extent of poverty among Dutch citizens aged 50 years and older. Our results show that old-age poverty is low compared to poverty among younger age groups, especially among the over-65s. Moreover, it is more prevalent, more frequently occurring and more persistent among first-generation immigrants than among natives. Second-generation immigrants are also more vulnerable, but their disadvantage is much smaller and limited to people who have not yet reached retirement age. These results point to the importance of the Dutch state pension scheme in preventing poverty among older adults.

This article examines the redistributive effects of the 2019 reform on the benefits of Brazil's federal public service pension scheme for old-age and survivors' benefits. We developed an actuarial model to compare the Current Situation (which applies to those who entered public service from 2020 onward) with the three cohorts under the Old Situation (those who joined before 2004, those who joined between 2004 and 2012, and those who joined between 2013 and 2019). We calculated four pension indicators, breaking down the results by gender, as well as teaching and non-teaching staff. The reforms led to reductions in both replacement rates and required rates. Additionally, the internal rates of return decreased, while effective rates increased. Women and teachers were the most negatively affected by these changes. The composition of required rates between old-age and survivors' pensions has also shifted. Overall, the reforms diminished the redistributive characteristics and the adequacy while increasing their equity and progressivity.

While it is well established that welfare bureaucrats hold some discretionary power in implementing welfare policies, scholars of the administrative burden concept have only recently begun to consider their individual impacts on welfare recipients' experiences of onerous state encounters. This article aims to explore how welfare recipients' perceptions of personal interactions with welfare bureaucrats shape their experiences of administrative burden, specifically their psychological costs, by drawing on biographical–narrative interviews conducted with 33 (former) welfare benefit recipients in Germany. The results reveal that welfare recipients perceive individual welfare bureaucrats as responsible for reducing, increasing, or creating certain psychological costs they experience and that welfare recipients themselves respond to these costs and negotiate them to some extent. This article contributes to the growing literature on citizens' experiences of administrative burden and expands the concepts of psychological costs and citizen agency by building on theoretical frameworks of coping behaviours in response to stress and psychological costs. The results also confirm a need for policy changes that support, rather than discourage, more case-sensitive approaches to welfare benefits and employment services.

This qualitative study examined the challenges affecting the well-being and coping strategies of Chin irregular migrant workers in Malaysia. Using non-governmental organization referrals and snowball sampling, 25 participants were recruited for semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions. The findings revealed that participants experienced mistreatment, discrimination, and financial exploitation from employers and co-workers because of their irregular status, ethnic background, and language barriers. Fears of detention, deportation, restricted access to public healthcare, and discriminatory treatment affected their daily mental challenges and mental health. Religious devotion, alcohol consumption, and cohabitation were found to be coping strategies for addressing struggles, some of which are harmful coping mechanisms that lead to health problems. Therefore, collaboration between Myanmar and Malaysia is crucial for regularizing migrant status, providing accessible medical care without fear of repercussions, and enabling the use of formal channels for remittances to improve the health and well-being of these individuals.

The aging population in the United States, combined with older adults' strong preference for aging in place, has driven an increased demand for home and community-based services (HCBS). Medicaid 1915(c) waivers are a critical component of the social welfare system, providing essential services such as homemaker services, personal care, and assistive technology to help economically vulnerable older adults with physical difficulties continue living in their homes. This study investigates state-level differences in the availability, accommodation, and generosity of 1915(c) waivers for older adults. Data include approved state waiver applications, Genworth State Cost of Care, Medicare-Medicaid Coordination Office reports, and the Medicaid Analytic Extract dataset. Findings reveal pronounced differences among states in these key areas. This study offers critical insights for policymakers, emphasizing the importance of expanding service variation, increasing slot allocation, incorporating participant direction more broadly, and enhancing generosity.

The literature on labour market segmentation traditionally looks at servitisation as the main structural driver behind the rise of employment precariousness, overlooking another crucial engine of the knowledge-economy transition: the Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) revolution. This paper proposes a task-based approach to complement the skill-biased framework usually applied to labour market segmentation, investigating the correlation between occupational exposure to the risk of automation and low-quality employment. The empirical analysis, based on 14 countries sampled from ESS (2002–2018), shows a strong correlation between technological replaceability and low income across all of Western Europe, especially after the Great Recession, while its association with atypical employment is mainly driven by fixed-term contracts in Central and Southern Europe and by part-time arrangements in Anglo-Saxon and Scandinavian countries. Overall, a “recalibrated” dualisation emerges in Western European labour markets, characterised by the diffusion of low labour earnings and atypical contracts among mid-skill routine workers, besides the low-skill service precariat.

This study examined user trust in Nav among groups receiving various benefits and assistance from Nav. Based on institutional theory and research, the central hypothesis is that those users who have been allocated selective benefits involving discretionary judgments, especially social assistance, will have less trust in Nav than other users. In addition, users who are satisfied with the service they have received from their supervisors will report higher levels of trust toward Nav than other users. The empirical basis for the study is Nav's annual user surveys (2008–2023). The two hypotheses were supported, but the main differences are between social assistance and other groups. Furthermore, the condition for granting benefits explained less of the variation in trust than the interaction users have with Nav. The study argues that institutional factors matter for trust in the welfare state and that a holistic view of users' life situations should be used to understand their trust toward the welfare state.

The role of digital technology in the lives of older adults is becoming increasingly critical. Guided by the displacement theory, this study examines the characteristics of older Internet users, the relationship between Internet use and common activities, and the relationship between Internet use and happiness among Chinese older adults. Using the 2018 and 2021 Chinese General Social Survey data, the study found that Internet use was generally associated with active and increased engagement in most activities, except for watching traditional mediums (TV/DVDs). Meanwhile, the connection between Internet use and perceived happiness was not established, as only the unadjusted models in 2018 showed a significant positive association between daily Internet use and older adults' perceived happiness. This study underscores the potential of digital technology to support active aging and calls for holistic digital integration strategies. The findings have significant implications for policymakers and stakeholders in creating an age-friendly digital environment in today's evolving digital era in China and beyond.

This article focuses on a Danish study of an early childhood intervention that targets young minority ethnic children and their parents. The intervention, termed ‘mandatory learning programme’ is an example of current European policies that endeavour to support young children's learning as key to enhancing their future school performance and fighting inequality and marginalisation. This study employs document analysis and ethnographic methods to examine the political representations of the problems targeted by the intervention and to investigate how the intervention affects parents' everyday lives. The findings reveal that the parents involved in the intervention find it challenging to maintain their engagement in education and work; hence concluding, the intervention risks enhancing exclusion from society, despite its aim to prevent exactly that.