Welfare Cuts Research Articles

Unintended Consequences of Welfare Cuts on Children and Adolescents

This paper studies the effects of a large welfare benefit reduction on the children in the affected families. The welfare cut targeted adult refugees who received residency in Denmark, and it reduced their disposable income by 30 percent on average over the first five years. We show that children exposed to the welfare cut during preschool and school-age obtained lower GPAs, experienced reduced well-being and overall education levels, and suffered lower employment and earnings as adults. Children in their teens at exposure faced large increases in conviction probabilities for violent and property crimes. (JEL I26, I31, I38, J13, J15, J31, K42)

Inefficient urban-rural resource allocation and reduced tuition benefits for preschool education: an example from a Chinese county

PurposeTaking urban-rural disparity into account, this research examines the current service provision of preschool education at the local level in China.Design/methodology/approachFollowing a qualitative design, the research is based on a case study on the preschool service provision in Luochuan County in China, with data collected from semi-structured interviews with grassroots officials and residents from the county’s rural and urban regions.FindingsThis research finds that preschool services are inefficiently delivered between the county’s rural and urban areas. While services are oversupplied in rural regions, the popular demand for urban kindergartens is inadequately addressed. Moreover, the tuition subsidy offered by the local government has drastically decreased in recent years.Research limitations/implicationsThis research is confined to a single-case study, so its findings are not necessarily applicable to all Chinese localities. Nevertheless, it proves that these problems in preschool service provision can be a result of the central authority’s tight control.Social implicationsGiven China’s rapid urbanization and fertility decline, this research argues that overinvestment in rural kindergartens can be a widespread phenomenon throughout China. It also suggests a decreasing popular demand for other public services, such as childcare, in Chinese rural regions. This research calls for special attention to the persistent regional discrepancy in preschool service standards and the welfare cuts after the revenue centralization reform.Originality/valueThis research contributes to a clearer picture of the current preschool service delivery by Chinese local governments, which remains largely underexplored by far. It also provides updates on the country’s long-existing urban-rural discrepancy in preschool services.

Unintended Consequences of Welfare Cuts on Children and Adolescents

Unintended Consequences of Welfare Cuts on Children and Adolescents

Selling Austerity to the Public: Analysing the Rhetoric of the UK Government on its Welfare Cuts

Over the past twelve years, the UK has seen a marked increase in poverty and economic inequality. While numerous factors have contributed to this situation, an undisputedly important role has been played by the continuous program of welfare spending cuts designed and executed by a series of Conservative governments. To alleviate the potential for the unpopularity of austerity measures, the Conservatives have attempted to put a positive spin on their policies by making a series of core claims emphasizing the beneficial effects of the welfare reform. Using the method of Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA), this paper examines these claims and offers a critique of each of them. In doing so, the research seeks to expose the use of traditional stereotypes (especially that of the “deserving” and “undeserving” poor) in the government’s rhetoric. The paper draws on a corpus of political speeches and media appearances of Conservative politicians, as well as on sociological reports and newspaper coverage. The analysis is principally focused on the two governments led by David Cameron, although some attention is also devoted to subsequent Conservative administrations.

Austerity and young people’s political attitudes in the UK

Abstract This article studies the impact of the 2012 British austerity policies on youth political attitudes using a difference-in-differences. The study achieves this by combining longitudinal survey data from “Understanding Society” with a district-level estimate of the austerity shock that each individual faced between the years 2013 and 2015. The findings indicate that the welfare cuts had a negative impact on the political efficacy of young people, as they were more inclined to believe that public officials did not care about them and that they had no say in the actions of the government. Additionally, their satisfaction with politics, as determined by their perceived level of political influence, also decreased. Overall, the results suggest that the implementation of austerity measures increased the likelihood of political disenfranchisement among young people in Britain.

A Pregnant Pause? Reproduction, waiting and silences in the relational endurance of austerity

This paper brings together relational geographical writings on the politics of waiting, austerity and social reproduction, and also speaks to feminist methodology and praxis. I draw on a recent research project exploring experiences of reproduction in austerity, in particular having any or more children, to think about how austerity in the UK is endured in everyday life. I engage with geographical ideas about temporality – pauses, silences and futures – to unpick everyday and intimate experiences of economic change in the UK. I offer multiple interpretations of 'a pregnant pause' in this context. Firstly, of pausing and waiting ‘with’ decisions to having any or more children as a direct result of changes in the name of ‘austerity’: welfare cuts, precarious housing, unaffordable childcare etc. Secondly, the pauses and silences in public discussions about the economic impacts of austerity on reproduction, as a rarely shared experience and one that participants seldom spoke to anyone else about. And thirdly, the literal pauses and silences in verbal discussions on this topic, and how to respond in method and praxis. In doing so, I refocus discussions about the everyday life of austerity towards a relational politics of endurance.

The effects of default nudges on promoting approval of welfare cuts: An exploration during COVID-19.

The global COVID-19 pandemic has created significant financial and operational challenges for some businesses. As a result, temporary welfare benefit reduction may be a tough but future-oriented choice for both employers and employees. The present study examined whether default nudges can be used to promote employees' approval of welfare-cutting policy while avoiding negative attitudes. Two online surveys were conducted during the first pandemic wave in China (February 2020). In the first study (N = 310), the participants were presented with a hypothetical welfare-cutting policy that used either an opt-in approach or an opt-out approach. We aimed to investigate how their approval and attitudes were different between two conditions. The results showed that the employees in the opt-out condition were more likely to accept the welfare-cutting policy than those in the opt-in condition, while participants' attitudes toward the policy employing opt-out approach were as negative as that employing opt-in approach. Study 2 (N = 1,519) involved a replication of Study 1 with two additional improved opt-out approaches (opt-out education and opt-out transparency). Compared with the opt-in approach and standard opt-out approach, the opt-out education approach both increased policy support and improved attitudes toward the welfare-cutting policy. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Welfare Cuts and Crime: Evidence from the New Poor Law

Abstract The New Poor Law reform of 1834 induced dramatic and heterogeneous reductions in welfare spending across English and Welsh counties. Using the reform in a difference-in-differences instrumental variables strategy, we document a robust negative relationship between the generosity of welfare provision and criminal activity. Results are driven by non-violent property crimes and are stronger during months of seasonal agricultural unemployment, highlighting the particularly criminogenic combination of welfare cuts and precarious work opportunities for the economically vulnerable.

‘Creative City’ R.I.P.?

‘Creative City’ R.I.P.?

Austerity, welfare cuts and hate crime: Evidence from the UK's age of austerity

From 2010 the UK entered an ‘age of austerity’, with major cuts to welfare payments. We study the link between these cuts and increases in hate crimes. Using a panel of 313 Community Safety Partnerships areas in England and Wales, we show that for each £100 loss per working age adult, racially or religiously motivated crimes rose by approximately 5-6% in 2013/14 and 2014/15. These effects are large given a mean loss of £450 per working age adult and survive multiple robustness checks. Using individual data, we find no evidence that these crimes are driven by increased anger of the benefit recipients per se but find evidence for a decline in community cohesion.

Welfare Cuts, Local Spillovers and Financial Fragility

Welfare Cuts, Local Spillovers and Financial Fragility

‘God Is Protecting Me … And I Have Mace’: Defensive Labour In Precarious Workplaces

AbstractSince the 1970s, welfare cuts and market deregulation have made jobs increasingly precarious and workers have been made responsible for their own safety. In this context, technological developments have recently paved the way for the gig economy, in which tasks and services are distributed on digital platforms. Drawing on interviews with 32 Uber and Lyft drivers in New York City and Boston, we document how the intersecting forces of precarity, responsibilization and organizational innovation spawn the need for ‘defensive labour’, that is, emotional and cognitive self-protective practices.

The Dispossessing 2016 Coup d’État in Brazil

In 2016 Brazil’s Senate ousted the popularly re-elected President Dilma Rousseff, who had been accused of budget mismanagement under the pretense that she committed an impeachable crime that justified the parliamentary coup. This paper investigates the hypothesis that her government was removed once it could no longer sustain a neoliberal pro-finance agenda, which depends on the state, and that the forces that seized power promised to restore and strengthen. Pro-finance policies had been established in the 1990s by the Cardoso government and were maintained by the Lula da Silva government. The latter, nevertheless, was able to raise wages, as did Rousseff, but more slowly. Her government also loosened some neoliberal policies, such as the so-called fiscal austerity. Rousseff’s non-elected successor, Michel Temer, tried to limit budget spending by implementing a 20-year ceiling on the real growth of virtually all expenditures except public debt interest. He also began aggressive privatizations and, after curtailing labor protections, proposed a regressive social security reform to further cut state expenditures. Thus, the Temer government promoted dispossessing policies to redistribute economic surpluses—e.g., through future primary fiscal surpluses—and allow the expansion of capital accumulation. The latter is driven by the proletarianization that follows welfare cuts—i.e., cuts in the social wage—due to the budget cap and regressive social security and labor reforms that sought to increase the supply of cheaper labor-power. Capital could also expand because budgets can increase the commodification by private companies of hitherto state-provided pensions and healthcare.

Offshoring & leaking: Cristiano Ronaldo’s tax evasion, and celebrity in neoliberal times

ABSTRACT This article examines how the news media framed the allegations made in 2016 against Cristiano Ronaldo for evading taxes through offshores, and how audiences discussed this online, in Portugal, where he is originally from, and Spain, where he played football at the time. These countries were amidst an “austerity culture” justifying welfare cuts, promoting entrepreneurialism as “success”, and presenting neoliberal policies as “common sense”. Our analysis reveals Ronaldo portrayed as a member of the economic elite criticized for the high earnings of football players and celebrity tax privileges; as an ungrateful immigrant who does not contribute enough to society; and as “one like us” maneuvering to evade taxes. The comparative analysis shows audiences had double standards based on their feelings toward the celebrity, and they interpreted this case positively or negatively in relation to the inefficiency of the fiscal and justice systems in Southern Europe.

Tax reform and redistribution for a better recovery

A regressive tax system and welfare cuts under ideological austerity have generated growing poverty and inequality in the UK and US. Failures in responding to the COVID-19 pandemic and the resulting deep recession have the greatest impact on the poorest and most vulnerable, exacerbating poverty and inequality. In contrast to this depressing history, we show in detail that a better recovery in the UK requires a radical tax reform and a universal basic income, combined with a Green New Deal for full employment and a low-carbon economy, employee self-determination and economic democracy to eliminate exploitation and establish social justice.

Discipline and Feed: Food Banks, Pastoral Power, and the Medicalisation of Poverty in the UK

Food banks across the UK are offering basic food supplies and a range of support services to people who have been affected by years of welfare cuts and the ongoing COVID-19 health crisis. Despite a growing research interest in the drivers and experiences of food bank use, their own role in constructing and managing poverty as a social problem has been neglected. Adopting a Foucauldian approach, this study critically explored how power is exercised and subjects are formed inside three UK food banks. The localised care for the poor is shown to work through a pastoral power, which requires confessions of crises and obedience to an expert regime in the diagnosis and treatment of poverty as an individual condition. By making food aid conditional on active engagement with other support agencies, volunteers negotiate and translate neoliberal discourses of personal responsibility and active citizenship. Findings are linked to a wider critique of neoliberal government, which works through therapeutic discourses and retains disciplinary and paternalistic elements in managing poverty at a distance.

The Red-Green Alliance: A roaring, yet harmless lion

The Red-Green Alliance (RGA) rose from the ashes of three dying communist parties when the Berlin wall fell in 1989, and has enjoyed remarkable success. RGA has become an established, stable part of the far left in the Danish Folketing. What explains this success? RGA can be described as a roaring, but harmless lion in the sense that RGA asks more questions to the minister than any other party in the Danish parliament; mainly about social welfare, the environment, and the EU. Yet, this pressure on the government is not converted into policy influence in the annual budget when it would be most likely, namely during Social Democratic cabinets. Through its criticism (but not its policy influence), RGA has been able to challenge the executive and maintain a pure, uncompromising ideological stance during a time characterized by welfare cuts, immigrant restrictions, and a rising climate crisis. A growing group of voters has been looking for this type of party.

The Legacy of Economic Recession in Terms of Over-Indebtedness: A Framework and Review of the Evidence

With the expansion of credit, low interest rates and overly optimistic expectations about future economic and housing price developments, mortgage lending soared in most OECD countries in the run-up to the 2008 global economic crisis. The crisis revealed the hidden epidemic of over-indebtedness, which continues to overshadow the lives of millions in rich countries. In the wake of the global economic crisis, the household debt crisis led to worsening economic conditions and put pressure on government finances, which caused further income shocks in the form of austerity measures such as social welfare cuts and higher taxes. This article is based on a scoping review aimed at summarising and reflecting on the available literature. It analyses the effects of over-indebtedness on individuals and societies across six OECD countries: Finland, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, the UK and the US.

Critical reflections on the job guarantee proposal

This article assesses the job guarantee (JG) from two angles. First, by tracing some of the JG’s intellectual origins in the inflationary crises of the 1970s, it questions contemporary claims about the JG’s potential to increase workers’ bargaining power. Second, it critiques antiwelfare thinking among JG advocates by showing how their normative claims about the dignity of employment both obscure the centrality of unpaid social reproductive labour to capitalism and could potentially reinforce social welfare cuts and workfare.

Beyond the 2008 crisis? Tracing global social protection arrangements amongst onward Andean migrants in Belgium

ABSTRACT After the 2008 financial crisis, migrants were particularly affected by restrictive migratory policies as well as welfare state budgetary cuts in family allowances, pension rights and unemployment benefits. In this context, this contribution looks into the experiences of Andean migrants that have moved onwards from another EU state to Belgium while trying to counteract these policies. The author argues that depending on their gender, class and ethnic locations Andean migrants are able to construct different sets of global social protection arrangements that allow them to protect themselves and their family members in various countries across Europe and Latin America. Data draws from a multi-sited ethnography conducted during 20 months in Belgium, Colombia and Peru with 85 participants that included the Andean migrants themselves as well as their family members. The analysis contributes to the literature on onward Intra-European migration as well as studies on transnational social protection.