Benefit Recipients Research Articles

‘Dead people don’t claim’: A psychopolitical autopsy of UK austerity suicides

One of the symptoms of post financial crisis austerity in the UK has been an increase in the numbers of suicides, especially by people who have experienced welfare reform. This article develops and utilises an analytic framework of psychopolitical autopsy to explore media coverage of ‘austerity suicide’ and to take seriously the psychic life of austerity (internalisation, shame, anxiety), embedding it in a context of social dis-ease.Drawing on three distinct yet interrelated areas of literature (the politics of affect and psychosocial dynamics of welfare, post and anti-colonial psychopolitics, and critical suicidology), the article aims to better understand how austerity ‘kills’. Key findings include understanding austerity suicides as embedded within an affective economy of the anxiety caused by punitive welfare retrenchment, the stigmatisation of being a recipient of benefits, and the internalisation of market logic that assigns value through ‘productivity’ and conceptualises welfare entitlement as economic ‘burden’. The significance of this approach lies in its ability to widen analytic framing of suicide from an individual and psychocentric focus, to illuminate culpability of government reforms while still retaining the complexity of suicide, and thus to provide relevant policy insights about welfare reform.

DOES EU COMPETITION POLICY SUPPORT INCLUSIVE GROWTH?

This article proposes a novel methodology to strengthen the micro-foundations of a macroeconomic assessment of EU competition policy. A unique database containing case-specific information on merger and cartel decisions is exploited to conduct macroeconomic policy simulations using a Dynamic Stochastic General Equilibrium model. The model has been extended to allow investigating the effects of EU competition policy interventions not only on standard macroeconomic variables such as GDP and employment, but also on distributional outcomes across households with different skill levels and across different types of income earners (capital owners, wage earners, and benefit recipients). The policy simulations presented include both direct and indirect (deterrent) effects of competition policy interventions. They show that competition policy has a sizeable impact on GDP growth, job creation, and the distribution of consumption across different types of households.

The Image of Refugees and the Features of its Development in Lithuanian Online Newspapers

The considerable number of refugees fleeing to Europe has an impact on countries’ economic, political and social agenda, as well as the processes of society. The European refugee (migrant) crisis, which began in 2015, brought out not only different attitudes toward refugees among Eu­ropean Union politicians, but also revealed how diverse the coverage of na­tional media may get on the refugee topic. Refugees flee to Europe from various countries and diverse cultural back­grounds. However, society lacks the knowledge about their religious beliefs, lifestyles and outlooks. Moreover, the media has the power to decide which events and individuals to portray, and in such a way constructs the audi­ence’s perception about the world they live in. Refugee-related messages in the media usually occur in a negative context: terrorist attacks, refugee deaths, criminal activity and protests. However, the media does not only construct, but also has the power to change prejudice toward refugees, ensuring that one of its aims is interaction between diverse social groups. The author combines quantitative and qualitative research methods for media messages and analyzes dominant stereotypes about refugees in Lithu­anian online media. The types of refugee-related publications are also exam­ined. Three research periods were chosen: 1-31 July 2015, 1-30 November 2015 and 1-31 January 2016. The main goals are to theoretically discuss the media’s role and peculiarities in shaping certain images which society main­tains, as well as to define the stereotypes and their role in society. Lithuanian online newspapers are commercial institutions, which – in order to compete in the market – strive to engage consumers. Delivering mes­sages quickly and in large quantities often matters more than their content and the reliability of sources. This, in turn, leads to the information being distorted or superficial. Lithuanian newspapers construct a negative refugee image, where the most dominant images of refugees are as individuals who are uncontrollable, aggressive and prone to commit crime, being either gang members, terrorists or benefit recipients.

Displacement as Regulation: New Regulatory Technologies and Front-Line Decision-Making in Ontario Works

AbstractThis paper explores how new regulatory technologies and front-line decision-makers reshape one another. Drawing on a recent qualitative study of caseworker decision-making in the Ontario Works program, it demonstrates the dialectical relationship between new case management software and caseworkers. While new technologies may attempt to deskill and decentre front-line decision-makers, transforming them into data entry clerks, caseworkers learn how to expertly translate and input client data to produce decisions that more closely match their interpretation of clients’ needs and welfare laws. The ways in which workers “manipulate the system” to produce a particular decision, though common knowledge among their colleagues, are black boxed to program managers, auditors, and benefits recipients.

The Impact of the Eligibility Threshold of a French Means-Tested Health Insurance Programme on Doctor Visits: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis.

This paper assesses the impact of eligibility for a free means‐tested complementary health insurance plan, called Couverture Maladie Universelle Complémentaire (CMUC), on doctor visits. We use information on the selection rule to qualify for the plan to identify the effect of eligibility and adopt a regression discontinuity approach. Our sample consists of low‐income individuals enrolled in the Health Insurance Fund and recipients of social benefits from the Family Allowance Fund of an urban area in Northern France. Our findings do not show significant impacts of the CMUC threshold on the number of doctor visits within the full sample. Among the subsample of adults under 30 years old, however, eligible individuals are more likely to see a specialist and have, on average, significantly more specialist visits than non‐eligible individuals. This specific impact of the CMUC cut‐off point among young adults may be explained by the fact that young adults are less likely to be covered by a complementary health insurance plan when they are not recipients of the CMUC plan. © 2017 The Authors. Health Economics Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Fathers as Frauds: On the Criminalization of Fathers in the Parental Leave for Fathers Program in Israel

The criminalization of poverty, the process in which recipients of social security benefits are construed as frauds, is a well-documented phenomenon. Two aspects of this process are the use of stereotypes as a tool in fraud accusations and the targeting of marginalized populations. In this article, I wish to expand the gendered discussion of this phenomenon to men by examining the process of the construction of Israeli fathers wishing to take parental leave as welfare frauds. I will claim that this process is based on gendered assumptions that deny the possibility of fathers wishing to care for their children. The program that allows fathers to share parental leave experiences a high reported rate of fraud by fathers claiming parental leave benefits. However, analysis shows that the evidence does not support these reports and that claims on fraud and abuse are the result of a tendentious interpretation of the data by bureaucrats. This tendentiousness is based, I argue, on implicit assumptions about the nature of men. As this case shows, criminalization of benefit recipients can be targeted at nonmarginalized or even privileged groups. This sheds new light both on the criminalization process and on the workings of the gendered power structure.

MEANS TESTING SOCIAL SECURITY: INCOME VERSUS WEALTH

A Social Security means test targeting benefit recipients in the top quarter of the income distribution will have substantially different distributional effects from a means test targeting the top ...

A Study on the Improvement Transforming Characteristics of the Revised Housing Benefit

본 논문은 지난 1여년간 개편된 주거급여의 제도적 특성은 무엇이며 그로 인해 변화한 결과, 그리고 한계와 미비점은 무엇인가를 밝히는 것이다. 제도 개편 후 주거급여는 지원 대상자의 범위가 확대되고 주거급여 보장수준도 확대되어 수급자의 임대료 부담 완화와 주거 수준 향상에 기여하였다. 그러나 당초 시행 전 예상했던 주거급여 수급자 97만 가구 목표 지원에 비한다면 실제 급여 수급자는 80만 가구여서, 제도 개편 전에서 비하여 10만 가구의 증가에 그치고 있다. 제도 개편의 가장 큰 목적 중의 하나였던 정책 사각 지대를 좁이는 문제는 아직 해결되지는 않고 있다고 볼 수 있으며, 탈주거빈곤문제도 과제로 남겨져 있다. 임차 급여의 임대료 부담 완화 효과는 있었지만 아직까지 수급자의 절반 가량이 임대료 과부담이라는 점에서 향후 임대료 부담 수준을 더 완화하는 방안이 필요하다. 또한 개편 제도의 시행 1년차에 사용대차 지급 원칙, 임차료 검증문제, 수선유지급여의 실시와 관려한 부분들이 제도적 미비점을 나타났다. 따라서 향후 주거급여는 이러한 제도적 미비점을 개선해 나가면서 주거급여 제도의 난해성, 임대료 부담 기준 부재, 열악한 거주 여건은 향후 주거급여의 성장과 발전을 위한 선결 과제라 할 수 있다. 공공협력형 주거급여 전달 체계는 보장기관과 전담기관간의 원활한 협력과 교류로 주택 조사의 범위를 넘어 수급자의 상향 주거이동 연계 지원과 탈주거빈곤을 유도하여 주거 자립화를 지원할 수 있도록 보다 강화할 필요가 있다.The purpose of this study is to examine the transforming characteristics of the housing benefit system that was revised with the introduction of customized benefit system and to investigate the revised housing benefit s changed effect and limitations over the past one year. The revised housing benefit system has redesigned for expanding the coverage of beneficiaries eligibility criteria, alleviating rent overburden and improving their housing quality. Though increasing the number of recipients over the past year, the number of recipients receiving housing benefit (800,000 households) falls short of the government target of 970,000 households. One of the main purposes of the revision was to reduce the blind spot of National Basic Livelihood Security System, but these transformation has done little to achieve that goal. Housing poverty is another problem to be solved. Although the revised housing benefit system has helped alleviate rent overburden for recipients to some extent, about half of the housing benefit recipients are still suffering the pressure of rent burden. Poor housing conditions did not also be improved. Limitations such as rent-free recipients, rent verification, and in-kind support revealed in the implementation. To resolve these issues, central government need to simplify the current housing benefit system, define affordable rent burden criteria, improve housing quality and institutional imperfections. In addition, local government and LH as authorized housing inspector involved in the delivery of housing benefit services should actively cooperate and communicate with one another for not only conducting housing investigation, but also assisting housing benefit recipients out of housing poverty and help them move up the housing ladder.

Receiving Unemployment Benefits May Have Positive Effects On The Health Of The Unemployed.

Research suggests that job loss can cause illness and premature death. This raises the question of whether unemployment benefit programs, which are intended to alleviate the financial stress of job loss, can protect the health of the unemployed. To investigate this question, we analyzed data for the period 1984-2009 from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. We found that receiving unemployment benefits significantly reduced the probability of reporting poor health in the year after job loss, by around 5percentage points. The health-promoting effects of receiving the benefits were robust across multiple model specifications and after we accounted for preexisting differences between benefit recipients and nonrecipients. Our results add to the growing body of literature that suggests that social policies can have unanticipated health effects.

The Decentralization of Social Assistance and the Rise of Disability Insurance Enrolment

Fiscal decentralization, the decentralization of government expenditures to local governments, may enhance public sector efficiency. Vertical externalities, i.e. spillovers between local and central government, could however undo part of this advantage. In this paper we estimate spillovers from Social Assistance (SA), administered by municipalities, towards central government’s Social Security Disability Insurance (SSDI) scheme in The Netherlands. The latter scheme saw rapidly rising enrolment rates after financial responsibility for Social Assistance was transferred from central to local government. We find that the correlation between local SSDI enrolment and the local stock of SA benefits recipients has increased significantly in the years after decentralization. We show that an increased caseload shifting from Social Assistance to Disability Insurance is the only plausible explanation for this change. Our analysis shows that, following the decentralization of Social Assistance, at least one third of the SSDI inflow was diverted from SA. This caseload shifting increased more rapidly in municipalities experiencing deficits on their SA budgets than in municipalities running a surplus.

Association between Sleep Duration and Injury from Falling among Older Adults: A Cross-Sectional Analysis of Korean Community Health Survey Data.

PurposeWhile sleeping problems increase with advancing age, there are inherent differences in sleep between males and females. Previous studies have shown inconsistent results of the relationship between sleep duration and risk of injury from falling. While controlling various sociodemographic and health-related factors, national representative data were used in order to analyze the association between sleep duration and injury from falling among older adults.Materials and MethodsThe data were obtained from the Korean Community Health Survey of 2011. A total of 55654 individuals aged 65 years and older participated in the study. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was conducted to identify the factors associated with injury from falling.ResultsAfter adjusting for covariates, such as age, sex, marital status, whether or not an individual is a recipient of benefits from the National Basic Livelihood Act, hypertension, diabetes mellitus, dyslipidemia, stress level, and self-rated health status, those who slept five hours or less per day [odds ratio (OR)=1.26; 95% confidence interval (CI)=1.18–1.34; p<0.001] or eight hours or more per day (OR=1.11; 95% CI=1.04–1.17; p=0.001) presented significantly higher ORs for injury from falling. A similar result was found when we conducted stratification by sex.ConclusionThe current study supports that there is a relationship between short sleep duration and injury from falling and also identified a marginal risk of long sleep in older adults. Therefore, sleep management in older adults with inadequate sleep duration may be necessary.

Does Disability Insurance Improve Health and Well-Being?

The purpose of disability insurance (DI) is to protect people with health problems that limit their ability to work. We evaluate the effectiveness of DI benefit programs in delivering this protection by following people’s health and financial well-being after the take-up of DI benefits. This paper takes advantage of internationally harmonized panel data and the differences across DI programs in Europe and the United States, as well as their changes over time. We use several econometric approaches to account for the potential endogeneity of DI enrollment and sample selectivity. We find that self-reported health stabilizes after DI benefit receipt. Mental health improves more for DI benefit recipients than non-recipients relative to the beginning of DI benefit receipt. This effect is stronger in countries with more generous DI systems. The effects on objective health measures are positive but largely insignificant.

Kształtowanie się Zakładu Ubezpieczeń Społecznych jako podmiotu ubezpieczeń społecznych w Polsce

The functioning of the Social Security Institution (ZUS) is one of the elements of social policy of the State It aims at securing existence and fundamental needs of benefit recipients. The Institution is an entity which handles the social security system. It ensures social security in case of sickness, disability, old age or death. The Social Security Institution is a combination of a financial institution (contribution collection, payment of benefits, tax collection from old-age pensioners and recipients of sickness allowances) with a social institution. Every month social security contributions are paid to ZUS for 14,5 million persons; they are contributed by over 2 million taxpayers. Every month 7,3 million pensions and sickness allowances are paid from ZUS as well as 400 thousand securities and short-term benefits which total around PLN 14 million. The functioning of the Institution cost little, i.e. over 2 % of money in its operations. In relation to the scale of tasks performed, this amount is low. It has stood practically at the same level for years due to a public sector pay freeze.

Why do immigrants have longer periods of unemployment? Swiss evidence

AbstractImmigrant groups, especially those originating from non‐European countries, tend to experience disadvantages in the labour market and to be overrepresented among the recipients of welfare benefits in many European countries. In the public debate, this outcome is sometimes explained with reference to migration‐related factors such as weaker work values than natives (i.e., acceptability of remaining on benefits), smaller and lower quality of informal networks and lower levels of psychological well‐being. Indeed, we find that these factors significantly influence unemployment duration in the expected direction. However, they explain only a small share of the overall disadvantage that some immigrant groups experience. We conclude that at least some of the large differences we observed in unemployment durations are likely to be due to other factors including discrimination by employers.

Young adults’ risk of long-term benefit receipt and parents’ socioeconomic background

This study investigates social differences in the risk of long-term benefit receipt of young adults in Germany. Although employment is a major route to end social benefit receipt, it may not result in financial independence for all social groups in their early working lives as this also depends on the status of their parents: Do young benefit recipients have unequal chances of making the transition from benefit receipt as soon as they take up employment? How stable is the impact of parents’ socioeconomic status on the transition once young adults complete their vocational education? This study conducts an empirical analysis of the careers of a cohort of 18-to-24-year-old Germans who received benefits in 2005 by combining survey data and register data for a six-year observation period. Event history analyses indicate that social differences persist when young adults claim social benefits. In particular, parents’ socioeconomic status is positively associated with their offspring’s likelihood of ending receipt of social benefits as soon as they are in full-time employment. Parents’ socioeconomic status has a relatively stable impact for young beneficiaries irrespective of whether they have completed vocational qualifications or not. The findings suggest that these social differences persist during early working life.

Current Issues in Unjust Enrichment: Claims against Remote Recipients and the Illegality Defence

This paper discusses two current issues in the English law of unjust enrichment: when do claims lie against the remote recipients of benefits, and when will a claim be denied on the ground that it is tainted by illegality?

Social capital as a key determinant of perceived benefits of community-based marine protected areas.

Globally, marine protected areas (MPAs) have been relatively unsuccessful in meeting biodiversity objectives. To be effective, they require some alteration of people's use and access to marine resources, which they will resist if they do not perceive associated benefits. Stakeholders' support is crucial to ecological success of MPAs, and their support is likely to depend on their capacity to adapt to and benefit from MPAs. We examined the influence of social adaptive capacity (SAC) on perceived benefits of MPAs in Siquijor, Philippines, in the Coral Triangle. This region has substantial biodiversity and a population of over 120 million people, many of them dependent on marine resources for food and income. The region has many MPAs, most of which are managed under decentralized governance systems. We collected survey data from 540 households in 19 villages with associated MPAs. We evaluated the influence of multiple SAC variables (e.g., occupational multiplicity and social capital) on perceived benefits with decision trees (CHAID) and qualitatively analyzed this relationship with respect to types and recipients of benefits. Our models revealed the key role of social capital, particularly trust in leadership, in influencing perceptions of benefits (χ2 = 14.762, p = 0.000). A path analysis revealed that perceptions of distributional equity were a key mechanism through which social capital affected perceived MPA benefits (root mean-square error of approximation = 0.050). Building social capital and equity within communities could lead to more effective management of MPAs and thus to expenditure of fewer resources relative to, for example, regulation enforcement.

A review of ecosystem service benefits from wild bees across social contexts.

In order to understand the role of wild bees in both social and ecological systems, we conducted a quantitative and qualitative review of publications dealing with wild bees and the benefits they provide in social contexts. We classified publications according to several attributes such as services and benefits derived from wild bees, types of bee-human interactions, recipients of direct benefits, social contexts where wild bees are found, and sources of changes to the bee-human system. We found that most of the services and benefits from wild bees are related to food, medicine, and pollination. We also found that wild bees directly provide benefits to communities to a greater extent than individuals. In the social contexts where they are found, wild bees occupy a central role. Several drivers of change affect bee-human systems, ranging from environmental to political drivers. These are the areas where we recommend making interventions for conserving the bee-human system.

Factors related to satisfaction with long-term care services among low-income Korean elderly adults: A national cross-sectional survey

BackgroundWith the growing demand for long-term care (LTC) services, it is increasingly important to explore experience with care. This study examined care satisfaction in a nursing home and at home among low-income elders in South Korea. MethodsThis cross-sectional study was conducted with 246 elderly recipients of welfare benefits using a proportional stratified sampling method. Two self-reported versions of a questionnaire developed for users of nursing home care and homecare were used. ResultsThose at home reported higher care satisfaction than those in nursing homes did. Both users of nursing home care and homecare were less satisfied with the food served. Users of nursing homes had comparatively less satisfaction regarding the daily activities available to them and less autonomy concerning their care decisions. Factors that influenced satisfaction with nursing home care and homecare were the quality of caregivers, care facilities, and physical wellbeing. ConclusionsAn approach focused on improving the quality of the care facilities and caregivers could help enhance care satisfaction among low-income Korean elders receiving LTC.

Nostalgia narratives? Pejorative attitudes to welfare in historical perspective: survey evidence from Beveridge to the British Social Attitudes Survey

Jensen and Tyler (2015) have powerfully argued that 'anti-welfare commonsense', fuelled by negative political and media discourse stressing welfare dependency and deception, has buttressed support for social security reform in recent years. Along with many other academics they point to the hardening of public attitudes towards welfare state provision and how notions of the 'deserving' and 'undeserving poor' have been reintroduced into popular debates. We identify four distinct threads within this scholarship. First, there is an argument that public attitudes have shifted from an earlier post-war welfare imaginary and settlement to an anti-welfare consensus. Second, this hardening includes a growing prevalence of 'othering'. The third thread is the broadening of this moral and disciplinary gaze to include groups, such as disabled people, who until recently were not subject to the same amount of stigma as other types of benefit recipients. Fourth, is the impact of pejorative welfare discourses on the self-identity and attitudes of disadvantaged groups. While a growing body of evidence makes it increasingly difficult to argue against suggestions that there is a hostile body of anti-welfare sentiment in the UK, what is often implicit in the analysis of pejorative contemporary attitudes to welfare is the view that there was once a 'golden age' of the welfare state when public support was more fully behind a strong set of social security benefits provided as a social right of citizenship. Whether this was the case is a moot point however. Few studies have tried to piece together the attitudes to welfare of the general public during the consensus era. We attempt to undertake such a task here, drawing on ad hoc attitudes surveys and polling data in particular. Specifically, we focus on how notions of the 'deserving' and 'undeserving poor' play out in this data, pointing to some key continuities found in contemporary and historical public attitudes to welfare.