Welfare Eligibility Research Articles

Welfare Eligibility Manipulation: Evidence from Georgia

Welfare Eligibility Manipulation: Evidence from Georgia

Spring is not yet here: raising a child with ASD in rural southwest China

Purpose This study aims to reveal the parenting experiences of parents of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in rural southwest China under the framework of ecological systems theory. Materials and methods Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 21 parents of children with ASD from rural southwest China and the interview data were analyzed using the three coding steps of the grounded theory method, namely open, axial, and selective coding. Results The results showed four themes: challenges from within the family; relationships between parents, the school, and the community; scarcity and low accessibility of available resources and services; the culture of discriminating against people with disabilities and the loss of eligibility for welfare. The mismatch between the needs of families of children with ASD and the resources available in social-environmental systems is the major issue faced by parents. Conclusions Raising a child with ASD in rural southwest China is affected by the interactions between the families and the internal structures in different environmental systems. The culture of discriminating against people with disabilities formed in the macrosystem could be the essential factor that affects the smoothness of the parenting process of children with ASD.

Immigration, Policy Exclusion, and State-Level Inequality in TANF Usage

AbstractThe relationship between immigration and welfare provision is at the heart of welfare politics research. While prior studies have examined how immigration affects welfare generosity, less is known about the consequences of exclusive welfare policies and immigration on social inequality. In this paper, by using TANF as the policy context, we offer a systematic examination of how immigration combined with state immigrant welfare policies affect inequality in welfare usage between citizens and immigrants. Using data across the fifty American states from 2001 to 2016, we find evidence that exclusive state immigrant TANF policies are a key source of decreased immigrant TANF caseload rate and enlarged citizen-immigrant TANF caseload gap. Moreover, states’ immigrant population density moderates the effect of state immigrant welfare eligibility policies on immigrant TANF caseload rate and citizen-immigrant TANF caseload gap. Our robustness checks by using alternative measures of the dependent variable and key independent variable verify these findings.

Is strategic interaction among governments just a modern phenomenon? Evidence on welfare competition under Britain’s 19th-century Poor Law

Drawing on data from mid-19th century Britain, this paper studies strategic interaction among local governments in the choice of welfare benefits under the Poor Law, the local welfare system of the time. The paper exploits a national reform that reduced the length of residency required for welfare eligibility, which should have increased the incentive for welfare migration and thus led to both stronger strategic interaction and lower levels of equilibrium spending. The results show evidence of a positive but small degree of baseline interaction, suggesting that modern models of welfare competition may apply even in settings with relatively high migration costs. While the change in post-reform equilibrium spending is negative as predicted, the results show no evidence of stronger interaction after the reform.

The intergenerational impact of reduced generosity in the social safety net

This paper provides new causal evidence on how a reduction in welfare cash assistance to newly separated parents impacts the parents themselves and their young-adult children. Our paper differs from the rest of the literature evaluating the intergenerational impacts of welfare policy because it focuses on the role of welfare assistance specifically at the point of parental relationship separation. A priori, it is unclear if a policy that provides welfare assistance to newly separated mothers produces work-disincentive effects and/or whether, on balance, it helps or hinders recovery from the event of separation. We use a reform that withdrew welfare eligibility from mothers who separated from their partners on or after 1 July 2006, while mothers who separated before this date were exempt from the new rules. We exploit this discontinuity in a Regression Discontinuity framework using biweekly administrative social security records. We find that the loss of welfare eligibility at the time of relationship breakdown reduces mothers’ welfare benefits, but increases their personal and family income. The reform is found to decrease young adults’ reliance on unemployment benefits, but this result is weaker and less robust. The effects on young adults’ receipt of other types of welfare payments, fertility, homelessness or financial independence cannot be identified precisely.

Intra-EU Mobility: The Employment and Welfare Experience of Temporary EU Workers in the United Kingdom

This article explores the mobility pathways of temporary EU workers and the implications that transnational temporary mobility has on their labor market outcomes and access to social rights and benefits. The experiences of temporary EU migrants working in the UK show that despite the narrative of the borderlessness of the common European labor market, access to host countries’ labor market and welfare is shaped by their employment status and welfare eligibility criteria that produce worker precariousness. Temporary EU workers’ experiences are characterized by employment insecurity and unequal access to labor and social rights, effects which might increase since the UK has left the EU.

Rural-Urban Inequalities in Poor Self-Rated Health, Self-Reported Functional Disabilities, and Depression among Chinese Older Adults: Evidence from the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study 2011 and 2015.

The household registration system (Hukou) in China classifies persons into rural or urban citizens and determines eligibility for state-provided services and welfare. Not taking actual residence into account may underestimate rural–urban differences. This study investigates rural–urban inequalities in self-reported health outcomes among older adults aged 60+, taking into account both Hukou and actual residence, adjusting for sociodemographic determinants, based on the China Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS) in 2011 and 2015. Self-Rated Health (SRH) was assessed with a single question, functional abilities were assessed with the Basic Activities of Daily Living (BADLs) and Instrumental Activities of Daily Living (IADLs) scales, and depression was assessed with the 10-item version of the Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale. Rural respondents had poorer socioeconomic status and higher prevalence of poor SRH, functional disabilities, and depression than urban respondents in both years, which were closely related to rural–urban differences in educational level and income. Impairments appeared at a younger age among rural respondents. Analyses using only Hukou registration and not actual residence resulted in underestimation of rural–urban differences. This study may serve as a basis for interventions to address rural–urban differences in health and social services and reduce health inequalities among Chinese older adults.

Who receives occupational welfare? The importance of skills across Europe’s diverse industrial relations regimes

This study investigates the association between eligibility for occupational welfare and employees’ skill levels. In particular, building on Visser’s classification, we explore (i) the extent to which this relationship is moderated by industrial relations regimes and (ii) whether the moderating effect of industrial relations regimes has changed over time. Analyses draw on the latest three waves (2005, 2010, 2015) of the European Working Conditions Survey, and consider a nationally representative sample (N = 64,122) of employees in 30 European countries (the then 28 EU Member States plus Norway and Turkey). Findings indicate a significant, persistent, skill-biased disparity in access to occupational welfare in any industrial relations regime, with the only exception of the organised corporatism regime (that is, the Nordic countries).

At the intersection of immigration and welfare governance in the United States: State, county and frontline levels and clients’ perspectives

Abstract The U.S welfare reform of 1996 restricted the eligibility of immigrants and introduced a punitive and devolved workfare system. While previous studies explained state variation in the welfare eligibility rules for immigrants, few studies have examined the intersection of immigration and welfare governance within a state. We choose the Californian welfare-to-work (WTW) program as a case, most likely to be inclusive to immigrants. Analyzing statistics, documents, and interviews at the state, county, and frontline levels, however, we also reveal multiple exclusionary mechanisms at various policy levels, such as complicated processes and insufficient translations. Our analysis of immigrant clients’ interviews helps to understand why many immigrants decide not to apply for welfare and how even WTW participants with an immigration background experience fear and are especially vulnerable to unfair treatments. Thus, the implementation of the punitive workfare regime along with the restrictive immigration regime can contradict the aim of WTW-policy to lead families in poverty to selfsufficiency.

Effects of non-health-targeted policies on migrant health: a systematic review and meta-analysis

SummaryBackgroundGovernment policies can strongly influence migrants' health. Using a Health in All Policies approach, we systematically reviewed evidence on the impact of public policies outside of the health-care system on migrant health.MethodsWe searched the PubMed, Embase, and Web of Science databases from Jan 1, 2000, to Sept 1, 2017, for quantitative studies comparing the health effects of non-health-targeted public policies on migrants with those on a relevant comparison population. We searched for articles written in English, Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Finnish, French, Spanish, or Portuguese. Qualitative studies and grey literature were excluded. We evaluated policy effects by migration stage (entry, integration, and exit) and by health outcome using narrative synthesis (all included studies) and random-effects meta-analysis (all studies whose results were amenable to statistical pooling). We summarised meta-analysis outcomes as standardised mean difference (SMD, 95% CI) or odds ratio (OR, 95% CI). To assess certainty, we created tables containing a summary of the findings according to the Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development, and Evaluation. Our study was registered with PROSPERO, number CRD42017076104.FindingsWe identified 43 243 potentially eligible records. 46 articles were narratively synthesised and 19 contributed to the meta-analysis. All studies were published in high-income countries and examined policies of entry (nine articles) and integration (37 articles). Restrictive entry policies (eg, temporary visa status, detention) were associated with poor mental health (SMD 0·44, 95% CI 0·13–0·75; I2=92·1%). In the integration phase, restrictive policies in general, and specifically regarding welfare eligibility and documentation requirements, were found to increase odds of poor self-rated health (OR 1·67, 95% CI 1·35–1·98; I2=82·0%) and mortality (1·38, 1·10–1·65; I2=98·9%). Restricted eligibility for welfare support decreased the odds of general health-care service use (0·92, 0·85–0·98; I2=0·0%), but did not reduce public health insurance coverage (0·89, 0·71–1·07; I2=99·4%), nor markedly affect proportions of people without health insurance (1·06, 0·90–1·21; I2=54·9%).InterpretationRestrictive entry and integration policies are linked to poor migrant health outcomes in high-income countries. Efforts to improve the health of migrants would benefit from adopting a Health in All Policies perspective.FundingSwedish Council for Health, Working Life, and Social Research; UK Medical Research Council; Scottish Government Chief Scientist Office.

Migration Incorporation Regimes and Institutionalized Forms of Solidarity: Between Unconditional Institutional Solidarity and Welfare Chauvinism

Despite compelling literature, research has so far failed to provide substantive empirical evidence on the relationship between individual preferences on the inclusion of immigrants into institutionalized forms of solidarity and migration incorporation regimes. I argue that, apart from individual factors and welfare state generosity, citizenship models shape citizen’s attitudes on immigrant social rights. Concretely, I examine the effect of the civic and cultural dimensions of the models of citizenship relative to attitudes of unconditional institutional solidarity toward immigrants and welfare chauvinism. The results show that individual attitudes about welfare eligibility of migrants differ among sociodemographic characteristics, political economic orientations, and social depositions of deservingness but at the same time yield from the cultural barriers to the access of immigrants to the political community.

Bipartisan Budget Deal Includes Wins for Health, MH Priorities

Back to table of contents Previous article Next article Government NewsFull AccessBipartisan Budget Deal Includes Wins for Health, MH PrioritiesLinda M. RichmondLinda M. RichmondSearch for more papers by this authorPublished Online:22 Feb 2018https://doi.org/10.1176/appi.pn.2018.3a5AbstractThe budget deal includes funds to combat the opioid crisis, support mental health programs, and increase NIH spending.The bipartisan budget agreement Congress passed last month provides funding for important mental health initiatives for which APA lobbied hard, including earmarking $6 billion to confront the opioid epidemic as well as extending the state Children’s Health Insurance Program (CHIP). The Bipartisan Budget Agreement of 2018 extends CHIP through 2028, marking the longest reauthorization in the program’s history. This decade-long renewal ends the recent uncertainty felt by families and state officials, as the program had technically expired and was relying on a temporary spending allotment for several months, with several states running critically low on funds. CHIP is a federal-state partnership that provides comprehensive health insurance coverage for children whose families earn too much to qualify for Medicaid, but not enough to afford private insurance. CHIP insures 9 million children, including 850,000 children with serious behavioral or emotional disorders. The agreement contains a new requirement for states to report pediatric health quality measures starting in 2024 and a continuation of CHIP’s “express lane eligibility,” which permits new participants based on their eligibility for other state welfare programs.The CHIP extension became more politically palatable after a scoring by the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office (CBO) showed that a 10-year extension would reduce the federal deficit by $6 billion. However, a sizeable portion of the cost savings comes from a reduction in the average federal match rate: 70 percent in 2021 and beyond, down from 93 percent in 2019. This will force states to shoulder more of the costs of the program.The budget agreement, passed February 9, scraps the spending “caps” imposed during the Obama administration and increases government spending by $320 billion over two years, according to the CBO. The agreement keeps the federal government in operation through March 23, giving Congress time to refine the details of its plan in an omnibus spending package. Meanwhile, a White House tax and spending plan issued February 12 calls for $3 trillion in spending cuts to Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, and other social programs.APA applauded the Congressional budget agreement’s provision of $6 billion to help fight the nation’s opioid epidemic, primarily through state grants aimed at fighting drug abuse and expanding treatment for mental illness and substance use. Another $2 billion over the next two years will support research at the National Institutes of Health, including its study of nonopioid pain therapies.“We are pleased that the budget deal includes $6 billion to fight opioid abuse, one of the most critical public health issues facing our nation today,” said APA CEO and Medical Director Saul Levin, M.D., M.P.A. “The opioid crisis has taken a heavy toll on millions of families in America. Our members stand ready to provide our expertise in treating this epidemic.” Additional mental health care provisions in the budget agreement include the following:Critical health-related resources to vulnerable communities, namely two-year reauthorizations of funding for community health centers; the Teaching Health Center Graduate Medical Education program; and the National Health Service Corps, which provides student loan forgiveness to health professionals who work in rural or underserved areas.Technical corrections related to the Medicare Access and CHIP Reauthorization Act (MACRA), which will help ease regulatory burdens faced by physicians.Additional funding for Department of Veterans Affairs hospitals and clinics.Funding that will improve access to telehealth services by Medicare Advantage enrollees.Levin sent a letter to congressional leaders to acknowledge their efforts to facilitate funding for mental health–related programs. “We recognize that Congress faces difficult decisions in funding myriad priorities with increasingly limited resources and appreciate your efforts to prioritize funding for mental health-related programs,” he wrote. “Through enhanced federal commitment to programs—stimulating the mental health workforce, furthering evidence-based practices, and advancing medical research—we can ensure the next generation of mental health professionals are well prepared to combat current and future health-related challenges.” ■APA’s press statement on the budget legislation can be accessed here. Levin’s letter to congressional leaders can be read here. ISSUES NewArchived

Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea by Eunjung Kim

Reviewed by: Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea by Eunjung Kim Sonja M. Kim (bio) Curative Violence: Rehabilitating Disability, Gender, and Sexuality in Modern Korea, by Eunjung Kim. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2017. 312 pages. $25.95 paperback. Eunjung Kim in Curative Violence lays bare the disavowal of debility, chronic illness, and disability in South Korea from the period of Japanese colonial rule (1910–1945) to the contemporary present. She accomplishes this by tracing the construction of what she calls the "imperative to cure" which requires the erasure of markers of difference and is fueled by heteronormative and nation-building mandates. Examining lived experiences, legislation, public discourse, and representations of disability in literary and cinematic texts situated firmly in the historical moments in which they emerge, Kim reconsiders cure as "a set of political, moral, economic, emotional, and ambivalent transactions," (p. 41) questioning its necessity or even desirability. Cure acts also as a form of "crossing," one of "folded time" where a future without (or a past before) disability is projected onto the present, that produce embodied, social, material, and affective transformations. Enforcing morphological conformity not only denies diverse ways of living but also deploys violence in the name of recovery or rehabilitation. Chapter one, "Unmothering Disability," analyzes "hereditary dramas," narratives which position reproduction as a site of curative intervention by preventing the birth of potentially disabled children, thereby disqualifying disabled persons, particularly women, from parenthood. Placing the texts featured in a longer history of eugenics since the 1930s through its legal manifestation in the 1973 Motherhood and Child Health Act and into the present in preimplantation genetic diagnosis (PGD) or screening, Kim raises the ethical implications of practices that keep women from reproducing through their sterilization (voluntary or not), abortion, and ineligibility as marriage partners. Hereditary dramas also fail to take into account the risks harbored and agency of choice taken by disabled women who do bear children. Familial relations take center stage in the next chapter, "Cure by Proxy," where Kim examines Vietnam War-era films and cinematic adaptations since 1937 of premodern tales of Sim Chŏng, Ongnye, and Changhwa and Hongnyŏn that obligate nondisabled bodies to serve as "curative agents" for disabled persons. The moral economy that exhorts duties to parents, husbands, and nation imposes a compulsory normality that denigrates disability and demands the sacrifice of the proxy. This "corporeal bind," moreover, imposes dependence of disabled persons on [End Page 102] their nondisabled family members, which, in some cases, result tragically, serving as a cautionary tale of the burdens placed by state legal codes that grant or deny welfare eligibility. Popular discussion and adjudication of sexual violence, agency, and sexuality of disabled persons are explored in chapters three and five. "Violence as a Way of Loving" problematizes the logic that justifies sexual assault and rape of disabled women as "compassionate cure," form of communication, or enabler of femininity. Kim rereads the "madwoman" in literary texts and films such as Adada (1987, based on a 1935 novella), A Petal (1996, based on a 1988 novel), and The Song of Songs (2000) not as the vehicle for the "wound and site of the nation's healing" (p. 147) or fantasy of idyllic (and non-existent) past village communities but as instructive to the hostility and cruelty of humans in response to difference. This is poignantly demonstrated by the film Togani (2001, based on a novel inspired by actual events), which refuses to abide to the "social scripts of violence" and instead protests that the alienation and sexual victimization of disabled persons makes life not possible without substantive change. Heteronormativity and expectations for gendered performance also undergird contemporary presentations of the sexuality of disabled persons as a social problem in chapter five "Curing Virginity." The sex drive of disabled men (presumed natural, invoking pity for their virginal life) and women (understood as excess and to be eradicated) invites curative interventions. Films such as Pink Palace (2005) and Sex Volunteer: Open Secret, the First Story (2009) and the Korean translation of the Japanese book Sex Volunteers (2005) promote the legalization and subsidization of sexual services for disabled persons by "sex volunteers" or "sex surrogates...

Who Deserves Solidarity? Unequal Treatment of Immigrants in Swiss Welfare Policy Delivery

Rising immigration rates in Western Europe concur with increasing anti‐immigrant attitudes. While assessments of welfare eligibility in the United States demonstrably hinge on how public servants perceive different racial groups as deserving, we know less about ethnically motivated discrimination in the European context. This paper argues that Switzerland is a critical case for studying such developments. It combines social construction theory and the deservingness heuristic to analyze how social constructions of Swiss natives and immigrants influence 90 disability benefits insurance procedures. Findings reveal that immigrants are perceived as less deserving and less powerful than Swiss applicants. Thus, Swiss welfare workers do not allocate welfare benefits independently of an applicant's nationality. Our results raise fundamental questions about the equal treatment of welfare applicants in times of rising immigration and anti‐immigrant attitudes. The feed‐forward effects of social constructions imply longer‐term consequences for good administrative practices and society that require scholarly attention.

Differences in welfare take-up between immigrants and natives – a microsimulation study

PurposeInternational empirical evidence suggests that immigrants have a significantly higher risk than their native counterparts of being on welfare due to their observed characteristics. Nevertheless, it remains unclear if immigrants are also more prone to take-up benefits, conditional on being eligible. The authors explicitly focus on this potential explanation for higher welfare take-up rates. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the take-up of social assistance in Germany by immigrants and natives, conditional on being eligible, and hence focus on take-up behavior rather than on determinants of eligibility.Design/methodology/approachTo simulate welfare entitlements, the authors employ a Tax-Transfer Microsimulation Model. It is a static microsimulation model that consists of a detailed implementation of the German tax and transfer system as well as an econometrically estimated labor supply model. After the simulation of welfare entitlements, the authors analyze take-up behavior within a discrete choice framework. The authors estimate probit models of observed welfare benefit take-up for the sample of eligible households taking into account unobserved heterogeneity.FindingsThe estimation results do not reveal a significant effect of being a migrant on the probability of taking-up entitlements. The authors found a significant negative effect for citizens from European countries on the take-up probability, which disappeared after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors find that it is worthwhile to focus on different groups of immigrants. Although not statistically significant, the rates of non-take-up of welfare benefits differ between different immigrant groups. The analysis further shows that controlling for unobserved heterogeneity is important when analyzing welfare differences between immigrants and natives.Practical implicationsThe higher welfare rates of immigrants are explained mainly by their higher risk of welfare dependence. Thus, given that reducing the welfare dependence of immigrants is a political goal, social policy measures to improve welfare recipients’ labor market prospects are contested. However, restricting eligibility rules to reduce entitlements does not seem to be the appropriate measure, because the take-up probability does not differ between immigrants and natives after controlling for individual characteristics.Originality/valueThe authors build on Castronova et al. (2001) and analyze the take-up behavior of individuals who are entitled to basic means-tested welfare benefits for employable persons in Germany. The analysis differs from Castronova et al. (2001) in four points. First, the authors provide first evidence of immigrant-native differences in welfare benefit take-up under the new welfare system in Germany after its reorganization in 2005. Second, the authors apply a microsimulation model of the comlete tax and transfer system in Germany to determine welfare eligibility. Third, the authors extend the analysis to a panel framework and take into account individual unobserved heterogeneity. Fourth, the authors distinguish between different groups of immigrants.

Linking Immunization Status and Eligibility for Welfare and Benefits Payments

The recent outbreaks of vaccine-preventable diseases have refocused attention on the threat posed by unvaccinated and undervaccinated individuals.1 Governments around the world have responded by strengthening laws and policies directed at increasing vaccination rates. The standard menu of options includes education and information initiatives, incentives, and mandates; these may be directed at the general public, health care organizations, or practitioners.

Measuring the Effects of Welfare Time Limits

This paper develops a simple regression model that incorporates the behavioral dynamics of time limits and is estimable by panel data techniques. By relating this model to reduced-form analysis, I clarify an implicit assumption that underlies a popular difference-in-differences (DID) specification, which understates the overall effects of time limits. I also find that a considerable amount of dynamics is due to individuals reducing welfare use, as their stock of remaining welfare eligibility depletes. This generates more plausible predictions related to counterfactuals, cumulative welfare use patterns, and mechanical termination of benefits.

Present status and challenges of intellectual assessment in India

Intelligence testing was one of the earliest interests of psychologists in India. Adaptation of Western intelligence tests has been a focus of psychologists in the first half of the last century. Indigenous development of intelligence tests has been attempted, but diversity of language and culture, complexity of school systems, and infrastructural inadequacies have emerged as major hindrances to such development. Intelligence tests are presently used to identify disability, assess eligibility for welfare, and account for gaps in potentiality and performance in school, rehabilitation, and guidance. Attention to the upper stratum of intelligence and identification of the gifted is relatively neglected. Tests commonly used for direct intelligence assessment, and in relation to developmental problems, specific learning disability, and autism spectrum disorder, have been briefly discussed. Future efforts should be directed toward developing intelligence tests suitable for Indian culture using an information processing approach.

Welfare reform and immigrant fertility

Immigration policy is at the forefront of US policy discussions, and the use of welfare benefits by immigrants has been hotly debated. In 1996, Congress enacted welfare reform legislation, which imposed strict restrictions on welfare eligibility for noncitizens. However, a number of states restored access to welfare benefits to immigrants that had been cut out in the federal welfare reform law. Using data from the Current Population Survey, we examine whether immigrant women adjusted their childbearing in response to changes in the generosity of welfare benefits at the state-level. We find that noncitizen women reduced their fertility in response to cutbacks imposed by the legislation. Our findings, which prove robust to a number of identification and robustness checks, underscore how immigrants respond to state-level policies and provide insight into the potential impacts of comprehensive immigration reform, particularly the components related to the path to citizenship and access to public benefits.

The Mediating Role of Financial Self-Efficacy in the Financial Capability of Low-Income Families

Social work is leading the development and application of financial capability to promote financial security among low-income families, yet little is known how the components of financial capability theory explain savings. This article operationalizes three constructs of financial capability: objective knowledge and financial self-efficacy as two internal factors, and welfare eligibility restrictions as an external factor. Data is drawn from a sample of low-income families using restricted data from the nationally representative 2009 Canadian Financial Capability Survey (N = 15,519). Path models were analyzed to explain three outcomes: saving for children’s postsecondary education, retirement planning, and inability to manage a $500 expense. Financial self-efficacy fully mediated the relationship between objective knowledge and education saving. For retirement planning and a small expense, the best model was partial mediation with the influence of objective knowledge on outcomes passing through self-efficacy. The external factor was not statistically significant in any model. Findings suggest that improving financial literacy through education may not be sufficient to build financial capability. Financial capability interventions can reinforce learning by explicitly targeting self-perceptions of one’s ability to manage finances. More research is needed to better understand the impact of social welfare policies on savings and asset building practices.