Government Welfare Research Articles

The Relationship Between Government Welfare Policies and Employment Rates: An In-Depth Analysis

This study examined the effects of social programs implemented by governments in China, the US, and Norway on employment rates. Welfare policies are essential for mitigating the problems of unemployment, poverty, and social inequality that the government faces and for fostering social stability. Using case studies and empirical data, this study uses a comparative analytical approach to investigate how various welfare regimes impact job results. According to the study’s findings, employment has decreased in China even while social spending has increased steadily. This might be because of a lag between the country’s economic transformation and the execution of its policies. Although welfare spending has expanded dramatically in the United States, employment growth has been modest, implying that welfare dependency may worsen rather than provide work prospects. Conversely, Norway’s welfare system is distinguished by substantial worker support and high social spending, both of which are positively connected with growth and stability in employment. The study concludes that, although welfare policies are essential to social security, their formulation and execution need to be carefully considered in order to encourage employment and prevent unforeseen outcomes like dependency or decreased labor force participation. The significance of welfare system optimization in promoting social justice and economic stability while attending to the needs of disadvantaged populations is emphasized by this study

Overcoming Educational Barriers: Analyzing Root Causes and Solutions for Gender Disparity in Adivasi Education

This paper examines the current state of the gender gap in literacy rates and school education among Adivasi populations in India. Despite significant progress in overall literacy rates in recent decades, Adivasi communities, particularly Adivasi girls, continue to lag behind. We analyze the latest data from the Census of India, National Family Health Surveys, and other government reports to quantify the extent of the gender gap in literacy and school enrollment, attendance, and dropout rates among major Adivasi groups across different states. Root causes including poverty, lack of access to schools, cultural norms, early marriage, and lack of female teachers are explored. The paper also reviews recent government initiatives and welfare schemes aimed at promoting education of Adivasi girls and reducing gender disparity. Based on the analysis, targeted policy recommendations are made to accelerate progress in closing the gender gap and ensuring basic school education for all Adivasi girls in India.

A functional typology of exclusions: why and how women fail to access government schemes in India?

ABSTRACT Social exclusions in India are not solely a result of marginalised, personal identities. They are equally about the failure of the state to recognise those identities. With an expansion of welfare programs, the turf of exclusions is now actively shaped by the state. Drawing upon fieldwork in the drought-prone Marathwada region of Maharashtra (India), this paper outlines the pathways of how citizens fail to access government welfare schemes. The resulting typology of exclusions is a layered one, encompassing failures of state outreach, rejections of citizens’ claims, and inclusions in the schemes coinciding with exclusions from the benefits, fully or partially. Importantly, the exclusions are deeply gendered. During their lifetime, women end up going through multiple cycles of identity verification by the state; pre-marriage, post-marriage and once again, in widowhood or if the marriage were to fail. Ironically, even as the state extends its welfare resources to women through specific schemes, the underlying procedural requirements render women invisible.

Welfare governance

This article connects to broader discussions on governance and neoliberal individualisation and advances how activation policies push a focus on labour market participation no matter what the cost – leaving non-citizens vulnerable to exploitative working conditions and termination of their stay permits if they do not participate. This goes along with a responsibilisation of the ‘poor migrant’, individualising their failure to secure their living that provides crucial momentum to drive them out of the national territory. Pointing to the broader context of intersectional (especially gendered and racialised) inequalities, this contribution concludes that precarity (both material and status-wise) is one of the key results characterising the current welfare governance of non-citizens.

Governing poverty and migration in European nation-states – keywords revisited

This article introduces a collaborative publication exploring the intricate interplay between poverty governance, migration control, and welfare provision. Adopting a ‘keywords’ approach, we investigate the terminology and concepts around which academic discussions revolve when addressing poverty and migration. Central to this examination is the figure of the ‘poor migrant’, whose experiences of inclusion and exclusion intersect along lines of race, gender, and legal status. Using an intersectional lens, the publication dissects key terms and concepts : Welfare State, Welfare Governance, Citizenship, Solidarity and Deservingness, Suspicion and Surveillance, Discipline, and Banishment. We thus aim to conceptualise and critically discuss the constant renegotiation of state power and the nation-state induced in ex/inclusionary aspects of welfare and migration policies and law. The contribution reveals how notions of belonging shape access to rights and services, particularly along racialized and classist lines. Moreover, it explores how migration policies exacerbate scrutiny and exclusion faced by non-citizen populations within contemporary welfare systems.

Discipline

With Discipline, we focus on techniques and mechanisms that advance corporeal, attitudinal, and behavioural docility and thereby contribute to contemporary processes of social differentiation and exclusion. Exploring the intersection of migration policy and welfare governance, we discuss disciplinary measures deployed at the intersection of welfare and migration regimes with the aim of understanding how internal border and welfare controls discipline poor non-citizens by criminalising certain kinds of behaviour. Drawing on concepts including micro-violence and micro-aggression, this keyword looks at bureaucratic practices, their justifications and their consequences for non-citizens, before moving on to theorise how such practices have come to permeate the wider society. Disciplinary systems of welfare governance depend on the threat of punishment: individuals are prompted to discipline themselves because they could become the object of disciplinary power at any moment. Such disciplinary techniques are efficient, productive, and subtle, and can result in the increasingly ‘automatic’ internalisation by non-citizens of certain kinds of behaviour.

Suspicion and surveillance

In this article we focus on contemporary processes of social differentiation and exclusion at the intersection of migration policy and welfare governance. The keyword pair looks at bureaucratic practices, their justifications, and their consequences for non-citizen subjects’ paths and moves on to theorise about the permeation of these practices into society. We discuss the effects of the suspicion-surveillance nexus on the observed body and mind and how they operate in support of increasingly intrusive practices. Rather than debating the legality of such practices and the inequalities and power relations they imply, we focus on the possibilities of control as discourses become technologised.

A STUDY TO DETERMINE IF HEMATURIA IN PATIENTS WITH SNAKE BITE CAN BE USED AS A CRITERIA FOR FORCED ALKALINE DIURESISTO PREVENT AKI

Hematuria and Acute kidney injury (AKI) are important causes of morbidity and mortality among victims of snake bite. As per Ministry of Health & Family Welfare Government of India, if the patient has oliguria or dipstick positive for blood give a trial of forced alkaline diuresis (FAD) within first 24 hours of the bite to avoid pigment nephropathy leading to acute tubular necrosis (ATN)19. In the current study we aim to determine if hematuria can be used as criteria for Forced Alkaline Diuresis in patient who present with hematuria following snake bite who later develop AKI. Results depicted that majority of the study subjects i.e., 88% AKI was not observed. However, urine output in study subjects at 6 hours was not significantly differed with the urine output of study subjects at 12 hours (χ2 = 0.219) and at 24 hours (χ2 = 0.066). Microscopic RBCs were present in 40%, 28%, and 24% of study subjects urine sample at 6 hours,12 hours, and 24 hours respectively. Furthermore, presence of microscopic RBCs in urine samples of study subjects at 6 hours significantly differed with the microscopic RBCs in urine samples of study subjects at 12 hours (χ2 = 0.000) and at 24 hours (χ2 = 0.001). In conclusion, patient with snake bite with presence of hematuria do not have AKI as a complication & hence hematuria cannot be used as criteria for Forced Alkaline Diuresis for the treatment of AKI in snake bite.

Factors affecting women's entrepreneurial intention: An empirical examination of Nepalese perspective

This paper aims to investigate the perceived social norms, entrepreneurial motivation, and entrepreneurial education on entrepreneurial intention. The study adopted a descriptive and causal relational research approach. The survey was based on a structured questionnaire and cross-sectional data for primary sources of information. A total of 525 questionnaires were distributed among the targeted respondents during October-December (2023) and received only 231 (44 percent) usable responses of youth women. The study utilized descriptive statistics, correlation, and regression analysis for analysis of demographic information, to assess the association and for testing the hypotheses. The findings of the study revealed that Entrepreneurial Education (EE), Perceived Social Norms (PSN), and Entrepreneurial Motivation (EM) have a strong and positive correlation with Entrepreneurial Intention (EI) among youth women who are pursuing entrepreneurship. The data demonstrates that the intention of women to engage in entrepreneurship is influenced by independent variables. This discovery significantly enhances the current body of work on the characteristics that influence entrepreneurial activity among youth women with entrepreneurial intentions in Nepal. The study's findings will assist planners, local governments, the federal government, educational institutions, economists, and social welfare agencies in implementing effective measures to promote entrepreneurship and formulating suitable strategies, rules, and regulations within the Nepalese business landscape.

Perceptions of distributive justice and public attitudes towards government welfare responsibility in China: moderating role of urban-rural and regional difference

ABSTRACT While current research mainly focuses on the social justice of contemporary people, it lacks attention to generational contradictions and distributive justice. This article analyses how citizens’ perceptions of distributive justice shape public attitudes towards government welfare responsibility in China. Using China General Social Survey data in 2015, it found that people upholding strong perception of intergenerational justice hold positive attitudes towards government responsibility for welfare provision, while people with strong perception of intragenerational justice are less supportive. Besides, intragenerational justice could mediate the effect of intergenerational justice on public attitudes towards government welfare responsibility. Furthermore, it reveals profound urban-rural and regional difference could moderate the effects of citizen’s perception of intergenerational justice and intragenerational justice on public attitudes. These findings indicate that a more unified welfare system should be established, and expand the spatial boundaries of social justice for both the present and future generations.

A review on the crisis of antibiotic resistance and the strategies to combat resistance

Abstract The discovery of antibiotics has caused a huge impact on the history of the entire health-care system. The irrational and excessive use of antibiotics has become futile and has given rise to another serious issue known as antibiotic resistance, which is now a threat to the health-care sector. Due to this, millions of deaths are occurring worldwide every year as infections are becoming difficult to treat as a result of resistance to the antibiotics that are used to treat them. Thus, the confidence of the global health-care system is ruined. The WHO has recognized antibiotic resistance as a serious issue that needs to be addressed and has declared tackling it a high priority. Even though complete eradication of antibiotic resistance is not possible, the spread and the incidence of resistance can be reduced by taking adequate measures. Combating antimicrobial resistance is, therefore, a prime need of the and various strategies have been adopted globally. This article primarily focuses on the phenomenon of antibiotic resistance, the mechanisms of resistance, various reasons that contribute to it, and the strategies adopted to combat the global crisis. Here, we have reviewed articles on antibiotic resistance from scientific websites such as PubMed Central, NCBI, Science Direct, and Google Scholar, and the strategies have been taken from the official website of the WHO, Indian Council of Medical Research, and the guidelines issued on this by the Ministry of Health and Family Welfare Government of India and Government of Kerala.

Inequality in high-cost borrowing and unemployment insurance generosity in US states during the COVID-19 pandemic.

US consumers may turn to the private market for credit when income and government benefits fall short. The most vulnerable consumers have access only to the highest-cost loans. Prior research on trade-offs of credit with government welfare support cannot distinguish between distinct forms of unsecured credit due to data limitations. Here we provide insight on credit-welfare state trade-offs vis-à-vis unemployment insurance generosity by leveraging a large sample of credit data that allow us to separate credit cards, personal loans and alternative financial services loans and to analyse heterogeneity in credit use by household income. We find that more generous state unemployment insurance benefits were associated with a lower probability of high-cost credit use during the first seven quarters of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic. This inverse association was concentrated among consumers living in low-income households. Our results support theories that public benefits are inversely associated with the use of costly credit.

Towards a platformised welfare state? How public administration, personal data, and third-sector welfare get entangled in a nation-wide digitalisation project

In the era of digital governance, the concept of Government as a Platform (GaaP) has gained significant attention. This article studies the implementation of this concept, taking the German Social Service Platform’ as a case study. The catalyst for the development of this public platform has been the German Online Access Act (Online-Zugangs-Gesetz or OZG), which marks a pivotal moment in the country’s government digitalization efforts. Employing the analytical toolkit of the Actor-Network-Theory (ANT), the article studies the sociotechnical processes shaping the evolution of this platform. It provides a thick description of the dynamics of translating generic ideas into an already existing landscape of institutions and technologies and explores how, through the actors’ interpretations, their negotiations, and their interactions with technologies, both ideas of traditional welfare governance (subsidiarity, welfare pluralism, and executive federalism) and ideas related to the platform concept (agility, user-centered design, once-only) are continuously redefined throughout the process.

Socio-Economic Status of Scheduled Tribes: A Study of Tamilnadu State

Background: Scheduled Tribe are the oldest inhabitants of their native place. Economically and technologically they are still backward. Their language, culture, beliefs and customs are different. In India there are 427 main tribal communities living and Tamilnadu accounts for 36(Rao, 1993). In Tamilnadu, majority of the tribes were illiteracy, ignorance. There is no proper awareness about the government welfare schemes. They are dominated, exploited and controlled by their mainstream in the living area and occupational area. In this context this paper addresses the “Socio-Economic Status of Scheduled Tribes: A Study of Tamilnadu State”. Data and Method: The paper uses the secondary data from the Census India 2001 & 2011 and Statistical Profile of Scheduled Tribes in India, 2013and other research studies and carries out the cross classification analysis to realise its objectives. Conclusion: Majority of the tribal people live in below poverty line in Tamil Nadu. The result of the study shows that the educational, employment and economic conditions of the tribal people of Tamil Nadu are very poor in the present situation. Therefore, the state of Tamil Nadu needs to pay special attention to the problems of the indigenous people and improve their education, employment and economic status. Already, Aboriginal people have been given special reservations in education and employment. This is very low compared to the growing tribal population. Hence, it is the duty of the state to secure social and economic justice for the tribal people.

Tourism Development Sustainable in the District South Nias: Influence Government in Increase Community Welfare

Tourism Development Sustainable in the District South Nias: Influence Government in Increase Community Welfare

Reproduction propaganda: The state hails, citizens responds—A case study of Vietnamese governmental Facebook

Since the turn of the 21st century, aging populations and low fertility rates have alarmed governments across Europe and East Asia. The Communist state of Vietnam is now experiencing the same situation. The government has recently started a propaganda campaign to encourage its citizens to not postpone marriage and having children. This article explores one recent attempt—a viral post published on the government's Facebook page in November 2023 urging young citizens to marry before 30, attracting hundreds of thousands of reactions and comments. The article examines this heteronormative message and netizens’ comments, which show humor, resistance, and critiques of the government's welfare system. Using the concepts of (counter-) interpellation, it reveals the nuances of the power relations between the state and its people in this case study where biopolitics and personal choice intersect, illuminating how social networks provide a discursive space for mundane political engagement.

Designing a Welfare Governance Model in the Country

Designing a Welfare Governance Model in the Country

Impact of a Local Government Funded Free Cat Sterilization Program for Owned and Semi-Owned Cats.

In most states of Australia, local governments (councils) are responsible for the enforcement of legislation relating to domestic cats. Traditional methods used for cat management based on trap-adopt or euthanize programs have been ineffective, with cat-related calls and cat impoundments continuing to increase, resulting in many healthy cats being euthanized. This has detrimental effects on the mental health of animal management officers, staff in shelters and council facilities, and cat caregivers. The city of Banyule, Victoria, implemented a free cat sterilization, microchipping, and registration (licensing) program in 2013/14. Initially, it was targeted at three low-socioeconomic suburbs with the highest cat-related calls and intake, and was microtargeted at call locations. An average of 4.1 cats/1000 residents per year were sterilized over eight years. The program included stray cats being fed by caregivers, provided they took ownership. The program was later expanded city-wide. Over eight years, city-wide cat intake decreased by 66%, euthanasia by 82%, and cats reclaimed by owners increased from 6% of intake (2012/13) to 16% (2020/21). Cat-related calls decreased in the target area by 51%, and city-wide by 36%. The council realized cost savings of AU $440,660 associated with reduced costs for cat-related calls to council (AU $137,170) and charges from the contracted welfare agency (AU $303,490), for an outlay of AU $77,490 for sterilization costs. Instead of the traditional management of urban cats, proactive management based on targeted sterilization should be utilized by government and animal welfare agencies in Australia and internationally. These types of programs are effective at reducing cat intake and euthanasia and are cost-effective.

How do private digital currencies affect government policy?

We provide a systematic classification and evaluation of the different types of digital currencies. We express skepticism regarding centralized digital currencies and focus our economic analysis on private digital currencies. We specifically highlight the potential for private digital currencies to improve welfare within an emerging market with a selfish government. In that setting, we demonstrate that a private digital currency not only improves citizen welfare but also encourages local investment and enhances government welfare. The fact that a private digital currency enhances government welfare implies a permissive regulatory policy which enables citizens to realize the previously referenced welfare gains.

Association of Socioeconomic Characteristics with Health and Well-Being of Rural Older Cambodians.

This study examined the demographic, socioeconomic, health, and well-being of rural-dwelling older Cambodians and identified differentials based on age and gender. The goal is to understand disparities in wealth, health, well-being, and support systems among older adults within the context of Cambodia's history of civil unrest and socio-cultural norms. A regionally representative sample from three northwestern Cambodian provinces was used to evaluate household wealth, economic satisfaction, health, psychological well-being, social support, and a government welfare program. Analysis was conducted to document how these factors differed by age and gender. Significant gender differentials in demographics, well-being, and support systems were observed. Older women outnumbered men and reported lower levels of social support and psychological well-being, potentially influenced by high widowhood rates and gender-linked cultural norms. Education levels were generally low, possibly due to disruption from wars and conflicts. Relative to neighboring countries, the health status of older Cambodians was poor, though no significant gender-based health disparities were identified. There were differences in debt and wealth accumulation among age groups but no variation in welfare support by age or gender. These findings underline the significance of addressing gender disparities and socio-cultural factors affecting older Cambodians. They underscore the need for policy attention toward older women's psychological well-being and support systems, as well as health and social support interventions for the oldest age groups. Future research should investigate these observed patterns, accounting for regional variations and survivor selection bias.