National Welfare Programs Research Articles

Social security or insecurity? The experience of welfare participation by financially vulnerable households in the Netherlands

AbstractSocial welfare aims to support financially vulnerable households by protecting them from financial shocks and providing them with a basic standard of living. Many eligible households, however, do not take up social welfare. We present the results of in‐depth interviews with 31 members of financially vulnerable households in two large Dutch cities about their experiences with welfare. We examined the role of money in their lives, what inhibited them from taking up social welfare, and how they sought support. For many interviewed households, money was a source of stress. The fear of reclaims and mistrust of government institutions were the main inhibitors to participating in welfare programs. Whereas the experience of shame and stigma were substantial inhibitors for claiming local welfare benefits, they were not for participating in national welfare programs. Formal and informal help promoted welfare participation, but many participants lacked access to both. We discuss policies that could decrease the perceived uncertainty of benefits receipt and give directions for future research.

User-Centred Design of a Mobile Application for Chronic Pain Management.

Chronic pain patients constitute a large and heterogeneous patient group and it is important to build tools and methods that can identify efficient treatment options for each individual patient. It is estimated that 20-30% of the population has suffered from chronic pain and this imposes enormous costs on society and the national welfare programs. The research project Chronic Pain addresses the problem of how to provide patients and physicians with relevant, valid and adapted decision alternatives in a shared decision making tool. This paper presents the results from co-creation workshops early in the user-centred design process of the chronic pain mobile application. The end-users contributed in mapping the user needs and requirements, and made paper prototyping of the user interface. The main contribution lies on how a user-centred design methodology can be applied in a clinical development context.

Using the infrastructure of a conditional cash transfer program to deliver a scalable integrated early child development program in Colombia: cluster randomized controlled trial

Objective To assess the effectiveness of an integrated early child development intervention, combining stimulation and micronutrient supplementation and delivered on a large scale in Colombia, for children’s development, growth, and...

Rice Fortification: An Emerging Opportunity to Contribute to the Elimination of Vitamin and Mineral Deficiency Worldwide

Vitamin and mineral deficiencies are ranked among the top causes of poor health and disability in the world. These deficiencies damage developing brains, impair learning ability, increase susceptibility to infections, and reduce the work productivity of nations. Food fortification is a sustainable, cost-effective approach to reducing vitamin and mineral deficiency. As the staple food for an estimated 3 billion people, rice has the potential to fill an obvious gap in current fortification programs. In recent years, new technologies have produced fortified rice kernels that are efficacious in reducing vitamin and mineral deficiency. There are opportunities to fortify a significant share of rice that comes from large mills supplying centralized markets and national welfare programs in major rice-growing countries. The rice export markets, which handle 30 million MT of rice annually, also present a key fortification opportunity. The cost of fortifying rice is only 1.5% to 3% of the current retail price of rice. Countries that mandate rice fortification have the strongest evidence for achieving wide coverage and impact. The Rice Fortification Resource Group (RiFoRG), a global network of public and private partners that offers technical and advocacy support for rice fortification, has a vision of promoting rice fortification worldwide. It has a targeted approach, engaging multisector partners in key countries where the opportunities are greatest and there is receptivity to early adoption of large-scale rice fortification. The challenges are real, the imperative to address them is powerful, and the opportunities to deliver the promise of rice fortification are clear.

India Moves Towards Menstrual Hygiene: Subsidized Sanitary Napkins for Rural Adolescent Girls—Issues and Challenges

The onset of menstruation is one of the most important physiological changes occurring among girls during the adolescent years. Menstruation heralds the onset of physiological maturity in girls. It becomes the part and parcel of their lives until menopause. Apart from personal importance, this phenomenon also has social significance. In India, menstruation is surrounded by myths and misconceptions with a long list of "do's" and "don'ts" for women. Hygiene-related practices of women during menstruation are of considerable importance, as it may increase vulnerability to Reproductive Tract Infections (RTI's). Poor menstrual hygiene is one of the major reasons for the high prevalence of RTIs in the country and contributes significantly to female morbidity. Most of the adolescent girls in villages use rags and old clothes during menstruation, increasing susceptibility to RTI's. Adolescents constitute one-fifths of India's population and yet their sexual health needs remain largely unaddressed in the national welfare programs. Poor menstrual hygiene in developing countries has been an insufficiently acknowledged problem. In June 2010, the Government of India proposed a new scheme towards menstrual hygiene by a provision of subsidized sanitary napkins to rural adolescent girls. But there are various other issues like awareness, availability and quality of napkins, regular supply, privacy, water supply, disposal of napkins, reproductive health education and family support which needs simultaneous attention for promotion of menstrual hygiene. The current article looks at the issue of menstrual hygiene not only from the health point of view, but also considers social and human rights values attached to it.

Национальная Репрезентация и Социальные Категории: Пример Политических Беженцев

SUMMARY: The author explores the sociological category of representation, especially as it is visible in national representation and in connection with the history of political refugees. Representation in the modern state, according to the author, acquires a multidimensional character of group mobilization and categorization from above by government authorities. During the July Monarchy in France, the state was thought to be separate from the social sphere and was not interested in defining who was a foreigner and stringently separating them from citizens. According to the law of 1832, only those refugees who were assisted by the state economically were specifically defined as foreigners and proof had to be presented that they were “real” refugees. Social support provided to refugees led to their categorization as such. In post-World War II Europe, refugee became a juridical category defined by international conventions. This universal definition was in conflict with the institutionalized “sovereign people” and its system of social welfare. Using regimes of identification and limiting national welfare programs, modern national states also limit the definition of “refugee” at will. As a result, refugees constitute a social category because they do not participate in the social work that leads to their constitution as a group. They remain, essentially, an object of government policies.

The International Labor Organization and the welfare state: institutional effects on national welfare spending, 1960–80

National welfare programs are importantly affected by models of welfare activity institutionalized at the global level. This article examines the impact of the welfare regime advocated by and within the International Labor Organization (ILO). Countries that have recently ratified ILO conventions related to welfare show increased growth in spending, net of national characteristics. Subanalyses show that the effects of ILO ratification are strong in the industrialized capitalist democracies, particularly where prior welfare spending is low and the working class has a weakly institutionalized role in policymaking. ILO ratification seems disconnected from spending in the less developed countries. Legislative case studies point to similar patterns. These findings suggest that international norms contribute to policy where they offer compelling models that powerful actors can use to legitimate policy innovation.

State authority and national welfare programs in the world system context

Recent research on national welfare programs focuses upon the organizational capacity of nation-states, but it does not directly address the issue of why state bureaucracies institute such programs. We develop an institutionalist theory that views the rationalization of authority and concomitant national welfare programs as products of a world culture. By examining the interplay between national characteristics and world-system context, we are able to interpret worldwide adoption of welfare programs as well as the difference between formal programs and their implementation. We provide preliminary tests of hypotheses predicting worldwide patterns of welfare expenditures. We find that a state's incorporation in intergovernmental organizations and its level of investment dependence positively affect social security expenditures in 1965 and 1970. We conclude by briefly discussing implications of our research for further work on the relationship between state structures and national programs.

Theories of the Welfare State

In the post-World War II era the apparent success of Keynesian economic principles in evening out the instabilities of the business cycle stimulated rapid growth in public welfare expenditures in Western capitalist democracies. For social science, welfare state expansion was not a puzzle but a given. When the economic crisis of the 1970s undermined faith in permanent and sustained growth in welfare programs, the new agenda for social theory concentrated upon the conditions that hindered or favored development. Ironically, both neo-Marxists and conservative economists reached the same conclusion: Welfare programs undermined profitability. The first half of this paper traces these theoretical developments, both in relation to internal debates among social scientists and in regard to external social and economic conditions that shaped the context of theorizing about the welfare state. Underlying the broader debates about the factors influencing welfare state development has been a more specific concern with the exceptionalism of the American welfare state. Here the central agenda has been to explain why the United States was late in developing national welfare programs and why the programs that did arise contained a bifurcated structure that separated benefits for the poor from those available to all citizens as a right. Three explanations have emerged: the failure of organized labor, the legacy of American politics and the dualism of the American economy. This paper critically assesses the theoretical relevance of these arguments and their implications for recent attacks on benefit programs.

The provincial role in the Canadian welfare state: the influence of provincial social policy initiatives on the design of the Canada Assistance Plan.

Abstract. Provincial social welfare programs are often treated as provincial government responses to federal initiatives establishing shared‐cost programs in the welfare field. In this paper, this traditional viewpoint is reversed, showing that the federal government's Canada Assistance Plan of 1966 was the result of provincial social welfare initiatives. Federal policy is shown to have been designed to accommodate as cost‐sharable those programs in which provinces (particularly Alberta and Ontario) were already involved. The federal government had to make considerable additions to, and concessions concerning, the proposed program in order to retain provincial support for the new national welfare program.

The Union Army as an Educational Institution for Negroes, 1862-1865

Despite the catastrophe of Hiroshima and limited wars in Korea and Vietnam, the Civil War was undoubtedly America's most unparalleled military, political, and social experience. The American Civil War led to many tactical and strategic innovations in warfare and weaponry: repeating rifles, machine guns, extensive trenches and fortifications, land mines, torpedoes, ironclad ships, an organized military signal service, a military draft, the Congressional Medal of Honor, the national income tax, and the systematic use of Negro troops. On the political front, seven Union officers later became presidents of the United States (Andrew Johnson, Ulysses Grant, Rutherford B. Hayes, James A. Garfield, Chester A. Arthur, Benjamin Harrison, and William McKinley). Perhaps the most significant innovation of the Civil War was the institution of a national welfare program to aid and educate the oppressed, destitute, and illiterate Negro.1

The Organization of a National Welfare Program

Previous articleNext article No AccessThe Organization of a National Welfare ProgramDavid C. AdieDavid C. Adie Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by Social Service Review Volume 8, Number 3Sept., 19341934 Proceedings of the American Public Welfare Association Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/631442 Views: 1Total views on this site Copyright 1934 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports no articles citing this article.