Social Policy Perspective Research Articles

LGBTQ+ Families, Welfare, and Same-sex Marriage Legalisation in Taiwan: A Social Policy Perspective

This article examines whether and to what extent legalised same-sex marriage can assist lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans, and queer (LGBTQ+) people to develop family life and protect them from defamilisation and familisation risks. It focuses on the provision of and gaps in welfare for LGBTQ+ people since Taiwan’s same-sex marriage legalisation in 2019. A content analysis of online community discussions since marriage equality shows that local LGBTQ+ community discussions were filled with concerns about the lack of familial status for cross-border couples, lack of legal parental status and rights for same-sex parents, and questions about heteronormative values and kinship ties. This article reveals how heteronormative assumptions embedded in the policy system and in the wider society adversely influence LGBTQ+ people’s welfare, and identifies supplementary and alternative measures. It highlights the importance of providing universal basic services free from heteronormative biases and prioritising the well-being and rights of all citizens.

A városi zöldövezetek jelentősége és romániai helyzete

With the expansion of cities, green spaces are becoming increasingly important, significantly enhancing people's quality of life on multiple levels. In her study, Cristina Humă addresses the concept of urban green spaces and examines the situation in Romania from a social policy perspective, highlighting their importance in sustainable urban development. The analysis indicates that green areas have started to increase in Romania, but many localities still do not meet European standards, emphasizing the need for further development.

Out of school children in the context of new policy trajectories and interlocking crises in Zimbabwe: a transformative social policy perspective

In the past two decades, Zimbabwe has been confronted with a concerning increase in the number of out-of-school children and youth (OOSC). Emerging evidence suggests that nearly a million children fall into this category, representing approximately half of the country’s adolescent population. This phenomenon has significantly impacted on Zimbabwe’s educational landscape and socio-economic fabric. Despite its gravity, research on OOSC remains limited. To address this gap, our study triangulates data from various sources to explore OOSC prevalence, examining geographical disparities and underlying causes. In addition, we investigate the nexus between OOSC and the prevailing socio-economic crises in the country. Our analysis reveals that, despite Zimbabwe’s robust education policies and legislative framework, OOSC prevalence rates remain high. Implementation gaps persist, hindering effective solutions. The challenge of OOSC is seen being intertwined with the multifaceted crises and socio-economic dynamics affecting the nation. Geographical, wealth-based, social, religious, cultural, and economic disparities all contribute to the persistence of OOSC. To combat this challenge, we propose several recommendations rooted in the political economy-oriented concept of transformative social policy. These are crystallised around the need to develop a social contract prioritising the fulfilment of rights, social justice, human capacity, and agency. Emphasis is on the importance of a holistic approach, aligning economic policies with social goals to foster an environment conducive to education. By transforming social institutions and structures, we argue that the scourge of OOSC can be addressed and pave way for a more equitable and inclusive education system.

Gendered economic inequalities: a social policy perspective

Abstract This commentary addresses gender inequalities from a social policy perspective. It extends the analysis by Andrew et al. in this collection; focuses on lower incomes and social security; and recognizes both individual financial autonomy and interdependence as central. The commentary discusses labour market issues, including how to improve security and in-work progression for women in particular. Policy proposals are also made to limit the disruptions to women’s working lives by care for elderly or disabled people. More broadly, the commentary argues that a key question for any policy is whether it will help transform gender roles and relationships, to allow both sexes to fulfil their capabilities to the full. In addition, both male disadvantage and inequalities and economic dependence within households require more attention. Impact analysis should therefore explore not only distribution between households at the time but also potential effects on individual women and men over the life course. A balance is needed between moves towards economic independence and recognition of past, and continuing, inequalities. Policies can potentially tackle gender inequalities directly, and norms and values that may affect them indirectly. Proposals are put forward for changes in ‘family policy’, including towards second earners, parental leave and childcare. Finally, the commentary argues that the combination of a focus on autonomy and agency for all with awareness of our interdependence as a society and wider world means that gender issues must be central to the Deaton Review, not just for their own sake but also in a broader context.

The ‘two lives’ of Esping‐Andersen and the revival of a research programme: Gender equality, employment and redistribution in contemporary social policy

AbstractThis article makes two conceptual contributions to social policy literature. First, we summarise key concepts and insights from Gøsta Esping‐Andersen's major books, tracing his work in ‘two lives’: ‘the foundations, or the welfare state between states and markets’ and ‘the demographic turn’. Analysing the ‘first life’, we revisit the centrality of the decommodification and social stratification concepts and the seeds of the social investment approach. Further, we explore Esping‐Andersen's masterful analysis of the double bind of the welfare state (supporting full‐employment and redistributional harmony) in a post‐industrial era and how countries belonging to different regimes have dealt with it. Through his ‘second life’, we explore the ‘impossible marriage’ between full employment and equality, and the development of the social investment approach. Our second contribution is to critically analyse a tension—generated by the shift from a broad to a narrow social policy perspective—between the two lives and how it raises questions for contemporary social policy. We suggest the field should take stock of Esping‐Andersen's work holistically, going beyond a simplistic use of welfare regime typologies and the universal proposition of a Scandinavian‐style social investment approach. This approach tends to overlook factors related to the international context (e.g., the expansion of the market logic, and questions of exchange, inflation and debt) when assessing the impact of social policy on key outcomes. Our ultimate goal is to revive a research programme based on the integration between social policy and international political economy, a programme geared at critically assessing issues related to gender equality, employment and redistribution.

Neglected Family Values, Sense of Integrity and Social Interest in Young People: Examination from the Perspective of Education and Social Policy

Bu çalışmanın genel amacı, gençlerde ihmal edilen aile değerleri, bütünlük duygusu ve toplumsal ilginin durumunu ortaya çıkarmaktır. Araştırmada ilişkisel tarama modeli kullanılmıştır. Araştırma evreni Ankara’da yaşayan 18 yaş üstü genç bireylerdir. Örneklem grubu ise 254 genç bireylerden oluşmuşmaktadır. Araştırma sonucunda; gençlerde, aile bütünlük duygusunun ve aile değerlerinin ortalamanın biraz üstünde, toplumsal ilgi durumunun ortalamanın altında anlamlı fark görülmektedir. Genç kadınlarda aile bütünlük (tutarlılık) duygusu ve aile değerleri algısı erkeklerden daha fazla olduğu yönünde ortaya sonuca ulaşılmaktadır. Diğer taraftan toplumsal ilgi algıları kadın ve erkeğe göre değişmediği; 18 yaş grubundaki gençler diğer yaş gruplarına göre daha yüksek aile bütünlüğüne önem verdiği anlaşılmaktadır. Anne ve baba eğitim durumlarına göre her üç ölçekte anlamlı bir farklılık çıkmamıştır. Yüksek gelir grubundaki gençler orta gelir grubundaki gençlere göre daha yüksek aile bütünlüğüne önem verdiği sonucuna ulaşılmıştır. Bu bağlamda araştrma sonuçları doğrultusunda Eğitim ve Sosyal politika ekseninde önerilerde bulunulmuştur.

Energy innovation and ecological footprint: Evidence from OECD countries during 1990–2018

Recent developments in energy engineering and state-of-the art technologies to increase eco-friendly energy production are receiving increasing attention in scientific debate as engines of growth. Although the energy-growth-environment nexus has been extensively studied, the ecological implications of innovative technologies in energy production are yet to be adequately addressed to provide adhoc social changes and policy perspectives. To bridge these gaps, the present study investigates the relationship between energy innovation (EIN), renewable energy production (REP), non-renewable energy production (NREP), energy intensity (EI), research and development (R&D) expenditures, GDP, and ecological footprint (EF) in 21 OECD economies during the period 1990–2018. This study applies advanced, rigorous, and robust econometric methodologies. The empirical outcomes reveal that REP, EIN, and EI, mitigate EF, while NREP, GDP, and R&D somehow accelerate the ecological deficit. This study advances the empirically proven validity of the Environmental Kuznets Curve hypothesis for OECD countries and provides valuable policy insights in terms of intensification of governmental budget spending on R&D, and boosting technological energy innovations and non-polluting energy projects. Of particular importance to trace a green energy growth is the development of comprehensive economic and energy policies with a specific focus on ecological wellbeing.

Nowe wymiary niepewności jednostkowej i społecznej w pandemii

This article provides an overview and shows new dimensions of individual and social uncertainty, the existence of which was empirically confirmed in the first year of the pandemic, or in other words during a period of particular intensification of fears and anxieties. The first part of the article reviews various approaches to the state of uncertainty from sociological, psychological and social policy perspectives. In the second section, selected uncertainty indicators are presented, confirming the thesis that the COVID-19 pandemic caused an increase in fears and concerns in several dimensions at the same time. The findings of sociological research on selected social categories and the results of surveys conducted by CBOS (the Public Opinion Research Center) were used for this.

Kids back to school – parents back to work? School and daycare opening and parents’ employment in the early phase of the COVID-19 pandemic

Around the globe, the coronavirus pandemic has triggered various reactions of governments designed to contain the pandemic. Among other things, the pandemic led to an unforeseen and unprecedented closure of schools and daycare facilities. In turn, these closures might have forced parents to stay at home to care for their children who could not attend schools or kindergartens. From a social policy perspective, this raises the question of the extent to which parents’ employment has been affected, as time spent on childcare might make parents reduce their working hours. To answer this question, we exploit within-country variations in school and childcare policies across the federal states of Germany to analyse their effect on parents’ working time. In specific, we compare the working time of parents who live in different federal states with different restrictions regarding childcare in a difference-in-differences and difference-in-difference-in-differences framework. Our results reveal a non-negligible positive effect of an earlier and more far-reaching reopening of schools and daycare facilities on parents’ employment. Our results indicate that prolonged closure goes along with negative employment effects for parents. Hence, containment and closure policies to prevent the spread of COVID-19 have substantial economic and social side effects.

Fintech and medical expenses: What social workers should know

ABSTRACT Individuals who cannot afford out of pocket medical expenses may reduce health care use, resulting in poorer health outcomes. To ease the situation, employers turn to financial technology (“fintech”) health care credit applications. We examine whether an employer-sponsored credit fintech application (MedPut) helps employees manage medical expenses. Results of the analysis of variance (ANOVA) and probit regression models reveal MedPut users did worse financially and delayed health care due to cost more often than employees who did not use MedPut. Results may inform social work policy and direct practice perspectives on fin-tech and medical expenses.

Land, Water, and Gender Questions in South Africa: A Transformative Social Policy Perspective

The heated debate around Section 25 of the South African Constitution and the principle of “expropriation of land without compensation” is conspicuously missing the inextricable link between land, water, and gender questions. Within former settler colonies, the “land question” is a “water question” and, by extension, also a “gender question.” The racially inequitable land distribution, codified in the Native Land Act of 1913, mirrored the unequal distribution of rights and access to water as codified in the Water Act of 1956. This was compounded by the gender question, in which lack of access to land for women mutated into lack of access to other productive resources. While secondary data analysis reveals that blacks control only 5.8% of agricultural water uses, Black women control less than 1%. Such intersectionality of race, class, and gender ought to remain a relentless focus of transformative social policy in South Africa.

Addressing energy poverty through technological and governance innovation

BackgroundEnergy poverty has gained much traction over the last decades, holding both high multidisciplinary conceptual value, but also profound implications from a social policy perspective, being closely linked to the quality of life and well-being. The goal of our study is to evaluate recent measures aimed at tackling energy poverty in Europe by analysing the extent to which they are innovative on technological and governance dimensions. We do so by building an analytical tool which combines evaluation criteria along these two dimensions and by employing it for the analysis of twenty measures aimed at tackling energy poverty that have been designed and employed in ten European countries. These measures were selected with the support of an expert panel.ResultsWe identify three categories of innovative measures aimed at alleviating energy poverty: (1) measures with high technological scores, (2) measures with high governance scores, and (3) measures with high scores on both axes. The measures in the third category incorporate a variety of actors in sustainable partnerships and implement monitoring tools throughout the process, complementary to incorporating new technologies into the domestic sphere and promoting consumer awareness and consumption pattern transformation.ConclusionsOur findings allow for a better perspective on the shape innovation takes in the context of energy poverty policies. Based on our research, we argue that combining technological innovation and governance innovation has a better chance of generating more articulate and scalable, and potentially successful measures with respect to their purpose of tackling energy poverty, since the drivers of energy poverty rarely pertain to only technology or only governance.

Rajib Bhattacharyya, Ananya Ghosh Dastidar and Soumyen Sikdar (eds): The COVID-19 Pandemic, India and the World: Economic and Social Policy Perspectives

Rajib Bhattacharyya, Ananya Ghosh Dastidar and Soumyen Sikdar (eds): The COVID-19 Pandemic, India and the World: Economic and Social Policy Perspectives

What Role for Activation in Eco-Social Policy?

This article aims to bring labour market activation policy into the orbit of eco-social policy, which we can understand as sustainable welfare without growth. Activation is extensively addressed from economic and social policy perspectives; however, environmental sustainability concerns are absent. Typically, each domain, activation and sustainability, is seen as mutually exclusive. Growing debate about sustainable welfare without growth features much discussion about the effects of productivism and about re-orienting and re-valuing work and how we use our time; however, such discussion tends to leave activation and unemployment untouched. One could ask whether there is any role for activation in eco-social policy: why focus on employment and employability, or even push people into work, if postgrowth requires a downsizing of paid employment and working time in everyone’s lives? The purpose of this article is to explore this question and to consider how activation could be re-valued and re-thought as a policy tool for eco-social policy.

Temporary labour migration in Asia: The transnationality‐precarity nexus

AbstractMuch of intra‐Asian labour migration is regulated on the basis of governing tools that aim at managing cross‐border movement of workers on a strictly temporary, employer‐tied basis. The key elements involved in the operationalization of strictly temporary migration are recruitment, remittances and return; these three ‘Rs’ are also central to global policy discussions around the migration‐development nexus. The core premise of this paper is that this strict framework results in a particular form of migrant precarity which in turn shapes migrant transnationality, leaving migrants with severely circumscribed labour agency. This leads to the argument that temporary migration paradigm as practiced in much of Asia constitutes involuntary transnationalism. The paper ends by arguing that based on proactive migrant rights activism, the involuntary character of transnationalism is being challenged by bringing a different set of ‘Rs’ into the discussion derived from global social policy and global justice perspectives: regulation, redistribution and rights.

Covid-19 and its global implications: A social policy perspective

Covid-19 and its global implications: A social policy perspective

发展型社会政策视角下少数民族流动人口城市融入问题研究

发展型社会政策视角下少数民族流动人口城市融入问题研究

Service Delivery, State Legitimacy and Conflict in Arab Countries: Exploring the Key Linkages Using a Social Policy Perspective

This paper addresses the question of how service delivery (SD) affects state legitimacy (SL) and conflict (C) in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region, drawing particularly on frameworks that move beyond a state-centric approach. Focusing on the majority-Arab countries of MENA, the paper aims to: (1) offer a preliminary explanation of the distinctiveness of this region in light of some of the main findings of the introductory paper by the lead guest editor Timo Kivimäki and (2) explore the potential of a social policy perspective in explaining the relationship between SD, SL and C. This is achieved by combining research insights acquired through extensive qualitative social policy research in the MENA region with a re-reading of the existing literature on SD, SL and C. To support a comprehensive re-examination of the issues at hand, the paper also draws on the 5th Wave of the Arab Barometer micro-level survey (ABS) on Arab citizen perceptions of socio-economic conditions in their countries and macro-level social welfare expenditure data from the World Bank World Development Indicators (WDI). By bringing insights from the social policy literature on the MENA region into conversation with broader research on the relationship between SD, SL and C, we identify several distinctive features of service delivery in the MENA context and examine their implications for state legitimacy and conflict.

Power, identity and precarity: Sex workers’ “lived experience” of violence and social injustice in Bangladesh

AbstractThis article applies an anthropological perspective of violence to critique and interrogate the concept of social justice. It analyses Bangladeshi sex workers’ “lived experience” of symbolic and structural violence in different social worlds—the community and family, and brothels—as a new framework for understanding social injustice. We find that violence and injustice exist in a complex web of power, identity, social structures and culture, shaped by power relations, discriminating social structures, and oppressive cultural norms which push the sex workers into the cycles of violence. These forms of violence impede an individual's capabilities, life chances and dignity, the factors that determine one's experience of social justice. From a social policy perspective, our study suggests that social justice to sex workers concerns, first and foremost, with addressing their needs for safety and security, thus, enabling them to experience equity, dignity, protection and human rights.

Social Research, Policy and Practice Section Perspective

Social Research, Policy and Practice Section Perspective