Welfare Reform Research Articles

Who’s in for no strings: revisiting the determinants of universal basic income support

Abstract Universal basic income (UBI) is becoming a prominent alternative to reform the welfare state, yet public support for this policy remains a puzzle. Existing scholarship empirically shows that certain groups like the low-income and left-wing show support, but it remains unclear if this translates to a preference for UBI over alternatives. This paper argues against this assumption: UBI challenges welfare norms and deservingness principles, suggesting people would typically prefer means-tested options. Drawing on a conjoint experiment, this paper empirically shows supportive evidence of the idea that support for a UBI does not translate into an inherent preference for UBI. These findings have widespread implications for both the UBI literature and the politics of welfare reform.

Public pension contract minimalism

AbstractThe national pension debt and COVID crises have collided. Post‐pandemic economic decline has escalated existing financial strains on state and local pension plans, impacting workers and the public welfare. With unfunded obligations exceeding one trillion dollars, many of these plans are in jeopardy. But the movement to reform government pension contracts has yet to adopt an anchoring idea, leaving judicial decisions in disarray and policymakers without guidance about how to shore up troubled retirement systems. The crux of the problem is the many meanings of contract under state and US Contract Clauses that prevent pension reform. This Essay endorses a promising path forward—contract minimalism. “Contract minimalism” concentrates on the duration of government pension contracts. It posits that public and private employment law should be treated the same. Like its private law counterpart, public sector employment at‐will ought to consist of a daily contract interval. A contract‐a‐day concept entitles employers to change the plan prospectively, with employees receiving a proportionate share of benefits for work performed. Just as several agreements safeguard salaries for labor, they should also mirror the protection afforded to deferred benefits like pensions. Contract minimalism additionally puts public and private sector employers on the same legal footing as to the authority to change pension plan terms. Thus, it aligns public pension benefits with overlapping fields of law, placing them on a firm conceptual foundation. The minimalist approach also has the advantage over approaches that are insufficiently attentive to scarce government resources or employee old‐age security. By protecting pension benefits early and incrementally, it advances a middle path with fairer, more coherent results. In the present post‐pandemic era of hard choices, minimalism provides an equilibrium between the over‐ and under‐protection of pension benefits.

The impact of pension reform on employment, retirement, and disability insurance claims

We evaluate the 2011 comprehensive reform of Norwegian early retirement institutions using a parsimonious random utility choice model. Conditional on employment at age 60, we estimate a three-state conditional logit model to explain the realized labor market state at age 63 among the alternatives of employment, retirement, and disability program participation. The reform radically changed work incentives and/or pension access age for some (but not all) workers, such that the influence of economic incentives can be identified based on reform-generated variation only. We find that improved work incentives caused employment rates to rise considerably at the expense of early retirement and exit through disability insurance. Improved liquidity through a lower age to access own pension funds on actuarially neutral terms caused a small increase in employment and a large drop in disability program participation. Properly designed pension reforms thus need to take the interplay between old-age pension and disability insurance programs into account.

On the Issue of Human Capital of the Working Older Generation of Modern Russia

Practice has shown that the onset of retirement and pre-retirement age in modern Russia adds new problems to the working older generation, caused by significant changes in lifestyle and new views on human labor activity. The implemented pension reform in Russia, which added five years to the day of retirement, significantly exacerbated the problems associated with the employment of people of retirement age. The article offers scientifically based recommendations for increasing human capital at the expense of the working older generation, taking into account regional and other characteristics. In modern conditions, human capital can play an important role in solving many problems during the military conflict between Russia and Ukraine, especially in increasing the military-industrial potential of our state. In conditions of labor shortage, experienced personnel of engineers, technologists, managers can significantly strengthen Russian industrial and other enterprises

Financial Sustainability Above All Else? Drivers and Types of Pension Reform Recommendations in EU Socio‐economic Governance

AbstractThe average age of the population and the ratio of workers to pensioners in the European Union (EU) are rising, putting increasing pressure on the long‐term sustainability of pension systems. To counteract this development, a large number of pension reform recommendations (PRRs) have been issued within EU socio‐economic governance. In this article, we analyse the extent to which PRRs are consistent with the three main objectives of the open method of coordination (OMC), which emphasise (i) financial sustainability, (ii) benefit adequacy and (iii) modernisation with respect to gender equality. Using an original dataset, we code 438 PRRs from 2011 to 2023 and analyse the extent to which these are consistent with the three main objectives of the OMC. Our results show that PRRs are primarily focused on financial sustainability, to the detriment of adequacy and modernisation, and that they are driven solely by sustainability concerns.

Understanding the role of practical knowledge in evidence-based welfare reform—a three-stage model

Understanding the role of practical knowledge in evidence-based welfare reform—a three-stage model

An ideology of deserving: A historical analysis of the United States' immigration policies governing forced migration and social welfare

AbstractLegislation governs both the admittance and treatment of forced migrants in the United States. Increasingly, many forced migrants are offered few welfare benefits, temporary protection, and no pathway to permanent residency. This paper explores forced migrants' legal categories and access to social welfare, focusing on five humanitarian protection statuses: Temporary Protected Status, Humanitarian Parole, Asylum Seeker, Refugee, and Asylee. Based on the concepts of welfare nationalism and the Protestant Work Ethic, our historical analysis examines the Welfare Reform Act of 1996 to see how this landmark legislation shaped access to welfare for noncitizens. We then focus on the emergence of humanitarian statuses since the 1950s and the legislation that constructed them. We conclude that immigration legislation governing forced migrants underlies an ideology of deserving, where some are treated as more meritorious than others. Thus, we call for welfare scholars to elevate immigration status as a key category in their research.

Policy design and policy feedback in welfare retrenchment: A survey experiment in China

AbstractA growing body of public policy literature examines how welfare retrenchment reform produces attitudinal and behavioral feedback effects. This study adds to the literature on welfare reforms by exploring how different policy designs, combined with individual proximity to reform, produce heterogeneous feedback effects. Bridging the theories of policy feedback and policy design, we theorize how different policy designs shape individuals' self‐interest or sociotropic considerations when they form opinions on welfare reform. The feedback effects of these different policy designs are channeled by individual proximity to the reform, resulting in heterogeneous responses to proposed policy change. Seizing an opportune time window when the Chinese government undertook a public consultation program in 2020 regarding the proposed reform reallocating financial resources in individuals' medical savings accounts, we conducted a survey experiment to examine if two different policy designs led to varying feedback effects. We find that the moderate de facto retrenchment reform indeed triggered public opposition. Unlike previous research that emphasizes partisanship as a major source of heterogeneous feedback effects, our study reveals different sources of heterogeneity—public opposition to the proposed reform varies by the specific policy designs and individuals' past experiences with the existing health insurance policy.

OLG Model Analysis of Delayed Retirement and Social Pension Effects on Family-Based Elderly Care in China

Driven by the traditional concept of “Raising Children to Ensure Old-age Security”, China’s elderly care system has long relied on a family-centered approach, with intergenerational financial transfers (IFTs) serving as a major source of income for the elderly. However, as China’s population ages, the government’s plan to implement delayed retirement from 2025, along with pension reforms, is expected to reshape family-based eldercare and intergenerational financial dynamics. This paper employs an Overlapping Generation (OLG) model, grounded in unified growth theory, which incorporates a delayed retirement policy under the constraint of pension fund balance to examine the impact of adjusting the pension contribution rates (PCRs) and raising retirement age (RA) on IFT rates. The research findings indicate a negative correlation between RA, PCR, and IFT. Both policies have the potential to alleviate the burden on family-based eldercare. The integrated implementation of these two policies not only creates room for a phased reduction in pension contribution rates but also enables the effective utilization of senior workers’ expertise and experience.

Pension reform in Ukraine

The pension system is an important area that ensures the stability of any society. In the conditions of a full-scale invasion of russia into Ukraine, in accordance with the essence of the solidarity pension system, there is an increase in deep disparities between the available number of persons who need pension protection and persons who have to form this protection with their contributions. The aim of the research is to evaluate the pension system of Ukraine under the conditions of martial law and to substantiate the directions for its improvement. The hypothesis was tested that the level of financial stability of the pension system affects the countryʼs ability to maintain social justice and the effectiveness of state regulation of human potential. In this research it was used a systematic and logical approach; method of theoretical generalization, comparison, analysis and synthesis, scientific abstraction. A feature of the pension system in Ukraine is the functioning of the first and third levels of the system, while the second is in a state of reform (does not work). The foundation of pension protection is the solidarity pension system, which suffered the most negative impact from the military operations on the territory of Ukraine. It is substantiated that today the Ukrainian and European pension systems have similar problems, which allows us to generalize the acquired experience and use advanced measures to improve the pension protection of Ukrainian citizens. Given the factors of the pension fund deficit and existing disproportions between the working population and pensioners, the following main approaches to the develop­ment of pension provision in Ukraine are proposed, such as comprehensive support for the development of non-state pension funds, the introduction of accumulative pension insurance; taking into account the European experience – the formation of an additional fund to the Pension Fund of Ukraine (PFU) to ensure a fair pension in the future. It is assumed that the use of European experience in the process of pension reform, taking into account the state of war in the country (which has no time frame for ending) will make it possible to harmonize the existing stratification between the working population and pensioners

The Collateral Damage of Policy Reform: Low-Income Women Retirees, State Feminism, and the Pension System in Sweden

In 2014, the Swedish government declared itself the first feminist government in the world. Indeed, the country has been successful in promoting gender equality, yet many retired women, particularly in rural areas, live on an income below the EU poverty line. Based on analysis of Sweden’s pension system, the country’s commitment to gender equality, and interviews with low-income women pensioners in rural Sweden, this article explores why some women end up living in poverty in later life. The article demonstrates how the Swedish pension reform of the 1990s has generated a structural lag; today’s older women have lived during times that were radically different from the world nowadays, yet their pensions are based on forward-looking ideals. Consequently, today’s older women have become “collateral damage” (Bauman 2011) of securing a new form of pension system, and seemingly also neglected in the state’s promise of ensuring gender equality.

Legal Aspects of Demographic Policy in the Russian Empire

The paper provides a legal analysis of demographic processes in Russia in a retrospective aspect during the pre-revolutionary period. The solution of demographic problems in the Russian Federation at the present stage is possible only taking into account the historical and legal experience of state legal regulation of public relations in the demographic sphere, including in the Russian Empire, taking into account positive historical and legal traditions. It should be borne in mind that demographic processes influence the possibility of making and implementing management decisions at the national and regional levels. State legal demographic policy is an integral part of the legal policy of the state as a whole. The paper examines the stages of the formation of demographic policy in the Russian Empire, its place, role, and goals. The author defines demographic processes, demographic policy, and its modern representation in the norms of law. The paper describes correlation between social policy and demographic policy of the State. The importance of the development and State support of demographic policy in particular and social policy in general is determined. The author analyzed several laws of the Russian Empire adopted from the 18th to the 20th centuries, determined features of demographic and social policy. The author takes into account statistical data of the 1897 census that became the first general census of the population, which determines the quantitative and qualitative composition of the population of the Russian Empire. The paper investigates major reforms in labor relations, health care, pension reforms.

Quantile‐Based Test for Heterogeneous Treatment Effects

ABSTRACTWe introduce a permutation test for heterogeneous treatment effects based on the quantile process. However, tests based on the quantile process often suffer from estimated nuisance parameters that jeopardize their validity, even in large samples. To overcome this problem, we use Khmaladze's martingale transformation. We show that the permutation test based on the transformed statistic controls size asymptotically. Numerical evidence asserts the good size and power performance of our test procedure compared to other popular quantile‐based tests. We discuss a fast implementation algorithm and illustrate our method using experimental data from a welfare reform.

Reflections on the Challenges of Old-age Security and Policy Options for an Ageing Population

The global phenomenon of population aging is advancing at an unprecedented pace, particularly in China, where the accelerating aging process poses substantial challenges to the existing pension security system. The issue of elderly care has emerged as a critical topic in the realms of society, economy, and politics, impacting national sustainability and social stability. The challenges brought about by an aging society extend beyond the pressures of pension payments and insufficient elderly care services, encompassing risks related to funding sources and management, as well as concerns over the fairness of the security system. In the face of these challenges, there is an urgent need to optimize pension policies, advance pension system reforms, enhance the elderly care service system, and strengthen the coordination between social and medical security to construct a more equitable and sustainable pension security framework. Measures must be collaboratively advanced through top-level institutional design, policy execution efficiency, and societal involvement to provide robust support in addressing the challenges of aging. This paper will delve into the impact of population aging on the pension security system, analyze the current state and shortcomings of policies, and propose strategies to enhance the system's resilience, offering insights and recommendations for strengthening the pension security framework.

Communal Intimacies

The reproduction of the American home hinges on a clear public/private distinction, wherein the private sphere is traditionally viewed as domestic — a space for interpersonal care and social reproduction, distinct from the abstract political culture of the public. Due to American legal and cultural norms maintaining this division, the mainstream LGBTQ rights movement has privileged privacy as a portal of legitimation, often to the detriment of poor, queer people of color without access to private property. Amid residential segregation, mass incarceration, and welfare reform, queer people of color must reshape and repurpose both public and commercial space to collectively affirm their erotic desires and care for each other through “communal intimacies,” the spatial-kinship practices that decouple care from the domestic, create a pathway for the transfer of libidinal pleasures, and act as a foundation for envisioning and enacting a world of belonging and transformation despite gentrification. Through cultural analysis of John Leguizamo's performance of the “Manny the Fanny” character from his 1991 show Mambo Mouth and Sean Baker's 2015 film Tangerine, this article illustrates novel forms of homemaking that blur the boundaries denoting the public/private spatial divide inherent in neoliberal property regimes.

Institutional pedagogy and the transformation of residential care for, and with, disabled citizens

In this article, we build upon a historical and critical analysis of de-institutionalisation strategies, representing a fundamental shift in disability policy and practice starting in the 1960’s. We state that de-institutionalisation has commonly been interpreted and translated as a vital ‘transition’ – referring to the dismantling of residential care and institutions – in rights discourse, policy, and (self-) advocacy. Whereas de-institutionalisation currently often interferes with neo-liberal welfare state reforms, we argue that the focus on ‘transition’ tends to ignore controlling and oppressive institutional care cultures that circulate in a variety of settings, whether ‘community based’ or not. In this article, we elaborate on Francois Tosquelles’ Institutional Pedagogy as a theoretical framework to radically ‘transform’ (residential) care in a wide variety of settings. Our analysis is based on qualitative interviews with residential care providers and (self-) advocacy groups, and offers a more in-depth insight in the complexities of de-institutionalisation as ‘transformation’.

Österreichs Rentenpolitik: Vom Nachbarn lernen?

Abstract In the German debate on retirement pensions, Austria’s policy is often referenced. The considerably higher statutory pensions in the neighbouring country arouse interest. How does Austria finance these higher pensions? How does the Austrian pension system in general differ from the German one, especially against the background of the latest pension reforms and inflation in Austria? What reform options can applied to Germany?

Intergenerational redistribution in a pay-as-you-go pension system

This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the generational wealth transfer within Sweden’s public pay-as-you-go pension system introduced in 1960. Using extensive administrative registers, the paper quantifies the contributions made and benefits received by each birth cohort. The findings reveal a substantial fiscal imbalance favouring the initial generation (born in the early 20th century), who received a net gain of $1.5 trillion in today’s present value, equivalent to up to 13% of their discounted lifetime income. This windfall for the initial generation resulted in an implicit tax on current workers, accounting for 70% of their pension contributions. However, the study also highlights the effectiveness of Sweden’s 1999 notional defined-contribution pension reform in stabilizing this imbalance. Unlike many international counterparts, Sweden’s reformed system successfully mitigates further generational inequities in the pension system.

An intersectional feminist analysis of compulsory income management in Australia

Abstract Globally, women experience poverty at disproportionate rates to men, with the situation being worse for Indigenous women and women of colour. Social security systems are one avenue for income redistribution that can alleviate poverty. However, such systems are themselves embedded within and produced by unequal social relations, meaning they can also serve to perpetuate and exacerbate social inequalities. This is exemplified under neoliberal welfare reforms, which have disproportionate negative impacts for women across the world (e.g. increased poverty and stigma, reduced health/wellbeing, and more). Again, this is particularly the case for Indigenous women and women of colour. In this article, we offer an intersectional feminist analysis of an intensive form of neoliberal welfare conditionality, Australia’s ‘compulsory income management’ program (CIM). CIM quarantines social security incomes onto cashless bank cards to restrict expenditure to ‘approved’ items. Drawing on interviews and surveys with 170 individuals who have personally experienced CIM, we show that it has myriad negative impacts that are especially borne by (Indigenous) women. These are not, we argue, unintended policy impacts, but are instead symptomatic of the gendered and racialised violence that is woven into patriarchal capitalism more broadly. Thus, the experience of CIM holds lessons for welfare states internationally.

China's Neoliberal Authoritarian Social Policy

ABSTRACT: China is commonly regarded as a successful alternative to neoliberal economic policy and development strategy. But China's social policies, which were adopted at a pivotal global moment of postsocialist transition in the 1990s, bear significant traits one would associate with neoliberal economic policy. This article uses the case of old age pensions to support this claim. Pension reforms of the early 2000s transferred unprecedented costs and risks to Chinese households under a new social insurance scheme. Twenty years later, the inherent flaws in financing healthcare and pensions through employer-financed and individualized social insurance have become apparent. The concluding section discusses Xi Jinping's dominance of Chinese politics and the risks and economic insecurities that have afflicted Chinese society under these neoliberal social policies.