Minimum Living Research Articles

Social Assistance Programs and Child Poverty Alleviation — A Comparison Between Hong Kong and Mainland China

This paper compares the major child poverty alleviation policy in Hong Kong and the urban regions of Mainland China, i.e. Comprehensive Social Security Allowance (CSSA) Scheme and Minimum Living Security Standards (MLSS), respectively. It aims to examine whether CSSA and MLSS can tackle child poverty, to identify similarities and dissimilarities of CSSA and MLSS, and finally to suggest future policy implications or directions. A methodology of comprehensive systematic review is used to search for the relevant literature. The findings show that children living in poor families faced food consumption difficulties, lived in overcrowded environment and lacked education‐related financial support and learning resources. Children's rights emphasized in the UNCRC (United Nations, 1989) in different dimensions of living standards were often unmet due to the limited support from these two cash transfer policies. Poor children experiencing multiple disadvantages need more than just monetary or material assistance. Such findings can provide evidence for policy makers to craft holistic responses to meet the needs and remove the barriers that poor children face in China.

Rastin Social Takaful ( RST )

Rastin (RST) is a financial subsystem of Rastin PLS banking system. RST provides necessary background for depositors' participation in benevolent activities of takaful and interest-free loans in various fields. includes two sections of Social Takaful which involves the duty of people of society in alleviation of other's penury, and Ensure Dependency that is obligation of government in fulfilling minimum livelihood of the people of the society. Mechanism of fulfilling Takaful, including grants and interestfree loans are defined under Rastin PLS banking. In this scheme, depositor permits the bank to invest their funds through Rastin PLS banking to donate takaful payments or interest-free loans from the principal, or profit of his investments to needy persons introduced by depositors or Welfare Organization, and report to depositor and supervisory authorities. Specific governmental authorities are responsible for supervision and surveillance of takaful payments.

China's social assistance policy: experiences and future directions

The Minimum Living Standard Guarantee System (MLSGS) forms the core of China's current social assistance policy, and special assistance programmes are used to supplement this policy. This paper scrutinizes the evolution and achievements of the social assistance policy, and analyses the challenges and problems that the policy faces. In this paper, we argue that the international trend of social assistance reforms, institutional background changes and the problems of social assistance in China require a developmental model to guide the future development of the social assistance policy. Therefore, social assistance policy should not only fulfil the basic living requirements of the underprivileged and enable underprivileged people to share the outcomes of economic and social development, but also should enable the underprivileged to develop human capital and participate in the labour market. To move towards developmental social assistance, this article proposes several relevant policy suggestions.

POVERTY IN A RURAL AREA: THE ROLE OF THE SOCIAL WORKER

There are many ways of looking at poverty. When poverty is measured in absolute terms, itrefers to the financial means necessary for people to survive from day to day. The most basicmeasures of poverty in South Africa are the Minimum Living Level (MLL) and the HouseholdSubsistence Level (HSL). They measure the amount of money necessary to provide ahousehold (of six people) with the very basic necessities, including food, clothing, energy,washing, rent and transport to stay alive (Greeff, 2004:7). The Household Effective Level(HEL), which is the HSL plus 50%, makes provision for some important items not covered bythe HSL, namely tax, medical expenses, replacement of household equipment, education,recreation, personal care, pension and burial contributions. In 1999, for South Africa, thatwould have amounted to R800,00 per month (Greeff, 2004:7).

Unification of the Urban Minimum Living Standard in China: Using a Consumption Expenditure Percentile Method

ABSTRACT. The Minimum Living Standard Guarantee (MLSG) system in urban China was established in the 1990s. As a national income benefit program, this system has huge regional differences as a result of regional variation in economic development and the methods used to calculate the benefit. This article uses a consumption expenditure percentile method to measure and evaluate the benefit level of the MLSG system. The analysis shows that the consumption expenditure replacement rates in central cities are decreasing, but in prefectural-level cities, by contrast, they are increasing. The regional differences in replacement rates when comparing central cities are considerable and are even larger among cities at a prefecture level. Per-capita consumption expenditure is positively correlated with minimal living standards but negatively correlated with the replacement rate. Such variation in the value and operation of the MLSG system suggests an urgent need to implement a national unified scheme. The article proposes a single approach to calculating Minimum Living Standard benefits using a consumption expenditure replacement rate that would allow for local differences while providing national cohesion.

Covering whoever is eligible? An exploratory study on the eligibility of the Urban Minimum Living Standard Guarantee in China

This article puts the policy goal of the Urban Minimum Living Standard Guarantee (UMLSG) in China into question and it aims to expose the assertion ‘covering whoever is eligible’ as a myth. An exploratory study of the implementation of the UMLSG eligibility criteria was launched in Guangzhou. Interviews were conducted with twenty-five poor people and local bureaucrats. In addition to people’s meeting the income requirement, it was discovered that there were three unwritten principles flexibly used by local bureaucrats in assessment: the ability to work, the family unit and clientelism. The prevalence of street-level bureaucracy in the UMLSG administration not only hampered state resources from reaching the families living in urban poverty, but also seriously contradicted the reformulated ideologies and undermined the party’s legitimacy. The findings of this study suggest that variations in UMLSG eligibility, which are causing a serious problem of under-coverage, should attract immediate attention from both officials and academics.

Social Assistance Under Capitalist Authoritarian Rule: Two Management Models in Chinese Municipalities

This study uses a micro set of Chinese city-level data to understand the varying choices taken by municipal officials in their distribution of a minimum livelihood scheme. It explores the variation in the apportionment of allowances offered to disparate types of poor groups in poor versus wealthy cities. The paper argues that in China, where profits, modernisation, competition and globalisation have become significant to leaders at all levels, there is a logic undergirding welfare allocation that has nothing to do with the calculus that spurs its delivery in democracies, and yet that is more nuanced than stylised models of dictatorship/authoritarianism presume. The paper also demonstrates that, where lower echelons of governmental administration have the authority to make rules about the rationing of social assistance, urban finances appear to have an impact upon (or at least to correlate with) administrators’ allocational decisions to groups among the poor. This influence of municipal financial health is exerted directly in the case of poor places, by enticing officials to attempt to save on funds; it also seems to operate indirectly in wealthier municipalities, by disposing richer cities’ authorities to design their urban areas as showcases, in the hope of attracting tourism and foreign investment.

Trapped in poverty? A study of the dibao programme in Shanghai

As the secondary means of income redistribution in Chinese society (the primary means being taxation), the Minimum Living Standard Guarantee (MLSG) programme or dibao has been the object of both praise and criticism. The programme helps the government to channel its limited financial resources to the persons who need it most. While it covers the necessities of life, however, it does not enable its recipients to escape from poverty. It has also been criticized for its exorbitant administrative costs and heavy workload. This study uses a qualitative longitudinal design to identify changes across interview intervals and uncover the internal dynamics of the dibao programme. The research findings enrich the current literature on social assistance in China. Forty households receiving dibao in Shanghai were interviewed. Our findings show that most dibao recipients are laid-off workers – casualties of the massive economic reforms of the 1990s – and the younger members of their families. The assistance they receive helps with their daily expenses, but is insufficient to raise them out of poverty.

Anti-Poverty in China: Minimum Livelihood Guarantee Scheme

“Di Bao” or Minimum Livelihood Guarantee Scheme is a national means-tested programme to provide cash transfers to the poor based on a locally set minimum income level. In 2011, the outlay of “Di Bao” reached RMB134 billion and more than 70 million people were covered. Issues to be addressed for the “Di Bao” programme include low financial coverage, fragmented management, mistargeting as well as incentive compatibility of the scheme.

Public assistance and poverty reduction: The case of Shanghai

Using household survey data collected during November 2009 to January 2010 among 500 low-income families in Shanghai, this article provides updated evidence on the poverty reduction effects of the Minimum Living Standard Assurance (MLSA, or Dibao), urban China’s primary public assistance program. The article finds that, even though Shanghai’s MLSA line has been constantly raised, it has trailed behind the average living standard in Shanghai as measured by city per capita income and consumption levels. Low education, unemployment, being unmarried, and having child(ren) have been revealed to be strongly linked to MLSA participation and higher benefit amounts. MLSA’s poverty reduction effects were most prominent when a low poverty line was used, and the effect size became smaller as the level of the poverty line rose. When using two absolute poverty lines that were set in the national context, MLSA lowered the poverty rate, gap, and severity in Shanghai significantly but was unable to eliminate poverty. When using two much higher relative poverty lines, it is evident that MLSA was far from sufficient in lifting the relative positions of the recipient families in the context of the overall income distribution in Shanghai.

Development and Characteristics of Social Work and Social Welfare in Korea

The beginning of social work and its formation differ in each society due to its unique historical and social background inherent to a society, so the beginning of social work in Korea is also categorically influenced by historical events. How social work in Korea began and why the expression 'social work' is no longer used and has been replaced by 'social welfare' can be understood in the context of the social work development process in Korea, as the change of word usage can be viewed as a product of history that reflects its epoch and society. Up until around 1980, all the work in this field had been called 'social work', thereafter the terminology 'social welfare' was used, but there is no longer any differentiation between these two terms as the microscopic approach of social work on personal services and the macroscopic approach of social policy are jointly called 'social welfare'. This research is to consolidate the details and characteristics of social work and social welfare development in Korea. Consequently, this paper focused how social work in Korea started, what are the patterns of social welfare development, and what are the prospects and problems of social welfare in Korea. The task for Korean Social Welfare can be analyzed critically into five categories. Firstly, the nation's sympathy and approval must be sought for a particular welfare system. Secondly, it is necessary to increase the people's level of awareness of welfare issues. Thirdly, it is necessary for policy-makers to be aware of the problems in the Korean welfare system, and to have professional knowledge and accomplishments, and the power of decision-making on social welfare policy. Fourthly, an effort is needed to increase the level of expenditure on welfare. As welfare finance primarily derives from the nation's taxes, it is important to carry out taxation through a fair system as acknowledged by the people. Fifthly, it is necessary to develop a Korean social welfare model. Korean welfare model development needs to solve the problem of the right to survival of the socially deprived class and the socially weak, and social welfare policy and social services must be developed as a priority so as to guarantee their minimum livelihood expenditure to improve their quality of life. A welfare policy that includes the minority in social solidarity, and an intelligent, mature welfare policy which fosters integration, equality and unity, and allows for the continuous development of social welfare policy, must be the primary focus. In future, social welfare must be a pivotal policy of the government to enable it to recover its legitimacy and trust, and in implementing this there will be a greater sense of national unity and duty. Accordingly, I expect the Korean welfare model to be a driving force in the development of a multi-cultural society and in resolving the North-South division and confrontation and regional conflicts and divisions through regional solidarity.

Economic and Social Assessment of Wage Employment Programs in Manipur

Poverty is complex and multi-dimensional in nature. It is reflected in multipledeprivations like inadequate resources required for a minimum livelihood, lack of access to skill development, education & health and other facilities Ravallion, (2004). The marginal farmers, landless labourers and casual worker households are the worst sufferers of these deprivations. The present study is an enquiry in to the real implications of MGNREGA in few a selected districts regarding the attainment of goals viz; economic and social enhancement of beneficiaries, the importance and the timely requirement of the program and to decide the connection of the beneficiaries. Results of the study showed that MGNREGA at village level is success when considering about the social and economic impact of this Wage Employment Programmes. Assessment of the MGNREGA Programme on providing greater employment and income opportunities to rural workers and assets created has been mostly of durable nature. More employment days need to be provided to workers in the Villages. It was also suggested that the stipulated number of days working should not be provided but even then it is found that the incidence of rural poverty in Manipur has not declined.

Where is China's Minimum Living Standard Scheme Heading? : Welfare or Workfare

Where is China's Minimum Living Standard Scheme Heading? : Welfare or Workfare

The New Urban Underclass and its Consciousness: is it a class?

This paper investigates whether the 22 million or so urban recipients of the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (the zuidi shenghuo baozhang), whose per capita family income falls below a locally set poverty line, can be called a ‘class’. It also explores if they experience ‘class consciousness’. It draws on theoretical writings on class and class consciousness, and on some seven dozen unstructured interviews in households of urban dibao recipients in Lanzhou, Guangzhou, Wuhan, and three smaller Hubei cities in 2007–2010, mainly using material from 2010. It finds that, unlike the former working class, while these people do not comprise a ‘class’ as such, their consciousness of their plight, stripped bare of all the illusions that clouded it in Maoist times—again as distinguished from the bygone working class—is more faithful to their actual circumstances than it is specious.

Social policy learning and diffusion in China: the rise of welfare regions?

This article offers an account of the peculiar phenomenon of social policy learning in China, and illustrates the situations in which local policy learning can either facilitate, or constrain, the capacity of the central government to monitor social policy development. Based on analyses of the urban pension reform and the introduction of the Minimum Living Standard Scheme, the article concludes that local activism has become an eclectic tool for policy learning and diffusion leading to subnationalisation of social protection, which poses a challenge to the central government in its efforts of coherent social policy governance.

Anti‐Poverty Family Policies in China: A Critical Evaluation

Despite its rapid economic growth, China remains a developing country facing serious challenges of poverty and inequality. This article examines the development and effectiveness of China's primary anti‐poverty family policy, the Minimum Living Standard Assurance (MLSA, or Dibao). Using rich administrative data and building on the existing literature, this article provides a critical evaluation of MLSA's benefit generosity, coverage, targeting, and anti‐poverty effectiveness. To help reinforce MLSA's anti‐poverty impacts, local governments in recent years have implemented a series of supplementary policies and programs, including health, education, housing, and work support programs. This article also provides an assessment of these supplementary policies and programs and draws policy implications for the ongoing expansion of the Chinese government's anti‐poverty efforts.

Doing a Little More for the Poor? Social Assistance in Shanghai

Shanghai was a leader in nation-wide social assistance reform. It has established an extensive and complex social assistance system. This paper offers a general overview of different major assistance programs in Shanghai and uses a recent survey of Minimum Living Standard Guarantee System (MLSGS) recipients in urban Shanghai to briefly examine the performance of social assistance. It finds that on the program construction and administration level, Shanghai’s social assistance is advanced. However, due to high living costs and relatively low values of social assistance, social assistance plays a limited role in relieving the distress of recipients. The paper analyzes the main reasons for this and argues that efforts should be made to give the poor more assistance and help them to get rid of poverty.

Social Assistance in China, 1993–2002: Institutions, Feedback, and Policy Actors in the Chinese Policy Process

From 1993 to 2002, the emergence of the urban resident Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (MLG) system saw a major reconfiguration and expansion of social assistance in the People's Republic of China. The development of the MLG has been a complex process. The initial emergence and design of the MLG reflect space in the Chinese state for innovations and feedback in the social assistance agenda. The expansion and development of the MLG can be explained by the interventions of key policy actors. These actors pushed the MLG for a variety of different reasons. The resources available to these actors and the outcomes of their interventions were a reflection of their institutional position in the bureaucracy. Contributing to existing studies of Chinese social policy reform, this article argues that the emergence, design, and development of the policy reflects institutional space, constraints, and feedback in the Chinese policy process.

On the Edge between “the People” and “the Population”: Ethnographic Research on the Minimum Livelihood Guarantee

AbstractThis article examines how local resistance against government attempts to reduce poverty to a technical problem ironically reinforces the precarious state of the poor. It looks at the workings of the minimum livelihood guarantee (dibao) through mundane interactions between street-level officials and poor residents in a workers' village on the periphery of Harbin. As the party-state's primary policy for urban poverty,dibaohas introduced a new rationality that poverty is calculable and flexible. Urban laid-off workers have resisted this by invoking the socialist claim that they are “the people.” I examine how this resistance has led street-level officials to be preoccupied with the old socialist norm of “an ability to work” rather than with “income” asdibao's official criterion. The new local criterion has produced the ironic effect that urban laid-off workers, who were understood to bedibao's main target, have been mostly excluded from the scheme.

Social assistance policy and its impact on social development in China: the case of the Minimum Living Standard Scheme (MLSS)

China has been undergoing large-scale socio-economic transformation in the past three decades. With the shift from a planned to a market economy, China's social security system has been fundamentally transformed. In order to help inefficient state-owned enterprises to survive in a competitive market economy, since the mid-1980s the Chinese government has made great efforts to transform the traditional danwei- (work unit-) based social security system into a multi-tier social security system based on social insurance programmes. However, the embryonic social insurance system has proven inadequate and inefficient to cope with the mounting unemployment and urban poverty caused by the reform of the state-owned enterprises (SOEs), and has left more urban people outside the social protection system, thus imposing a negative impact on social stability. In the late 1990s, to pacify the vulnerable social groups consisting of laid-off workers, the unemployed, retirees and poor farmers, the Chinese government started to reform its public assistance policy and established a social assistance system with the minimum living standard scheme (MLSS) as its core. Focusing on the policy pertinent to the MLSS in China in general and in Guangdong in particular, this article examines social assistance policy and its impact on social development. It argues that although the MLSS indicates a statist approach to social development, the residual nature of the MLSS and the localization of financial responsibility have hampered the role of social assistance policy in promoting people's wellbeing and social development in China.