Non-cash Benefits Research Articles

Studying of the Factors Affecting on the Mutual Fund by Individual Investor in Iran, Malaysia, Turkey and US

This study examines the main criteria of domestic investors in mutual funds selection behavior and evaluates their performance and with a survey method and using a questionnaire, the behavior of domestic investors in selection of mutual fund was evaluated. Factor analysis along with Multinomial Logistic Regression was used to test the hypotheses of the research. The Findings of the study indicate that there are 7 major factors that influence different types of investors in mutual funds selection behavior. These include: inherent characteristics of the fund, image reputation of fund, flexibility to facilitate the investment, performance, popularity, transparency and non-cash benefits. Another important aspect of this study is analysis impressibility the different groups of investors (professional, ambitious, moderate, conservative and cautious) towards these seven factors. The results of this analysis give us what is different between professional investors and other kinds of investors in the selecting of mutual funds.

Child Poverty: Definition and Measurement

This article provides a discussion of what we mean when we refer to ‘child poverty.’ Many images come to mind when we discuss child poverty, but when we try to measure and quantify the extent of child poverty, we often use a very narrow concept. In this article a variety of poverty measures that are used in the United States are described and some of the differences between those measures are illustrated. In this article 3 measures are explored in detail: a relative measure of poverty that is used more often in an international context, the official US poverty measure, and a new supplemental poverty measure (SPM). The new measure differs from the other 2 because it takes into account noncash benefits that are provided to poor families. These include nutrition assistance such as food stamps, subsidized housing, and home energy assistance. The SPM also takes account of necessary expenses that families face, such as taxes and expenses related to work and health care. Comparing estimates for 2012, the SPM showed lower poverty rates for children than the other 2 measures. Because noncash benefits help those in extreme poverty, there were also lower percentages of children in extreme poverty with resources below half the SPM threshold. These results suggest that 2 important measures of poverty, the relative measure used in international comparisons, and the official poverty measure, are not able to gauge the effect of government programs on the alleviation of poverty, and the SPM illustrates that noncash benefits do help families meet their basic needs.

Prioritizing the Compensation Mechanisms for Nurses Working in Emergency Department of Hospital Using Fuzzy DEMATEL Technique: A Survey from Iran

Aim and Background:Nursing professionals are the most important human resources that provide care in the Emergency Departments at hospitals. Therefore appropriate compensation for the services provided by them is considered as a priority. This study aims to identify and prioritize the factors affecting the compensation for services provided by the EDs nurses.Methods:Twenty four nurses, hospital administrators, local and national health authorities participated in a cross sectional study conducted in 2012. The participants discussed on different compensation mechanisms for nurses’ of EDs, in six groups according to Focus Group Discussion (FGD) technique, resulted in the adopted mechanisms. Opinions of the participants on the mechanisms were obtained via paired matrices using fuzzy logic. Decision Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) technique was used for prioritizing the adopted mechanisms.Findings:Among the compensation mechanisms for nurses of ED services, both Monthly fixed amounts (9.0382) and increasing the number of vacation days (9.0189) had highest importance. The lowest importance was given to the performance-based payment (8.9897). Monthly fixed amounts, increasing the number of vacation days, decreasing the working hours and performance-based payment were recognized as effective factors. Other mechanisms are prioritized as use of the facilities, increase in emergency tariff, job promotions, non-cash payments, continuing education, and persuasive years.Conclusion:According to the results, the nurses working in the EDS of the hospitals were more likely to receive non-cash benefits than cash benefits as compensation.

Advancing Poverty Measurement and Policy: Evidence from Wisconsin during the Great Recession

This article estimates trends in the poverty rates in Wisconsin for the overall population, for children, and for the elderly between 2008 and 2010, using an alternative poverty measure. Our measure is similar to the federally implemented Supplemental Poverty Measure (SPM) but customized to reflect the place-specific needs and resources of Wisconsin. Unlike the official poverty measure, the Wisconsin Poverty Measure (WPM) considers tax credits and noncash benefits and adjusts for work-related and medical care expenses and relative living costs statewide and across substate regions. Using the American Community Survey and Wisconsin administrative data, the WPM shows essentially no change in state poverty rates between 2008 and 2009 and a decline between 2009 and 2010, although state poverty levels calculated via the official measure continued to increase between 2008 and 2010. We discuss the policy implications of results and how the WPM compares to the SPM and other local poverty measures.

Payments for ecosystem services and rural development: Landowners' preferences and potential participation in western Mexico

Incentive-based mechanisms can contribute to rural development and deliver environmental services, but need to be attractive to landowners and communities to ensure their participation. Here we study the views of landowners and agrarian communities (ejidos) from central Jalisco in Mexico to identify characteristics that payment for environmental services (PES) programs conserving/enhancing forest cover could include in their design. A choice experiment was applied to 161 landowners and ejido-landowners. Results show that importance and dependency on cash payments can decrease if interventions to promote local development through improved health and education services and generation of employment and productive projects are included. Responses indicate that communal forested areas in ejidos would be most likely to enroll into PES. In some cases grasslands could be afforested. Agroforestry practices providing other environmental services could also be implemented (e.g. windbreaks). Potential enrollment is lower in agricultural and peri-urban areas due to higher opportunity costs. Higher payments favor enrollment but may compromise the program's efficiency since aggregated cash-flow over long periods can exceed the present value of the land itself in some areas. Offering a mix of cash and non-cash benefits based on local developmental needs might be the best way to promote participation in PES.

Multiple strategies for resilient livelihoods in communal areas of South Africa

Livestock farming in communal areas is an activity pursued by rural households as one of a range of livelihood strategies aimed at spreading risk. The cash and non-cash benefits derived from livestock, as well as the wide range of secondary resources harvested from communal rangelands, make an important contribution to livelihood diversification and, hence, resilience. Rural development policy should therefore not focus narrowly on commercialisation of livestock production in communal areas. Rather, it should take a multifaceted approach to building livelihood resilience while providing pathways for households to escape poverty through enhancing the multiple benefits of livestock, adding value to secondary rangeland resources, and expanding the rural non-farm economy.

Lifetime Generational Accounts for the Netherlands*

AbstractConventional generational accounting only includes future benefits and burdens from the government. This paper's contribution is to include past benefits and burdens as well, and in this way to provide a full lifetime account of how much current and future generations benefit from government, in net terms, under various future policy lines. The calculations are carried out for the Netherlands and for the cohorts born since 1946. The more complete picture may be helpful for political decision‐making on equitable intergenerational policies. A second contribution of this paper is that it uses a more comprehensive benefit concept than other such backward‐looking studies by including non‐cash benefits as well. The results point out that there are substantial differences in net lifetime benefits between generations and these are mainly driven by non‐cash benefits such as education and healthcare, on which expenditure increased substantially after 1946.

Evaluating social protection programs in Tajikistan

At independence, Tajikistan inherited an extensive social protection system that included a range of cash and non-cash benefits. While the economy is well into its transition from a centrally planned to a market-oriented economy, its social welfare policies still adhere to the methods and approaches of the Soviet period. This is true for social protection, which has both social insurance and social assistance components, and for which benefits are effectively non-contributory in nature in that no contributions are collected from employees. In this paper, we examine the performance of the country's social protection system—essentially public transfers for the elderly and disabled—in terms of reducing poverty, with the aim of identifying its key problems. Since the government provides such public transfers mainly as pensions (i.e., old-age pension, disabled pension, and survivors pension), it merits an in-depth analysis of whether or not these transfer programs reach the intended beneficiaries; that is, how well do they target the intended beneficiaries? Using data from the Living Standards Measurement Survey conducted in 2007, we find that only 43% of poor households are receiving transfers from the government, while 33% of non-poor households receive transfers. This study argues for applying a targeted approach to public transfer programs, including non-contributory pension schemes aimed at the most vulnerable populations.

Evaluating Social Protection Programs in Tajikistan

Following independence from the former Soviet Union, Tajikistan inherited an extensive social protection system that included a range of cash and noncash benefits. While the economy is well into its transition from a centrally planned to a market-oriented economy, its social welfare policies still adhere to the methods and approaches of the Soviet period. This is true for social protection, which has both social insurance and social assistance components, and for which benefits are effectively noncontributory in nature in that no contributions are collected from employees. In this paper, we examine the performance of the country’s social protection system – essentially public transfers for the elderly and disabled – in terms of reducing poverty, with the aim of identifying its key problems. Since the government provides such public transfers mainly as pensions (i.e., old-age pension, disabled pension, and survivors pension), it merits an in-depth analysis of whether or not these transfer programs reach the intended beneficiaries; that is, how well do they target the intended beneficiaries? Using data from the Living Standards Measurement Survey conducted in 2007, the study finds that only 43% of poor households are receiving transfers from the government, while 33% of nonpoor households receive transfers. This study argues for applying a targeted approach to public transfer programs, including noncontributory pension schemes aimed at the most vulnerable populations.

Welfare State Expenditures and the Distribution of Child Opportunities

This paper estimates the redistributive effects of welfare state expenditures on social and economic disparities in the economic well-being of citizens in ten nations. Data from the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) and other sources for cash and non-cash social welfare benefits (health and education benefits from third parties) are used to describe differences in the size and nature of welfare states and their distributional effects. The OECD data are combined with micro data on household incomes from the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) both to estimate the redistributive effects of the expenditures and taxes and to construct measures of the differences in the relative standard of living among the population at various points in the income distributions of their countries. Estimates are provided for country populations as a while and for three mutually exclusive groups: all persons; non-aged persons living with children; non-aged without children at home; and the elderly. These measures may be thought of as capturing the degree to which welfare states at the end of the 20th and dawn of the 21st century provide for the developmental needs and capabilities of their populations in terms of cash, access to health care, and educational opportunity. The results indicate a wide range of differences in levels of economic resources and support, within as well as between, nations and groups. The degree to which children have fair and equal opportunity chances; the degree to which the population has access to quality health care; and the population groups who are most called upon (most taxed) to provide these benefits are all investigated here. Non-cash benefits are particularly important for low-income Americans, especially elders and children and their families, and should not be taken for granted by analysts of the welfare state. Counting in-kind benefits at government cost substantially reduces across-national differences in market and cash disposable incomes, but does not eliminate them. The results are very sensitive to how in-kind benefits are measured and valued. [Revised October 2004]

Das Persönliche Budget – Neue Leistungsgestaltung in der Behindertenhilfe

Instead of non-cash benefits, disabled people are to receive personal payments to help them to better manage their own support. This "tailor made support" has become a legal basis for a claim in 2008. It is aimed to pave the way for a new design of assistance: more ambulant services and a stronger position for the recipient of support. Initial results within the scope of pilot projects, evaluations from various perspectives and the discernible effects of personal budgets are reported in national and international perspectives.

Non-Cash Benefits and the Distribution of Economic Welfare

Non-cash benefits can have substantial effects on the distribution of economic welfare. Standard approaches to the inclusion of non-cash benefits in broader measures of resources have failed to take adequate account of the pattern of needs associated with the greater use of health and education services. Our results, for Ireland in the year 2000, show that it is possible to derive more appropriate measures of total resources than have been derived using standard methods. The results indicate that the greatest impact comes from the inclusion of imputed rent for owner occupation as part of the measure. When this is done, the rate of resource poverty for older people is substantially reduced, in line with results which use indicators of standard of living as well as cash incomes (consistent poverty).

Disclosure of executive remuneration in listed public utility companies

This paper aims to examine disclosure about listed companies’ executive remuneration, investigating particularly the rules and recommendations adopted in industrialized countries (European countries: France; German; Italy; Spain; United Kingdom; and non-European countries: Canada; Japan; Russia; United States) and to verify if effective communication behaviours adopted in Italy and in foreign countries by listed public utility companies match cognitive and evaluation stakeholders’ expectations and rules and existing specific recommendations. Disclosure of the remuneration is necessary to offer each stakeholder to understand if the amount of compensation paid and its composition is adequate to avoid potential excesses that could compromise the process of value generation by the enterprise. This is an important topic, considering also potential conflicts between form, structure and level of executive directors’ remuneration (fixed and variable elements, stock options, total estimated value of non-cash benefits, remuneration paid to directors in connection with the termination of his activities during that financial year, etc.) and corporate performance optimization in the long term.

Les employeurs, un autre acteur de la politique familiale ? [Un état des lieux de leur participation dans la conciliation vie familiale-vie professionnelle

This article considers the aid afforded employees by their employers to reconcile work and family life, an issue rarely treated quantitatively. The authors begin by developing an overview of the various measures proposed in France before analysing their variations according to the characteristics of employer establishments (size, sector, proportion of female employees, public/ private sector, etc.). The measures contributing to the work-family balance have two main features which are not necessarily cumulative : the possibility of flexible working hours on the one hand and benefits (monetary or in kind) on the other. Cash and non-cash benefits tend to be cumulative, in particular in large-scale establishments, although working hours are less flexible. The overall observation is that reconciliation policies are more prevalent in the public sector. The proportion of women among employees also has a positive effect on services offered, albeit less so on working time flexibility, which depends strongly on organisational constraints.

Poverty Rates in Venezuela: Getting the Numbers Right

This article looks at household and individual poverty rates in Venezuela over the past seven years. For more than a year, the statement that poverty in Venezuela has increased under the government of President Hugo Chávez has appeared in scores of major newspapers, on major television and radio programs, and even in publications devoted to foreign policy. There are no data to support such statements, and in fact the available data show a decline in poverty for both individuals and households over the seven-year period: the percentage of people in poverty declined from 50 percent in the first quarter of 1999 to 43.7 percent in 2005. Further, there is no evidence to suggest any change in the methodology for measuring poverty during this period, as has been alleged in a number of reports. The article also examines briefly the impact of significant changes in non-cash benefits such as free health care, which are not taken into account in the measured poverty rate, on poor people in Venezuela. Finally, the authors look at how the mistakes in reporting on Venezuela's poverty rate were made; an appendix gives examples of mistakes in major media and foreign policy publications.

Social Experiments with the Budget for Nursing Care (2004-2008) - Conception of the Evaluation Design

This article introduces the evaluation design for the ongoing social experiments with the so called personal budget for nursing care. This personal budget is a cash benefit which can be used by long term care patients and their relatives for buying individually tailored care services. In the future, the budget for nursing care could amend the existing cash and non-cash benefits if the social experiment proves its cost-effectiveness. International experiences with personal budgets, especially in the Netherlands and Great Britain, indicate that personal budgets in the amount of non-cash benefits increase the quality of nursing care due to individually tailored home care arrangements By developing the evaluation design, two German specifics must be pointed out. On the one hand, the budget for nursing care will be connected with the consulting service of a case manager. On the other hand, the existing incentive system already contains cash and non-cash benefits. The budget for nursing care is to be tested between 2004 and 2008 in seven locations in Western- and Eastern-Germany with randomized control groups as social experiment.

How Did the Social Policy Changes of the 1990s Affect Material Hardship among Single Mothers? Evidence from the CPS Food Security Supplement

Although many opponents of welfare reform predicted that it would increase hardship, the official poverty rate for female headed families with children fell from 42 percent in 1996 to 34 percent in 2002. Skeptics have nonetheless argued that declines in official poverty rates may have been accompanied by increases in material hardship, since single mothers who entered the labor market often incurred new expenses and lost valuable noncash benefits. We investigate this possibility using the Current Population Survey's Food Security Supplement. Food-related problems declined among mother-only families between 1995 and 2000 and rose between 2000 and 2002, but the decline was far larger than the subsequent increase. These changes parallel changes in the official poverty rate during the same years. In contrast to previous economic expansions, the proportional decline in poverty during the late-1990s was at least as large among mother-only families as among two-parent families. We argue that this change was linked to welfare reform and other social policy changes that encouraged single mothers to enter the labor force. As a result, single mothers' material standard of living probably improved more during this economic expansion than during earlier ones.

The Population profile of the United States

This 11th annual US Population Profile summarizes the wide range of demographic and socioeconomic data collected during 1984 and 1985 and published in 1985 and early 1986 in the Current Population Reports series. At the end of each section a "For Further Information" box lists sources of data and the subject specialist who can answer technical questions. Data collected refer to: 1) national population trends, 2) national population projections, 3) fertility, 4) state population trends, 5) metropolitan/nonmetropolitan population, 6) population in cities and suburbs, 7) the farm population, 8) migration, 9) households and families, 10) marital status and living arrangements, 11) voting, 12) school enrollment, 13) educational attainment, 14) labor force, 15) money income, 16) sources of income and noncash benefits, and 17) poverty.

Do Interventions to Increase Income Improve the Health of the Poor in Developed Economies and Are Such Policies Cost Effective?

Health policy has shifted towards placing a greater emphasis on the role of lifestyle and life circumstances in improving health. The factors that are associated with poor health status are known, but the comparative effectiveness of specific policy interventions in improving health and reducing inequalities in health is unclear. For example, there is little evidence that specific policies aimed at providing income support or poverty eradication have any measurable impact on health. Two previous reviews have addressed the evidence in this area but in a fairly restrictive way. One considered only randomised trials and the other excluded non-cash benefits. This article builds on the previous reviews in three ways: a broader scope of study designs and types of intervention is considered; more recent literature is reviewed; and it considers the extent to which an economic evaluation framework has been applied. A systematic search of electronic databases was carried out for literature published since 1980 and in the English language. Each study was appraised in terms of its relevance to the question of interest, and the quality of the study design was appraised in terms of its capacity to provide robust answers. Few studies were found with health outcomes as their main focus. Most of the studies that used secondary data sources or survey data were of poor quality. Where economic evaluations were reported, these tended to be restricted to financial assessments. Different types of interventions were evaluated. In studies of cash benefits, there was limited evidence that they had a positive effect on some health domains, mainly psychosocial. Studies in welfare-to-work interventions produced mixed results in terms of impact on either income or health; there was no consistent relationship between income gains and health improvements. Five welfare-to-work studies included 'benefit-cost analysis', but these were essentially financial assessments. Studies of benefits in kind did not meet the quality criteria for inclusion in this article. Overall, we found no evidence of the potential cost effectiveness of income support or anti-poverty initiatives in improving health, nor is there a strong effectiveness literature on which to build such analysis. However, the hypothesis that increased income may improve health cannot be said to have been properly tested. Studies generally analyse the incremental effect of changes to the welfare system and do not estimate the health effects of current provisions. The production function for good health is complex. Increasing income may be a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition for the creation of better health in those with low incomes.

On the Emergence of Labour Redundancy in China's State Industry: Findings from a 1980-1994 Data Panel

The need to lay off redundant employees emerged as an important policy issue in urban China in the 1990s. The degree of over-manning can be estimated by comparing estimates of the marginal product of labor with estimates of the full wage, including bonuses, subsidies, and non-cash benefits. We present estimates from a panel of 752 industrial SOEs for the years 1980-94. These estimates show a rising trend of redundancy with substantial differences among industries. They confirm both out earlier finding that over-manning was not general in the pre-reform era, and the prevailing view that it was a severe problem in the 1990s.