Urban Welfare Research Articles

Equal rights and social inclusion: actions for improving welfare access by rural migrant workers in Chinese cities1

In recent years the government and the public have given more attention to formulating a social welfare policy for rural migrant workers in China's cities. However, in protecting their well‐being an inclusive policy and institutional reform will be needed. This paper explores the needs of rural migrant workers living in the cities and the basic principles upon which an institutional framework could be developed for incorporating them into the urban social welfare system. It argues that political commitments made by the government, both in welfare provisions and in making appropriate institutional reform in the current dualistic welfare system separating the rural and the urban, must be in place before their welfare needs are met and welfare benefits are accessed. 近年来， 中国政府和公众对城市中的农民工的社会福利政策给予了更高的关注。 然而， 要提高农民工的福利水平还需要有更具包容性和制度化的改革。 本文探索农民工在城市中的生活状况， 以及将农民工纳入城市社会福利体系的制度构架、基本原则和社会经济环境。 作者认为， 要从根本上解决农民工的社会福利问题， 应该将他们纳入到城市社会福利体系之中。 为达到此目标， 在政府对农民工的社会福利做出了政治承诺的基础上， 关键是要针对农民工当前和将来在对社会福利的基本需要， 以及他们在城市中就业和生活的特点而设计合理的制度安排。 同样重要的是应该采取相应的社会行动而改善其社会环境， 以便使农民工能够真正融入城市社会。

The Relationship Between Organizational Characteristics and Workforce Turnover Among Rural, Urban, and Suburban Public Child Welfare Systems

ABSTRACT Many child welfare agencies across the country are experiencing a severe workforce crisis involving high staff turnover rates. The purpose of this study was to analyze the similarities and differences on intention to leave among rural, urban, and suburban child welfare districts with an explicit focus on organizational, individual, and supervisory factors. Eight hundred and twenty workers and supervisors from twenty-five child welfare agencies participated in a survey addressing organizational, individual, and supervisory factors related to workforce turnover. ANOVA and Logistic regression models were conducted in the analysis. Findings suggest that there are unique influences on intention to leave among the three localities. Implications for social work education and organizational practice are discussed.

Smart Policy, Creative Strategy and Urban Development

Creativeness is not only the trademark of successful entrepreneurship in a business environment, but is also a necessary ingredient for success and achievement in a complex policy system. The urban environment is one of the places ‘par excellence’ where creative ideas and actions can flourish, if they are supported by smart policy. Urban planning is one of the multi-faceted constellations that have triggered an uninterrupted attention in the literature after World War II. It has in recent years put creativeness high on the strategic agenda. This paper aims to offer new perspectives for strategic development of an urban system, on the basis of creative knowledge management that should induce innovative investment developments in an urban setting. The ultimate goal would be to make the city more attractive and thereby to contribute to urban welfare as a multi-attribute policy objective.The conceptual framework of the paper is elucidated by presenting an empirical comparative case study on Italian urban areas, with a major interest in Caserta (in the Campania region in Italy). The analytical framework deployed in this paper is based on recent multi-criteria methods.

Urban Welfare and Work Experiences: Implications for Welfare Reform

Urban Welfare and Work Experiences: Implications for Welfare Reform

Sustainability indices as a tool for urban managers, evidence from four medium-sized Chinese cities

This research in four medium-sized Chinese cities aims at measuring urban sustainability in China and focuses on three issues. First, the situation in these four cities with regard to urban sustainability is evaluated. Secondly, a number of relations between different aspects of urban sustainability is explored. Finally, it is indicated how urban managers can improve with sustainability indices as tools currently ineffective urban management practices. Although all four cities are moving towards sustainable development, the current situation shows still weak sustainability in three, and even non-sustainability in one city. The social and, in particular, the economic dimensions of urban sustainability make significant positive contributions to overall urban sustainability. However, the decline of natural resources and environmental degradation are influencing it negatively. It is therefore suggested that more priority should be assigned to urban environmental protection and management in China. The fundamental reason for environmental degradation is believed to be inefficient urban management. To implement effective urban management in China, there is an urgent need to redefine the role of local government, reform local organizational structure, enhance local participatory institutional capacity, properly distribute the urban welfare, and thus integrate economic, social and environmental objectives local strategic and action plans.

Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200-1800: The Urban Foundations of Western Society (review)

Reviewed by: Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200–1800: The Urban Foundations of Western Society Steven Ozment Individuals, Families, and Communities in Europe, 1200–1800: The Urban Foundations of Western Society. By Katherine A. Lynch. [Cambridge Studies in Population, Economy and Society in Past Time, 37.] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 2003. Pp. xiii, 250. $65.00 clothbound; $24.00 Paperback.) For Katherine Lynch, the foundations of Western society evolved from networks of individuals, families, and communities between the thirteenth century [End Page 529] and the French Revolution. Her study covers Europe north and south and draws on the latest research on key cities and states. She documents old, inclusive "habits of association" that allowed families and communities to intermingle and ultimately become nations. More reinvention than a new departure, the only true novelty in the process is said to be the "increasing secular and political tone of associational life" by the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. What interests Lynch is the symbiotic relationship between households, families, and communities: "how family and community became interdependent parts of the same society." She perceives a connected process in which socially bound networks of individuals, both by nature and self-interest, form enduring bonds as they evolve into communities, which in turn become societies. In the process, working women, traditional religious confessions, and social welfare programs are seen to play key, positive roles in creating modern states and nations. The paid work of women was both a "normal feature" of this evolution, and something absolutely vital to it. As a history of working women, Lynch's study is upbeat about women's opportunities, especially those of working wives. She downplays patriarchy as a chief factor in community building, treats the relations between the sexes with the complexity they deserve, and makes the case for women's opportunities and acceptance in the workplace, despite some guild pruning and a "relative decline" in women's access to the better-paid jobs by the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Lynch also gives the Church credit where it is due. Despite its greater protectiveness by comparison with a more open civic community, the Church played a helpful role in the construction of extramarital forms of community life (e.g., beguinages and confraternities). Far more attention is given to urban welfare legislation, an ancient preoccupation of lay and municipal authorities and perhaps our best index of a mature, united, and morally responsible community. Lynch concludes her substantial study with a chapter on poor relief and family during the French Revolution, apparently finding in the latter a new, mixed departure in community and nation building. Steven Ozment Harvard University Copyright © 2004 The Catholic University of America Press

'I hope that the government does not forget my extraordinary services': Urban Negotiations, State Influence, and Welfare in Colonial Libreville, 1937 - 1950

'I hope that the government does not forget my extraordinary services': Urban Negotiations, State Influence, and Welfare in Colonial Libreville, 1937 - 1950

Commuting town workers: the case of Qinshan, China

In China's rapidly developing coastal region, a very high percentage of town workers return to the villages on a daily basis. This paper investigates the causes of what is referred here as commuting town workers through the case of Qinshan. It is found that the development of township and village enterprises has dramatically changed rural people's desire to live in town. Factors, such as land tenure, social security, controlled distribution of urban welfare, as well as changing means of transportation, are among the most important ones responsible for the village–town commuting phenomenon. The research challenges China's current rural policy in its applicability to the more developed coastal region and offers recommendations to deal with the problems.

The electronic superhighway: Melbourne's CityLink Project

Melbourne's CityLink, the largest private construction project in the world, promises motorists a new mobility which eases the conventional gridlock‐freeway impasse. Based on an electronic toll system, it also represents an interesting case study of how information technology can facilitate improved urban transit systems. However, such benefits, which in this case accrue to the construction company and motorists, may be illusory for the transport and urban welfare of the city as a whole when aesthetic, environmental and community questions are considered.

Laboring at the Margins: Welfare and the Regulation of Mexican Workers in Southern California

Despite sustained disciplinary interest in the social and institutional regulation of labor markets, the relations between welfare provision and work have received scant attention from geographers. This paper charts the functional and spatial interdependence of the urban welfare system and the agricultural industry in Southern California in the 1920s and 1930s. Employer groups actively constructed this interdependence and negotiated its unintended effects with strategies to discursively and physically manage the population of Mexican workers using welfare resources. These strategies, dependent on local grower control of the welfare apparatus, undergirded the racialized division of labor that concentrated Mexicans in casualized farm work.

Urban Environmental Management and Welfare Regimes: Some Speculations

Urban Environmental Management and Welfare Regimes: Some Speculations

The Urban Implications of the Developing European High-Speed-Train Network

Stimulated by the European integration process, the need for high-grade transport connections between the major European urban agglomerations is growing. Coinciding with the reurbanisation efforts of the major cities, the high-speed train (HST) is eminently suitable to fill that need, as it essentially connects urban centres, and is relatively environment-friendly. The authors set out to analyse how the HST can make an optimum contribution to the development of welfare in urban regions. The paper is based on an international comparative investigation in fourteen European cities: Amsterdam, Antwerp, Brno, Brussels, Cologne, Geneva, Liège, Lille, Lyons, Marseilles, Nantes, Rotterdam, Strasbourg, and Turin. Some criteria have been derived for the successful integration of the HST system in an urban area: accessibility, economic potential, the quality of the living environment, a balanced spatial distribution of activities, a balanced social distribution of effects, and organising capacity. HST integration should contribute to harmonious long-term urban development, and a balance should therefore be struck between, among other elements, internal accessibility and the quality of the living environment. There is no such thing as a standard solution for optimum HST integration in a city. Each individual city must take account of its own spatial-economic structure and the criteria identified to find out what solution will contribute most to a balanced development of urban welfare. A clear vision of and a well-considered strategy for HST integration remains essential, in order not to lose out on the profitable prospects of economic development opened to the urban region.

Hallelujah Lasses in the Battle for Souls: Working- and Middle-Class Women in the Salvation Army in the United States, 1872-1896

The Salvation Army is a largely understudied religious movement in late nineteenth-century America. Traditionally, American historians regard the Salvation Army as part of the Protestant response to urban life. Discussions have focused exclusively on the organization's urban welfare work and influence on the emerging social gospel movement, ignoring its role as a cross-class religious institution. Women's historians have also neglected the Salvation Army, although female Salvationists frequently exercised surprising levels of spiritual and administrative authority in the organization. Indeed, the rationale for women's activities in the Salvation Army provides an arresting contrast to the Protestant middle-class female reform model. While female reformers argued that women must become social housekeepers because of their special qualities as women, this article demonstrates that Salvationists believed sanctified women had an obligation to take to the streets in the name of Jesus, precisely because they were the same as sanctified men.

Urban homeless people and welfare: Who receives benefits?

Urban homeless people and welfare: Who receives benefits?

Examining Rural Welfare Practice: Differences and similarities in welfare practice between rural and urban setting

A substantial prescriptive literature on welfare practice in rural areas has been written over the years. This literature suggests rural practitioners are generalists, as they must utilise a number of roles in practice, that they must use and nurture informal helping networks, and that clientele of rural agencies exhibit numerous social problems. An empirical survey compares differences between urban and rural welfare workers on these dimensions. Data analysis compares differences between rural and urban welfare workers and between rural and urban qualified social workers. A number of statistically significant differences between rural and urban welfare workers were found. However, very few significant differences between rural and urban qualified social workers were uncovered.

The Effect of Population Density on Welfare Participation

The Effect of Population Density on Welfare Participation

Urban poverty and social welfare policy in the united states: an undergraduate research/training programme

Abstract A new, interdisciplinary, research and training programme focusing on urban poverty and social welfare policy in the USA has been established recently at UCLA. This paper describes the structure and organisation of the programme, assesses student reactions and experiences and discusses the importance of major research universities encouraging faculty to develop training of this type.

A Comprehensive Approach to Urban Renewal: The Israeli Experience

ABSTRACT: This article examines the implementation shortcomings of Israel's Project Renewal the major social welfare and urban renewal program of the Begin governments (1977–1984). Despite a government decision to have a unified comprehensive program, the process of implementation resulted in at least three separate and independent programs. Many modern nation states, including the United States, have implemented urban renewal and social welfare policies designed to deal with spatially based social inequality. The Israeli effort shares with them the participation of several autonomous agencies. The emphasis, therefore, focuses on those factors that either facilitate or constrain the coordination of the inputs of two or more separate agencies in policy formulation and service delivery. The findings should lend themselves to a comparison of how the political institutions of different countries affect the implementation of similar policy efforts. These findings suggest that the dichotomy between unitary and federal systems explains less about the causes of shortcomings in policy implementation than do other variables Each country has its own political institutions and variables that help to explain policy implementation There is an additional lesson for public policy which this study underscores. Regardless of the formal structure of government, proposals to achieve greater coordination in the formulation and implementation of national and urban policies assume incorrectly that there is either the existing capacity or the ability to impose coordination, or that all participants wild “naturally” agree to coordinate. Reality was otherwise in the case of Project Renewal in Israel, as it was in similar programs in the United States including OEO and Model Cities

Urban Welfare Maximization and Housing Market Equilibrium in a Random Utility Setting

A welfare-maximization framework for the allocation of a given housing supply to urban submarkets is formulated. The approach is founded on a stochastic equilibrium model for the housing submarkets, the demands of which are based on generalized extreme value choice models. This allows the random utilities associated with different submarkets to be statistically dependent. The deterministic part of the utilities includes the submarket rent levels together with disutility measures related to the local population densities. This latter aspect can be regarded as a kind of spatial externality usually neglected in urban modelling. The optimization is performed with respect to a welfare criterion derived as the aggregated expected utility accruing to utility-maximizing households at normalized equilibrium rents. Since these rents are implicit functions of the policy variables, that is, the submarket housing supplies, the welfare maximization is not straightforward. However, as a main result it is shown that if the population density disutilities satisfy a convexity condition, the unique welfare-maximizing housing allocation can be found by solving a dual unconstrained convex minimization problem. Finally, the relationship with entropy maximization is clarified and the applicability of the framework to the joint choice of residential location and travel mode is demonstrated. Two examples of nested multinomial logit models illustrate the potential use of the approach.

Health care and the poor: psychological implications of restrictive policies.

Medicaid proposals increasingly focus on cost-saving strategies that restrict clients' control over where and when they may receive services. This study used a field experiment in an urban welfare office to examine the possible effects of two aspects of restrictive policies: the loss of choice of providers and adverse patient mix (i.e., when the majority of a provider's clients are Medicaid beneficiaries). Results indicate that health care presented within the context of not having a choice is derogated and that choice and patient mix combine to influence intentions to seek care. Persons who did not choose the health plan in a simulated choice, who had fewer choices than expected, and who did not accept restricted choice also had negative perceptions.