Benefit Recipients Research Articles

Does external medical review reduce disability insurance inflow?

This paper investigates the effects of introducing external medical review for disability insurance (DI) in a system relying on treating physician testimony for eligibility determination. Using a unique policy change and administrative data from Switzerland, I show that medical review reduces DI incidence by 23%. Incidence reductions are closely tied to difficult-to-diagnose conditions, suggesting inaccurate assessments by treating physicians. Due to a partial benefit system, reductions in full benefit awards are partly offset by increases in partial benefits. More intense screening also increases labor market participation. Existing benefit recipients are downgraded and lose part of their benefit income when scheduled medical reviews occur. Back-of-the-envelope calculations indicate that external medical review is highly cost-effective. Under additional assumptions, the results provide a lower bound of the effect on the false positive award error rate.

Women smelling men's masked body odors show enhanced harm aversion in moral dilemmas

Among the most unnoticeable stimuli providing social information, body odors are powerful social tools that can modulate behavioral and neural processing. It has recently been shown that body odors can affect moral decision-making, by increasing the activations in neural areas processing social and emotional information during the decision process. The aim of the present study was twofold: 1) to test whether body odors selectively affect decisions to real dilemmatic moral scenario (incongruent) vs. fake (congruent) dilemmas, and 2) to characterize whether the impact of masked body odors is modulated by four conceptual factors: personal force, intentionality, benefit recipient and evitability. Women chose between utilitarian (sacrificing a person's life in order to save other lives) or deontological actions (deciding against the harmful action) in 64 moral dilemmas under the exposure of a neutral fragrance (masker) or a masked male body odor. Our results showed that the masked male body odor did not specifically affect the answers to real and fake dilemmas but instead, its effect is modulating whether the agent harms the victim in a direct or indirect manner (personal force) to save herself or only other people (benefit recipient). In particular, when exposed to the masked body odor participants gave more deontological answers when the harm was indirect and only other people were saved. These data support the hypothesis that body odors induce participants to perceive the individuals described in moral dilemmas as more real, triggering harm avoidance.

Anti Klimaks Implementasi E-Government: Analisis Partisipasi Masyarakat Petani Di Kabupaten Gunungkidul

This research is located in Gunungkidul Regency, Yogyakarta Special Region (DIY). The rapid development of global information technology has driven a paradigm shift in society towards the era of digital society. This fact directs the massive use of electronic media in the public service bureaucracy in Indonesia. In order to realize a clean, transparent public service and be able to answer the demands of change effectively, in line with Presidential Instruction No. 3 of 2003. Dilemma when the Gunungkidul Regency Government is seeking e-government as a reform of the public service bureaucracy that is intended for the community as the recipient of service benefits, there are elements of farmer communities that tend to be difficult to adopt new technologies. The Gunungkidul Regency Government has consistently developed a website up to the sub-district level totaling 18 sub-districts and village levels totaling 144 villages with domains namely "name of village-sub-districts.desa.id", known as the Village Information System (SID). The author uses descriptive exploratory research methods to explain the limitations of peasant communities in the use of e-government. This situation can trigger barriers to optimizing the implementation of e-government in Indonesia. The author finds the limitations of the farming community in Gunungkidul Regency in the use of e-government due to 2 (two) aspects namely the lack of habituation in the use of information technology media and the characteristics of community associations that are inherent in the social activities of farmers in Gunungkidul Regency. The character of the farming community tends to be difficult to correlate with the development of digital information technology in its activities, making it difficult to create an habit of using internet media for everyday life. Keywords: e-government, public service, farmer community, limitations

Конституционно-правовые императивы обеспечения демографической безопасности Республики Беларусь

In this work, we analyze the constitutional and legal imperatives of social policy that determine the sustainable state of demographic security of the Republic of Belarus, and also we establish the place of citizens legal awareness in the field of social and security relations. We make a number of conclusions: on the predominantly successful implementation of measures to improve social legislation (at the same time, certain areas were noted in which the predicted results were not achieved); the sufficiency of constitu-tional legal imperatives of social policy; on increasing the degree of inde-pendence of citizens and the level of their legal awareness in social and secu-rity relations. We note that the symbiosis of social and economic constitu-tional and legal imperatives reflected in the text of the current Basic Law of the Republic of Belarus corresponds to the spirit of the times. We also state that at present, refracting through the prism of dynamically developing eco-nomic relations, the sphere of social policy is filled with new meaning and new forms involving citizens, as recipients of these social benefits and val-ues, in the process of implementing guaranteed constitutional and legal im-peratives. In addition, we note that state paternalism, as a model of social protection, has not exhausted its capabilities even in the conditions of mod-ern, dynamically developing social and economic relations.

Bolsa Família, autonomia feminina e equidade de gênero: o que indicam as pesquisas nacionais?

Resumo O Programa Bolsa Família (PBF), desde sua criação, prioriza as mulheres como responsáveis pelo recebimento do benefício financeiro. Esse arranjo faz com que a conexão entre o PBF e mudanças nas relações de gênero seja objeto de interesse de diversas pesquisas. O objetivo deste texto é debater os achados dessas pesquisas. A conclusão é a de que, embora seu desenho possa reforçar a ideia de que o trabalho de cuidado é responsabilidade feminina, o PBF gera inquietações relativas à autoridade masculina e amplia as redes sociais das mulheres, tendo potencial para gerar mudanças nas relações de gênero.

Universal Basic Income and the Problem of Information Asymmetry

This article focuses on economic analysis of the concept of universal basic income. This social assistance scheme is regarded as an alternative to traditional targeted, means-tested, social benefits. The paper elaborates on what distinguishes universal basic income from other forms of social benefits, and analyzes some of the most widespread arguments in its favor. A hypothetical implementation of basic income could not only generate social and economic gains, but would also inevitably be associated with certain costs. In particular, given that for some individuals with medium and high incomes basic income payments would in essence be a tax deduction, taxes would need to be raised in order to balance out the state budget. This would lead to additional administration costs. As demonstrated in the article, they should be interpreted as costs of reduction of information asymmetry, which inevitably arises in the relation between the state and recipients of social assistance. It is shown that the economic side of a number of key arguments for basic income boils down to the latter making it possible to reduce information asymmetry. These arguments include the assertions that universal basic income would make the welfare system simpler and more manageable, eliminate poverty traps and expand the freedom of choice among social benefit recipients. The information asymmetry approach is applied to the analysis of preliminary results of the basic income experiment conducted in Finland in 2017–2018. The paper provides evidence that basic income is only one of the many possible approaches to reducing information asymmetry in welfare systems.

Assessing the Impact of Off- and On-the-Job Training on Employment Outcomes: A Counterfactual Evaluation of the Pipol Program

This evaluation study aims to assess the impact of PIPOL, an integrated program of active labor policies, on the employment integration of benefit recipients. To address the issue, we have resorted to a counterfactual approach with data from two main sources: the program administration and compulsory communications on employment and unemployment spells. We found a net impact of 5% on average for on-the-job training, but no impact for off-the-job training. On-the-job training also affects the probability to find permanent work (+3%). This is consistent with the view that young people have excellent theoretical, but very little work-related competences. Off-the-job training does affect the probability to experience at least one labor contract after 2016. These results are partly due to a lock-in effect, namely the tendency of those who attend training programs to delay their job search. Interestingly, we found that the program has a different impact for different typologies of recipients and different types of intervention. In a nutshell, active labor policy works when it generates work-related competences.

Support for conditional unemployment benefit in European countries: The role of income inequality

This article investigates attitudes towards the conditionality of benefits targeted to a specific needy group, the unemployed, and analyses their relationship with the structure of income inequality. The focus is on the deservingness of welfare recipients. The public seems to use five criteria to define deservingness and, consequently, the conditionality to which public support is subjected: need, attitude (i.e. gratefulness), control (over neediness), reciprocity (of giving and receiving) and identity, that is the similarity or proximity between the providers of public support (the taxpayers) and the people who should receive it. People’s willingness to help depends on how close they consider benefit recipients to be to themselves (i.e. the extent to which they belong to the same in-group). The identity criterion is the main object of our investigation. We argue that the operation of this criterion at the micro-level can be affected by macro-level variables. Specifically, we focus on different measures of the structure of income inequality which are indicators of the social distance between welfare recipients and taxpayers. Based on data from three waves of the European Values Study (1990–2008) collected in 30 countries, the study offers a comparative and longitudinal analysis. The picture emerging from the within-country analysis – which removed much of the between-country heterogeneity − shows that when the social distance grows, it is more difficult for the majority of citizens (upper and middle classes) to identify with the unemployed.

Would government compensation of living kidney donors exploit the poor? An empirical analysis.

Government compensation of kidney donors would likely increase the supply of kidneys and prevent the premature deaths of tens of thousands of patients with kidney failure each year. The major argument against it is that it would exploit the poor who would be more likely to accept the offers of compensation. This overlooks the fact that many poor patients desperately need a kidney transplant and would greatly benefit from an increased supply of kidneys. The objective of this study is to empirically test the hypothesis that government compensation of kidney donors would exploit the poor. Exploitation is defined by economists and several noted ethicists as paying donors less than the fair market value of their kidney. Exploitation is expressed in monetary terms and compared with the economic benefit recipients receive from a transplant. Data are from the Scientific Registry of Transplant Recipients and the United States Renal Data System annual data reports. Educational attainment is used as a proxy for income. We estimate that if the government rewards living donors with a package of non-cash benefits worth $75,000 per kidney, donors would not be exploited. Much more important, this compensation would likely end the kidney shortage, enabling many more patients with kidney failure to obtain transplants and live longer and healthier lives. The value of kidney transplantation to a U.S. recipient is about $1,330,000, which is an order of magnitude greater than any purported exploitation of a living donor (zero to $75,000). Consequently, the aggregate net benefit to the poor alone from kidney transplantation would increase to about $12 billion per year from $1 billion per year currently. Most of the benefit would accrue to poor kidney recipients. But poor donors would receive the fair market value of their kidney, and hence would not be exploited. If the government wanted to ensure that donors also received a net benefit, it could easily do so by increasing the compensation above $75,000 per donor.

Welfare reform and public justification

ABSTRACTThis paper investigates the conditions of political argument with regard to welfare legislation. It connects to the discussion on the role of ideas in political change but develops a new approach by investigating arguments in light of theories of public justification in a democratic society. The paper uses a recent Norwegian law as the case for studying how politicians frame their arguments for “mandatory activation,” meaning the policy that requires recipients to participate in work-oriented activities. The paper finds that Norwegian advocates of activation use a “justificatory narrative” that presents the new law as a form of paternalistic concern for the benefit recipients. It is argued that this justification can be understood as shaped by certain basic conditions of political viability.

Work must pay: Does it? Precarious employment and employment motivation for low-income households

One of the core dilemmas of current welfare politics is the question of how to ensure social protection while providing incentives to seek employment at the same time. A way to address this dilemma is to base policies and policy models on the principle notion that ‘work must pay’; in other words, income from employment should be higher than the social support of the unemployed. However, how accurately do these approaches and models represent the reality of benefit recipients, particularly in the context of increased employment precariousness? In this article, we use the cases of two disadvantaged regions in Czech Republic in order to contrast the presumptions of ‘making work pay’ policies with the everyday experience of welfare recipients. As we show, their situations are strongly shaped by current changes in the labour market, particularly the precarious character of accessible employment and high levels of indebtedness. The modelling of financial employment incentives and the public policies based on these calculations often do not correspond with the reality of welfare recipients that are often cycling in and out of precarious forms of employment. However, the authors’ main claim is that the very idea of the ‘work must pay’ approach focuses on the wrong question. A truly functioning financial incentive would need to focus not solely on the difference in income between those who work and those who do not work, but rather should analyse what type of arrangements allow working households to rise permanently above the poverty line.

Is brain death a legal fiction?

Summary Franklin Miller, Robert Truog, and Seema Shah claim that brain death is not really death and that interest in organ transplantation was the primary motivation behind its acceptance as a criterion for determining death. Since it is unlikely that these “facts” can remain hidden from the public much longer, they are concerned that, if the truth becomes widely known, the public may reject transplantation from brain-dead donors as a violation of the “dead donor rule.” However, in their view, transplantation from brain-dead donors should continue, since no harm is done to the donors and the recipients of the organs benefit greatly from the transplantation. They therefore propose that we accept brain death as a kind of “legal fiction” and become more transparent about how this fiction may be useful and ethically appropriate in permitting vital organ transplantation. In this paper, I maintain that Miller, Truog, and Shah's view is seriously flawed. I argue that, because brain death (total brain failure) is a true criterion for determining death, it is not a fiction at all and therefore cannot be a “legal fiction.” Organ transplantation from brain-dead donors should continue because those donors are really dead.

Developments in loaning social assistance: support for mortgage interest in Britain

Britain's 2015 summer budget introduced a policy extending the use of loans in its social security system. From April 2018 support for mortgage interest will be loaned, rather than granted. Its repayment is to be via a charging order on the homes of benefit recipients and/or from wages when they (re-)enter work. This development is examined in relationship to the use of loans in British social assistance provision. The paper argues that it is consistent with the philosophical underpinnings of loaning social assistance, but it also involves new developments with regard to charging interest and the recovery of the loans.

Community Attitudes Toward People Receiving Unemployment Benefits: Does Volunteering Change Perceptions?

People receiving government income support due to unemployment are sometimes required to participate in activities such as volunteering. These “mutual obligation” requirements have community support, but the effect of volunteering on benefit recipients is unclear. In three person-perception experiments (N = 222, 533, 934), we considered whether volunteering overcomes negative evaluations of unemployed benefit recipients. Volunteering increased the extent to which benefit recipients were considered suitable workers and likeable, but these effects also generalized to non-recipients. Results suggest that volunteering may compensate for attitudinal barriers arising from welfare stigma that represents a barrier for employment.

Street-level casework and mentally ill jobseekers under Social Code II in Germany: Counselling and the role of medical services

The German welfare-to-work system sets a low threshold of three hours a day for capacity to work. People with mental health problems are a relevant subgroup among those receiving benefits. Caseworkers in job centres are responsible for the placement, counselling and support of the benefit recipients. For this article, we examined the role of work for mentally ill people in treatment settings, how caseworkers in the jobcentres recognise mental problems, what the impact is of a psychiatric diagnosis on the process of counselling and what happens to benefit recipients close to incapacity for work.

Caught between two stools? Informal care provision and employment among welfare recipients in Germany

AbstractIn many countries, population ageing is challenging the viability of the welfare state and generating higher demands for long-term care. At the same time, increasing participation in the labour force is essential to ensuring the sustainability of the welfare state. To address the latter issue, affected countries have adopted measures to increase employment; e.g. welfare recipients in Germany are required to be available for any type of legal work. However, 7 per cent of welfare benefit recipients in Germany provide long-term care for relatives or friends, and this care-giving may interfere with their job search efforts and decrease their employment opportunities. Our paper provides evidence of the relationship between the care responsibilities and employment chances of welfare recipients in Germany. Our analyses are based on survey data obtained from the panel study ‘Labour Market and Social Security’ and on panel regression methods. The results reveal a negative relationship between intensive care-giving (ten or more hours per week) and employment for male and female welfare recipients. However, employment prospects recover when care duties end and are subsequently no longer lower for carers than for non-carers.

Housing subsidies and property prices: Evidence from England

This paper analyses the effect of major cuts to housing subsidies on property prices in England. Governments commonly give rental subsidies to poor households, but it is not known whether or to what extent this distorts underlying property prices. Using a difference-in-differences-type estimator to exploit variation in scale of the cuts across local areas, we find that the cuts lowered house prices from the time of the policy announcement. The impact was seen predominantly for types of property typically rented by recipients of subsidies and in areas where demand for housing is low relative to supply. Analysis of survey data of individuals finds that benefit recipients were more likely to move home after the cuts relative to other renters. Overall, the results suggest that rental subsidies, while helping recipients to afford otherwise too expensive properties, could contribute to affordability problems for buyers.

Incentive Effects of Cash Benefits among Young People. A Natural Experiment from Norway

AbstractPrior research on active labour market programmes (ALMPs) for young people has revealed either no effect or negative effects on transition rates into employment. In addition to accessing the programme content, participation in ALMPs bestows the right to a supplementary benefit. Yet, the direct effect of this benefit on the use and outcome of ALMPs remains largely unknown. We study the effects of a Norwegian policy that pays much higher benefits to recipients when they reach 19 years of age. This policy provides a natural experimental setting that allows us to utilise the age discontinuity to observe whether young people are more likely to become benefit recipients after their nineteenth birthday, and to estimate the effect of benefits on the labour supply. As age determines the increase in benefits rather than need, it creates a random and exogenous variation in the criteria for allocating cash benefits. We use Norwegian administrative register data that cover all 18 to 19 year olds during the period 2003 to 2012. We find no effect on programme take-up or employment rates. Hence, benefits do not work against the aim of ALMPs and young people's responsiveness to financial incentives cannot explain such programmes’ lack of effects.

Return-to-Work Policies and Labor Supply in Disability Insurance Programs

Return-to-work policies in disability insurance (DI) programs allow beneficiaries to collect a portion of their benefits while working. I investigate whether a large increase in incentives to work in a return-to-work policy could induce benefit recipients to increase their labor supply. I quantify the effects on earnings and labor force participation using a sharp discontinuity in the induced incentives to work at the month of the policy change in a DI program in Canada. Using administrative data, I document that large incentives to work could induce beneficiaries to increase their labor supply both in intensive and extensive margins.

Ethos i tożsamość służby a bezpieczeństwo pracowników służb społecznych

The security of workers of social services is one of the most important issues determining the quality of services provided by the social assistance and integration system. It belongs to the catalog of basic human needs. Additionally, in the professional sphere, it serves as a regulator of interpersonal relations. It identifies social relationships of the type of social worker – the user (recipient of benefits and services of social assistance and integration). The ethos and identity of the social service belong to the so-called group of invisible instruments. They condition the safety of this professional group. In this regard, they also serve as an analytical tool that refers to the factorial theory of the security of workers of social services.