Grant Payments Research Articles

Финансово-правовые аспекты грантовой поддержки научных исследований

The subject of the research in this article is the legal relations that develop in the process of obtaining and using grants to finance scientific research. The criteria of preferential taxation, the specifics of financial and legal relations of organizations providing conditions for the implementation of the project, and research teams are determined. The necessity of improving legislation in the field of grant provision and implementation, its important theoretical and practical significance both within the country is substantiated, so it is at the interstate level. The article reveals the legal basis for the provision and use of scientific grants, the specifics of agreements on the provision of scientific grants and the legal relations of participants in grant agreements. Typical issues of taxation of grant funds and payment of insurance premiums are analyzed. The peculiarities of the subject composition of the legal relations on the provision of grants are emphasized. In order to study the practice of selecting projects supported by a scientific grant, the documents of the Russian Science Foundation were analyzed, analytical materials of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Russian Federation were studied.

Industry-Sponsored Research Payments to Gastroenterologists and Hepatologists in the United States Between 2014 and 2021.

Aim This cross-sectional study aimed to examine the scale and trends of industry-sponsored research payments to gastroenterologists and hepatologists in the United States from 2014 to 2021. Methods Using the Open Payments Database and the National Plan and Provider Enumeration System (NPPES), the study analyzed both grant and research payments made to individual gastroenterologists and associated payments made for research where gastroenterologists and hepatologists served as principal investigators. Results After adjusting for inflation, the study found that a total of $1.5 billion was allocated to gastroenterologists by 284 companies during this period. Only 15.9% of the 20,986 gastroenterologists received at least one research payment, with associated research payments accounting for 97.6% of all payments. The study also revealed a significant increase in the number of gastroenterologists receiving associated research payments and a more than twofold increase in payments for registered clinical trials from 2014 to 2021. Conclusion The healthcare industry allocated large amounts of research funding to gastroenterologists and hepatologists. The study underscores the critical role of industry-sponsored clinical trials in advancing gastroenterological research and treatments.

Spatial optimization of nutrient reduction measures on agricultural land to improve water quality: A coupled modeling approach

AbstractThe objective of this study is to identify the optimal spatial distribution of Best Management Practices (BMPs) to reduce total phosphorus (TP) runoff from agricultural land in the largest Canadian watershed draining into Lake Erie, the Great Lake most vulnerable to eutrophication. BMP measures include reduced fertilizer application, cover crops, buffer strips, and the restoration of wetlands. Environmental SWAT model results feed into a spatial optimization procedure using two separate objective functions to distinguish between public BMP program implementation costs (PIC) on the one hand and farmers’ private pollution abatement costs (PAC) on the other hand. The latter account for the opportunity costs of land retirement and changing land productivity. PAC are initially lower than PIC but exceed the latter after 30% of the annual TP baseline load is eliminated. This suggests that under optimal conditions existing grant and incentive payments cover the economic costs farmers face up to a maximum of 30% of the baseline load reduction. Imposing further reductions of up to 40% results in a cost to farmers of almost $52 million per year. This is 45% higher than the optimal solution based on PIC and therefore not deemed incentive‐compatible under the watershed's existing cost‐sharing scheme.

P127 Baricitinib Efficacy in Moderate Rheumatoid Arthritis - A Post-hoc Analysis from two Phase III Trials

Abstract Background/Aims Baricitinib, an oral selective JAK 1/2 inhibitor, is approved for treating adults with moderate-to-severe active rheumatoid arthritis (RA). This analysis aims to report the efficacy of baricitinib in patients with moderate RA at weeks (W)12 and 24 from two phase III studies, RA-BEAM (NCT01710358) and RA-BUILD (NCT01721057). Methods This post-hoc analysis included patients from RA-BEAM (inadequate responders to methotrexate) and RA-BUILD (inadequate responders to conventional synthetic DMARDs) with moderate RA at baseline (defined as Disease Activity Score (DAS)-28 with C-reactive protein (CRP) of > 3.2 and ≤5.1). This analysis reports treatment response as low disease activity (LDA) defined by DAS28-CRP ≤3.2 and >2.6 or remission defined by < 2.6 and presents descriptive data at W12 and W24, including pain (visual analogue scale [VAS]), fatigue (Functional Assessment of Chronic Illness Therapy-Fatigue [FACIT-F]), physical functioning (Health Assessment Questionnaire-Disability Index [HAQ-DI]), Work Productivity and Activity Impairment (WPAI), duration and severity of morning stiffness, joint pain, and fatigue using daily diaries. Continuous variables are presented as median with interquartile range and categorical variables as frequencies and percentages. Results At baseline, moderate RA was observed in 117 patients on baricitinib 4-mg, 80 on adalimumab, and 133 on placebo in RA-BEAM; and 80 on baricitinib 2-mg, 63 on baricitinib 4-mg, and 73 on placebo in RA-BUILD. In RA-BEAM at W12, 46.2%, 37.5%, and 9.0% of patients on baricitinib 4-mg, adalimumab, and placebo, respectively, achieved remission. In RA-BUILD at W12, 38.8%, 44.4%, and 13.7% of patients on baricitinib 2-mg, baricitinib 4-mg, and placebo, respectively, achieved remission. At W24, a further increase in the percentage of patients achieving remission was reported in both trials (Table). Improvement in pain (VAS), FACIT-F, and HAQ-DI was similar across RA-BEAM and RA-BUILD with baricitinib treatment (Table). In both trials, patients reported improvement in duration and severity of morning stiffness, worst tiredness, and worst joint pain with baricitinib treatment (Table). Additionally, baricitinib treatment yielded numerical improvement in impairment of daily activity and work productivity in RA-BEAM (Table). Conclusion In patients with moderate RA, baricitinib markedly improved signs and symptoms of RA and patient-reported outcomes (PROs) at W12 and W24. Disclosure B.W. Kirkham: Member of speakers’ bureau; B.K. has received speaker’s payments from AbbVie, Eli Lilly and Company, Galapagos, Janssen, Novartis, Pfizer, and UCB. Grants/research support; B. K. has received research support from Eli Lilly and Company and Novartis. Other; B. K. has been an adviser for AbbVie, Eli Lilly and Company, Galapagos, Janssen, Novartis, Pfizer, and UCB. B. W. has received meeting support payments from Eli Lilly and Company. E. Nikiphorou: Honoraria; E.N. received speaker honoraria from Celltrion, Pfizer, Sanofi, Gilead, Galapagos, AbbVie, Eli Lilly and Company, and Fresenius. Grants/research support; E.N. holds grants from Pfizer and Eli Lilly and Company. Other; E.N. participated in advisory boards for Celltrion, Pfizer, Sanofi, Gilead, Galapagos, AbbVie, Eli Lilly and Company, and Fresenius. E. N. received travel payments from Eli Lilly and Company. C.J. Edwards: Honoraria; C.E received honoraria from Eli Lilly and Company. Grants/research support; C.E. received grant payments from Abbvie, Pfizer, Roche, Biogen, and Eli Lilly and Company. Other; C.E. received personal fees from Abbvie, Astra-Zeneca, BMS, Celltrion, Fresenius, Galapagos, Gilead, GSK, Janssen, Roche, Pfizer, and Sanofi and travel and meeting payments from Eli Lilly and Company. M. Sheesh: Corporate appointments; M. S. is a full-time employee at Eli Lilly and Company. Shareholder/stock ownership; M. S. is a minor shareholder at Eli Lilly and Company. E. Haladyj: Corporate appointments; E. H. is a full-time employee at Eli Lilly and Company. Shareholder/stock ownership; E. H. is a minor shareholder at Eli Lilly and Company. J. Gerwien: Corporate appointments; J. G. is a full-time employee at Eli Lilly and Company. Shareholder/stock ownership; J. G. is a minor shareholder at Eli Lilly and Company. L. Zaremba-Pechmann: Corporate appointments; L. Z-P is a contractor at HaaPACS gmbH. P.C. Taylor: Consultancies; P. T. has been a consultant for AbbVie, Biogen, Galapagos, Gilead, GlaxoSmithKline, Janssen, Eli Lilly and Company, BMS, Pfizer, Roche, Celltrion, Sanofi, Nordic Pharma, Fresenius, and UCB. Grants/research support; P. T. received grant/research support from Galapagos. Other; P. T. has received meeting support payments from Eli Lilly and Company.

PayPal launches new service to speed up distribution of grants

PayPal has launched a partnership with the National Philanthropic Trust and Vanguard Charitable to roll out a new Grant Payments service that enables donor‐advised fund (DAF) sponsors, community foundations and other grantmakers to deliver grants to charities quickly and electronically via PayPal.

New PayPal service aims for quicker distribution of grant funds

Online payment processing platform PayPal has launched a new partnership with the National Philanthropic Trust and Vanguard Charitable to roll out a new Grant Payments service that enables donor‐advised fund (DAF) sponsors, community foundations and other grantmakers to deliver grants to nonprofits quickly and electronically via PayPal.

The techno-economic feasibility and carbon footprint of recycling and electrolysing CO2 emissions into ethanol and syngas in an isobutene biorefinery

With the prevalent need for more circular and carbon-neutral chemicals and fuels such as bio-isobutene (bio-IBN), bioethanol, and syngas, the integration of waste and emission valorisation technologies with biorefinery production is critical for greater resource efficiency and Europe's green transition. To determine the technical feasibility, economic value, and carbon footprint of recycling and electrolysing CO2 available during 2nd generation bio-IBN production into by-products, the material and energy process flows of bio-IBN production (scenario 1), bio-IBN integrated low temperature (LT) CO2 electrolysis for ethanol production (scenario 2), and bio-IBN integrated high temperature (HT) CO2 electrolysis for syngas production (scenario 3), were each simulated and tested in the biochemical process engineering software SuperPro Designer, MS Excel biorefinery template, and the LCA software GaBi_ts, respectively. The results suggest that biorefinery biowaste and CO2 conversion enable higher CO2 savings for scenario 1's bio-IBN product (0.587 kg CO2eq./kgIBN) and scenario 3's syngas product (0.359 kg CO2eq./kgSyngas) compared to other products on the market. However, only scenario 3 was able to generate a net profit at the base scale ($67.92 million) and required financial support (i.e. capital grant payments) to render a positive NPV2021. While scaling production to >102,955.96 tIBN/year improved production costs per product, with scenario 3 being the exception, economic returns are not possible or feasible due to resource and technological constraints. Given the state of development of bio-IBN production, more technically mature biorefineries (e.g., bioethanol) could serve as a safer source of CO2 for HT CO2 electrolysis product manufacture in the future. Considering their carbon savings, selling bio-IBN and syngas at premium prices of $3.42/kgIBN and $1.60/kgsyngas, rather than their market prices, could be justified to obtain profitability and a positive NPV2021.

No Sunshine for Women: Industry Payment Disparities in Vascular Surgery

Industry relationships provide opportunities for professional growth and technical innovation. This study characterized the gender disparities in financial relationships between industry and vascular surgeons. A retrospective study was performed using the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid open payments database. Data were extracted for all payments made to vascular surgeons from 2014 to 2020, with gender determined for all vascular surgeons receiving payments. The physician profile or publicly available website was used to determine gender. The payment form and amount were collected. The average payment per category, by gender, was calculated. A total of 438,367 payments were made to 5380 vascular surgeons (87% men and 13% women) from 2014 to 2020. The average payment for a male surgeon was significantly greater than that for a female surgeon ($247 ± $3693 vs $150 ± $817; P < .001). When examining the payment categories, the female surgeons received 13% of industry payments in education and 26% of industry grant payments. However, they received 0% of licensing or royalty payments, 0% of ownership, and only 3% of honoraria payments. Among the largest 15 companies, which represented >70% of payments to surgeons, men earned, on average, 2.5 times more per payment than women, with a range of 30% to 1000% more per person (Fig 1). During the study period, the average male vascular surgeon received approximately nearly three times more in industry payments than did the average female surgeon ($21,720 vs $8276). The average annual amount paid to surgeons by industry per year had decreased by 30%, from $4703 to $3279. Despite this overall decline, the relationship between payments to male and female surgeons remained constant at 2.6 to 2.8 times throughout the study period (Fig 2). Analysis of the open payments database revealed that female vascular surgeons earned less than one half as much as men from industry, with little improvement in the payment disparities over time.Fig 2View Large Image Figure ViewerDownload Hi-res image Download (PPT)

Deinstitutionalization Through Optimism: The Community Mental Health Act of 1963.

Deinstitutionalization Through Optimism: The Community Mental Health Act of 1963.

BACK TO THE DRAWING BOARD?: AFRIBUSINESS NPC V MINISTER OF FINANCE [2020] ZASCA 140 AND THE POTENTIAL FOR RECONSIDERATION OF PREFERENTIAL PROCUREMENT LAW &amp; POLICY IN SOUTH AFRICA

A 2020 judgment of South Africa’s second-highest court is the most significant in the field of public procurement law and policy since the landmark series of AllPay cases concerning the outsourcing of social grant payments. In the field of black economic empowerment more generally, where multiple and conflicting goals have been pursued, Afribusiness constitutes a distinct judicial intervention into disciplining the quite wide discretion that public bodies possess and have exercised across government since 1994 to adopt such policies in the pursuit of substantive equality and affirmative action. The decision is best understood as part of the ongoing process of reform of South Africa’s public procurement system that began around 2012. The Supreme Court of Appeal’s order that the procurement regulations providing for race and gender preferences are invalid has sparked interest in the upcoming hearing at the Constitutional Court both among regulatory bodies (including the broad-based black economic empowerment (BBBEE) body) and within business sectors.The court was specifically critical of the prequalification criteria mechanism but also struck down the 30% quota (mandatory sub-contracting) mechanism in the 2017 Preferential Procurement Regulations. The judgment has some ambiguity as to whether it is based on statutory, constitutional, or a combination of statutory and constitutional grounds. The case raises an important regulatory question: Does Parliament or the Minister of Finance and National Treasury have authority to issue a constitutionally compliant framework for the regulation of preferential procurement policy? Further, some components of the public procurement legislative framework are likely to be sent back to the drawing, hastening but also complicating government efforts already underway. And state owned enterprises and other public bodies aiming to achieve competitiveness, fairness, equity, transparency, and cost-effectiveness in public procurement will need to manage the legal risks posed by the judicial remedy, finding the regulations invalid but suspending that invalidity.

Program Awareness, Social Capital, and Perceptions of Trees Influence Participation in Private Land Conservation Programs in Queensland, Australia.

Voluntary private land conservation (PLC) is becoming an increasingly important complement to state protected areas around the world. PLC programs can serve as valuable strategies to increase biodiversity on agricultural lands, but their effectiveness depends on high participation rates. Amidst growing concerns regarding scalability and effectiveness of conservation strategies like national parks, researchers and practitioners are looking for new strategies to increase adoption of PLC. This study investigates the demographic, social, and psychological factors associated with participation in three classes of voluntary PLC programs-grant payments, land management agreements, and covenants-and how this relates to landholders' attitudes toward tree clearing. We compare participation rates between these programs in Queensland and identify the most frequently cited reasons why land managers have or have not participated. Land managers who are more involved in agricultural organizations and whose tree clearing decisions are more influenced by the aesthetic value of trees are more likely to have participated in one or more of these programs. Participation was highly biased toward once-off grant payments, and participation in covenants was lowest of all programs. Although 58% of land managers have never participated, nearly half expressed interest in one or more programs. A lack of program knowledge and perceived losses of autonomy were the most frequently cited barriers to participation. We conclude with recommendations for increasing participation rates and raise important questions that need to be answered in order to promote a PLC culture that effectively curbs ongoing habitat degradation.

Collateral damages: Cash transfer and debt transfer in South Africa

Abstract Over the past decade, two development programs–cash transfer and financial inclusion–were bundled in global development discourse. Despite differences in their purported objectives, cash transfers are increasingly delivered via financial inclusion infrastructures and technologies. One important yet under-appreciated consequence of this bundling is the possible transference of credit and debt to cash transfer recipients. In this paper, I explore how the South African cash transfer program incorporated recipients into a highly coercive and monopolistic financial system predicated on proprietary technologies. The proliferation of such technologies enabled cash grants to be transformed into collateral for credit and encumbered by debts to private companies. Specialized payment technologies encouraged recipients to accept loans and ensured that they could not default, making cash transfer a site of nearly risk-free profit. My work is informed by over two years of ethnographic fieldwork, hundreds of qualitative interviews, and archival data from the South African Parliament and Constitutional Court. My study finds that while grant payment technologies promise to mitigate the contradictions between providing cash transfers for basic needs and offering profitable financial products, in practice, they can worsen indebtedness. By focusing on the materiality of financial inclusion technologies, I demonstrate how the efficacy of cash transfer programs can be undermined, when debts as well as grants are passed on to recipients.

The dark side of licensing cryptocurrency exchanges as payment institutions

The ultimate objective of cryptocurrencies is to become a payment system substituting, complementing, or competing with the conventional payment systems. Irrespective of whether such an objective could be accomplished, the functional similarities between certain cryptocurrencies and fiat money has persuaded competent authorities of certain EU Member States to grant payment institution licenses to cryptocurrency exchanges. At first blush, granting such an authorization would seem to be a step forward as it would bring otherwise unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges within the scope of the existing payment regulatory framework. However, this authorization effectively applies payment laws to new payment infrastructures that rely on volatile settlement assets with probabilistic finality. Since the volatility and finality risks cannot be fully addressed under the existing payment laws, an alternative policy option would be granting a special license to cryptocurrency businesses or introducing ring-fencing mechanisms to protect the conventional payment systems from the risks of cryptocurrency payments.

The Cash Flow Advantages of 3PLs as Supply Chain Orchestrators

With an increasingly open global economy and advanced technologies, some third-party logistics providers (3PLs), such as Eternal Asia, have emerged as supply chain orchestrators, linking buyers with manufacturers worldwide. In addition to their traditional transportation services, these orchestrators provide procurement and financial assistance to buyers in the supply network, especially small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in developing countries. Oftentimes, the 3PLs can obtain payment delay arrangements from the financially stronger manufacturers, which in turn can be partially extended to the SME buyers, alleviating their high costs of capital. To illustrate the efficiency improvements of the aforementioned practice, we use a model to explicitly capture the cash-flow dynamics in a supply chain consisting of a manufacturer, a buyer, and a 3PL firm and explore the conditions under which this innovation benefits all parties in the supply chain so that the business model is sustainable. We characterize these conditions and show that the supply chain profit can be higher under leadership by the 3PL than by the manufacturer. The intermediary role of the 3PL is crucial, in that its benefit may vanish if the manufacturer chooses to directly grant payment delay to the buyers. We demonstrate that the benefit is more likely to occur with more buyers. We further identify the unique Nash bargaining solution for the transportation time and the payment delay grace period. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/msom.2017.0667 . This paper has been accepted for the Manufacturing &amp; Service Operations Management Special Issue on Value Chain Innovations in Developing Economies.

The Dark Side of Licensing Cryptocurrency Exchanges as Payment Institutions

The ultimate objective of cryptocurrencies is to become a payment system substituting, complementing, or competing with the existing conventional fiat-based payment systems. Irrespective of whether such an objective could be accomplished, the functional similarities between certain cryptocurrencies and fiat money has persuaded competent authorities of certain EU Member States to grant payment institution licenses to cryptocurrency exchanges. At first blush, granting such an authorization would seem to be a step forward as it would bring otherwise unregulated cryptocurrency exchanges within the scope of the existing payment regulatory framework. However, such an authorization not only faces major legal challenges related to the definition of a payment institution, but also introduces new lesser-known risks. Aside from the semantic and definitional issues, authorizing cryptocurrency exchanges as payment institutions can bring activities and instruments - with a different risk profile than that of conventional payment instruments - within the scope of payment systems. It appears that such risks embedded in those instruments cannot be fully addressed under the existing payment laws. This paper studies two examples of unattended risks under the cryptocurrency-exchange-as-payment-institution regime. The first risk concerns the use of untethered, non-convertible, illiquid and volatile settlement assets for settlement purposes in cryptocurrency exchanges. The second risk concerns the risks associated with finality of settlements arising from the use of probabilistic finality in some of the most popular cryptocurrency blockchains. Given that in the conventional payment institutions central bank money or commercial bank money is primarily used as the settlement asset, such risks have already been addressed or otherwise taken for granted, however, in cryptocurrency exchanges, the risks involved in the settlement of liabilities with an illiquid and volatile asset relying on probabilistically final settlement mechanism cannot be dealt with by the existing applicable regulations. As the risks cannot be addressed within the current European payment regulation framework, an alternative policy option would be granting a special license to cryptocurrency businesses or introducing ring-fencing mechanism to protect the conventional payment systems from the risks of cryptocurrency payments.

Social Grant Payments – a Crisis Averted?

Social Grant Payments – a Crisis Averted?

Asset-building payments for ecosystem services: assessing landowner perceptions of reforestation incentives in Lebanon

Aim of study: Incentivising landowners to supply ecosystem services remains challenging, especially when this requires long-term investments such as reforestation. We investigated how landowners perceive, and would respond to, distinct types of incentives for planting diverse native trees on private lands in Lebanon. Our aim was to understand landowners’ attitudes towards hypothetical Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) contracts options; their likely participation; and the potential additionality they would provide. Area of study: Highland villages situated within eight of Lebanon’s 20 Important Plant Areas Materials and methods: Mixed-methods surveys were conducted with 34 landowners to determine past, present and future land-use strategies. Study participants were presented with three differently structured reforestation contract options (or schemes). The three schemes (results-based loan, action-based grant, and results-based payments) differed in their expected risks and benefits to landowners. Qualitative debriefing questions followed each of the schemes presented. Main results: Although the results-based loan did deter uptake relative to the lower risk action-based grant, results-based payments did not significantly increase uptake or planting area, suggesting asymmetric attitudes to risk. Qualitative probing revealed economic, social (e.g. trust) and institutional factors (e.g. legal implications of planting forest trees on private land) that limited willingness to participate in the results-based contract option. Research highlights: This study demonstrates the importance of combining qualitative and quantitative methods to better understand landowner perceptions of incentives and risks, particularly in challenging socio-political contexts.

Principles of Child Health Care Financing.

After passage of the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, more children and young adults have become insured and have benefited from health care coverage than at any time since the creation of the Medicaid program in 1965. From 2009 to 2015, the uninsurance rate for children younger than 19 years fell from 9.7% to 5.3%, whereas the uninsurance rate for young adults 19 to 25 years of age declined from 31.7% to 14.5%. Nonetheless, much work remains to be done. The American Academy of Pediatrics (AAP) believes that the United States can and should ensure that all children, adolescents, and young adults from birth through the age of 26 years who reside within its borders have affordable access to high-quality and comprehensive health care, regardless of their or their families' incomes. Public and private health insurance should safeguard existing benefits for children and take further steps to cover the full array of essential health care services recommended by the AAP. Each family should be able to afford the premiums, deductibles, and other cost-sharing provisions of the plan. Health plans providing these benefits should ensure, insofar as possible, that families have a choice of professionals and facilities with expertise in the care of children within a reasonable distance of their residence. Traditional and innovative payment methodologies by public and private payers should be structured to guarantee the economic viability of the pediatric medical home and of other pediatric specialty and subspecialty practices to address developing shortages in the pediatric specialty and subspecialty workforce, to promote the use of health information technology, to improve population health and the experience of care, and to encourage the delivery of evidence-based and quality health care in the medical home, as well as in other outpatient, inpatient, and home settings. All current and future health care insurance plans should incorporate the principles for child health financing outlined in this statement. Espousing the core principle to do no harm, the AAP believes that the United States must not sacrifice any of the hard-won gains for our children. Medicaid, as the largest single payer of health care for children and young adults, should remain true to its origins as an entitlement program; in other words, future fiscal or regulatory reforms of Medicaid should not reduce the eligibility and scope of benefits for children and young adults below current levels nor jeopardize children's access to care. Proposed Medicaid funding "reforms" (eg, institution of block grant, capped allotment, or per-capita capitation payments to states) will achieve their goal of securing cost savings but will inevitably compel states to reduce enrollee eligibility, trim existing benefits (such as Early and Periodic Screening, Diagnostic, and Treatment), and/or compromise children's access to necessary and timely care through cuts in payments to providers and delivery systems. In fact, the AAP advocates for increased Medicaid funding to improve access to essential care for existing enrollees, fund care for eligible but uninsured children once they enroll, and accommodate enrollment growth that will occur in states that choose to expand Medicaid eligibility. The AAP also calls for Congress to extend funding for the Children's Health Insurance Program, a plan vital to the 8.9 million children it covered in fiscal year 2016, for a minimum of 5 years.

Brazil's 'doomsday' scenario.

Grants in Rio go unpaid as science coffers are raided.

Insecurity in South African Social Security: An Examination of Social Grant Deductions, Cancellations, and Waiting

In 2012, the South African Social Security Agency (SASSA) contracted a private company, Cash Paymaster Services (CPS), to design a standardised national social assistance payment and registration system. The national card-based biometric enrolment and payment system was advanced as a way to make social grant payment more secure – for claimants, the state, and the national fiscus. In practice, however, it translated into forms of insecurity, which served to promote and reproduce precarity. This article considers some of these insecurities, with a focus on the three most pervasive: the cancellation of grants, the expansive, unauthorised monetary deductions from claimants’ accounts, and the new kinds of waiting that the system introduced.