Welfare Reform Research Articles

A thematic analysis of homelessness practitioners’ perception of the impacts of welfare reforms in the UK: “Hard to maintain my own mental equilibrium”

PurposeThis paper aims to explore the lived experiences of key stakeholders working with homeless people during the implementation of universal credit during the austerity years.Design/methodology/approachThe literature on austerity reveals welfare reforms’ impact on support services staff. Service providers’ perceptions of the impact of austerity-led policies and welfare reform via nine interviews with people working in homelessness organisations in Brighton and Hove in the UK. Service providers see the situation for their service users has gotten worse and that the policies make it more difficult to extricate themselves from their current situation. Three central themes relating to the impact of austerity-led welfare reforms were, namely, Universal Credit: the imposition of a precarious livelihood on welfare claimants; a double-edged sword: “If people are sanctioned: people can’t pay”; and “Hard to maintain my own mental equilibrium”.FindingsMore precisely, this paper captures service providers’ perceptions and experiences of the impact of austerity-led policies on their services and how they believe this, in turn, impacts their clients and their own lives.Research limitations/implicationsThe dimension cuts across service provision to vulnerable people and is intertwined with health and well-being outcomes. Austerity is detrimental to the health of service users and their clients. It is known that when it comes to the health and well-being of the most vulnerable, who have suffered most from the impacts of austerity policies. However, in times of open austerity, it falls also on those trying to ease their suffering.Originality/valueThe data suggest that policies were developed and accentuated by austerity, which led to the stripping of welfare support from vulnerable people. This process has impacted the people who rely on welfare and service providers.

Aged-adjusted pension plan, evidence from Israel

ABSTRACT We investigate the results of the Israeli pension reform that started at the beginning of 2016. This reform created aged, adjusted pension plans that are aimed to fit better the different age categories and protect the over 60 years old savers from the occurrence of a financial crisis close to their retirement. We find that all the over 60 years old funds have outperformed the financial market according to their preferred level of risk. On the other hand, because the financial market blossomed in recent years, they lost a yearly potential return of 1.64%. The pension tracks for under 50 years old savers have gained an extra of 0.73% return per year; however, not all funds in this age category have outperformed the market benchmarks. The reform did not have a substantial impact on the 50–60 years old track since the risk ingredient has not changed dramatically.

Economic effects of pension reform: applying the overlapping generations model to long-term nursing care

Economic effects of pension reform: applying the overlapping generations model to long-term nursing care

The rural–urban poverty gap in England after the 2008 financial crisis: exploring the effects of budgetary cuts and welfare reforms

ABSTRACT A rural–urban poverty gap exists in most countries around the world, and this paper employs a novel approach to explain this difference, using logistic regression to examine the effects of rural–urban residence type, individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics, and changes in government policies on the likelihood of being poor in England. Unusually, rural areas in England have lower poverty rates than urban areas, so the direction of the typical rural–urban poverty gap is reversed, but the method employed here would be applicable in either direction. We disaggregate micro-data from the Understanding Society Survey (USS) into three residence types (predominantly rural; significantly rural and predominantly urban), and combine these USS data with information on changes in councils’ spending power, in service spending and in per capita income lost from cuts to welfare benefits since 2010. The results demonstrate that rural residence provides a buffer against poverty in England, a so-called ‘rural advantage effect’, but this is reduced or becomes non-significant after controlling for individual socio-economic and demographic characteristics and changes in government policies. Furthermore, working-age poverty has increased more rapidly in rural areas than urban between 2010 and 2018. Our analysis also reveals how national policies have differential spatial impacts on local populations according to their diverse characteristics.

TRANSPARENCY, COMPLIANCE AND SUSTAINABILITY OF CONTRIBUTORY PENSION SCHEME IN NIGERIA

Policymakers have taken cognisance of necessity to improve the transparency and compliance level among parameters of pension reforms. Empirical literature found positive roles of transparency and compliance toward the achievement of pension reform objectives such as sustainability. However, the level of transparency and compliance of pension fund managers and employers of labour under the contributory pension scheme in Nigeria leaves much to be desired. Thus, this study examined the effects of transparency and compliance on the sustainability of the Nigerian contributory pension scheme. Data was collected with the use of survey questionnaires administered on purposive sampling method on the managerial level staff of contributory pension operators and active participants enrolled in the scheme. The data collected was analysed using partial least square structural equation modelling with the aid of Smart PLS statistical application. The results showed that transparency has positively significant effect on the sustainability of contributory pension scheme in Nigeria while compliance has positive but insignificant effect. The study recommends the need for National Pension Commission as the regulator of the contributory pension scheme to strengthen its capacity to enforce adequate transparency and compliance level among the operators and employers of labour in contributory pension scheme in order to achieve not only the sustainability but other objectives of contributory pension reform.

The impact of investment and social factors on pension savings in Kazakhstan

In the current social conditions, pension systems have become the most important topic on the agenda for many countries. Therefore, governments have started paying attention and should reform their pension systems to guarantee an adequate contribution to pensions. Thus, this study analyzes the impact of investments and social factors on pension savings using Kazakhstan as an example. The paper is based on secondary data from the annual reports of the Unified Accumulative Pension Fund and annual statistical reports of the Bureau of National Statistics of the Republic of Kazakhstan from 2014 to 2022. SPSS software was used to analyze the collected data, specifically through correlation and regression analysis, to determine the impact and relationships between selected indicators (i.e., inflation rate, number of contributors, pension contribution, investment income and average wage). To check the reliability of the models, Fisher’s F-test and Student’s t-test were conducted. Therefore, a VIF diagnosis was conducted. The correlation analysis results showed that in the group of investment factors, pension savings are more dependent on pension contributions (,900**), and in social factors, on average wages (1,000**). Based on the results obtained, all factors have a positive impact on pension savings, except inflation. Inflation growth by 1% on average reduces the amount of pension savings by 23% over the nine-year period between 2014 to 2022, which is reflected in the results of Model 2. The study’s results can be applied to managing pension funds and reforms related to the pension system. AcknowledgmentsThis research was funded by the Science Committee of the Ministry of Science and Higher Education of the Republic of Kazakhstan (Grant “Exploring the impact of economic, social, and environmental factors on the relationship between urbanization and greenhouse gas emissions” No. AP19576071).

Educational knowledge and politics of receiving migrant pupils. A contribution to Danish welfare state history during the late twentieth century

ABSTRACT The arrival of guest workers in Denmark from the late 1960s meant new political questions of how to receive their children in school. During the 1970s, the heyday of welfare state reforms, a new area of welfare state politics and policy emerged concerning these children: an education politics of migrant pupils accompanied by knowledge being produced in the intersection between the pedagogical professional field, the academic field and the political field. This politics, policy and knowledge area soon became contested among politicians, professionals and academics. The article explores a core discussion still taking place at present, namely how approaches for receiving newly arrived pupils in the Folkeskole (the primary and lower secondary school. Based on source material consisting of parliamentary debates from the official political field and the professional and research-based literature that developed in the period, the article sheds light on how educational knowledge on different approaches to reception was circulated between fields. Executing an analysis that combines concepts from sociology and history of education and knowledge and from theory on policy processes, the article shows how knowledge and politics interacted to make or reject policy junctures in the formative decades when the politics of migrant pupils in the Danish welfare state was established, namely from the early 1970s and up until the mid-1990s. We conclude that local developments and debates in the knowledge production field shaped early school integration policies in the Danish welfare state during the 1970s and 1980s, but had limited influence in the 1990.

Ireland’s Response to Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence: An Interview with Orla O’Connor

Orla O’Connor is the Director of the “National Women’s Council of Ireland” (NWCI), the leading national women’s membership organisation with over 190-member groups. She has held senior management roles in several non-governmental organisations for over 25 years. Time magazine recognised her as one of the 100 Most Influential People in 2019 for her role as Co-director of “Together for Yes”, the successful national civil society campaign that was influential in Ireland voting overwhelmingly in favour of removing the Eighth Amendment from the Constitution, a landmark referendum, which led to the legalisation of abortion in 2018. In addition to campaigning for women’s reproductive rights, Orla has spearheaded several other prominent campaigns related to women’s rights, including pension reform, social welfare reform, and the introduction of quality and affordable childcare. To mark the annual international campaign of the “16 Days of Activism against Gender-based Violence” – which started on 25 November with the “International Day for the Elimination of Violence Against Women”, and ended on 10 December, “Human Rights Day” – Orla was interviewed on 8 November 2022. O’Connor discusses recent Irish legislation and policy developments in relation to Domestic, Sexual and Gender-based Violence (DSGBV), in particular, the government’s ambitious “Third National Strategy” on the issue – the “Zero Tolerance Plan” – published in 2022. The following transcript has been edited for length and clarity.

Changes in health-related rehabilitation trajectories following a major Norwegian welfare reform

BackgroundIn this study we investigated the health-related rehabilitation trajectories of young Norwegian adults between 2004–2019. The study period is interesting because it overlaps with an extensive welfare system reform that occurred in Norway between 2006–2011. In parallel with the reform there was a substantial increase in health-related welfare dependency among young people due to mental health conditions.To better understand this group, we addressed three questions: 1) what were the most typical health-related rehabilitation trajectories for young Norwegians aged 23–27 between 2004–2019, 2) did the trajectories and composition of health-related benefit recipients change overtime and 3) in parallel with the welfare reform, do we see improved labour market outcomes in our study population?MethodsUsing high-quality Norwegian registry data, we established four cohorts of Norwegian health-related rehabilitation benefit recipients aged 23–27 in either 2004 (cohort 1), 2008 (cohort 2), 2011 (cohort 3) or 2014 (cohort 4). The follow-up period for each cohort was six years. We used sequence and cluster analyses to identify typical health-related rehabilitation trajectories. In addition, descriptive statistics and multinomial logistic regression were used to scrutinise the relationship between trajectory types, sociodemographic characteristics and cohort membership.ResultsThe majority follow trajectories consisting of welfare dependency, unemployment and unstable, low-income work. Both the trajectories and composition of the study population changed across cohorts. Over the observation period there was a 1) three-fold increase in the proportion following a trajectory ending in permanent disability benefits, 2) nine-fold increase in the proportion following trajectories characterised by long periods of health-related rehabilitation, 3) five-fold decrease in the share following unemployment occupational handicap trajectories 4) 6.9% increase in the proportion of early school leavers and 5) 8.9% decrease in the share with disabled parents.ConclusionOur study population is a vulnerable group with suboptimal mental health, functioning and employment outcomes. In conjunction with the welfare reform, we witnessed a significant drop in use of work-related benefits, accompanied by a substantial increase in uptake of health-related rehabilitation- and disability benefits. Thus, it appears that rather than improving employment outcomes, welfare policy changes have created a new problem by steering a greater proportion into disability benefits.

The Forward-Looking Effect of Increasing the Full Retirement Age

Abstract This paper analyses the effects of increasing the statutory retirement age for claiming full pension benefits on the labour force participation of middle-aged individuals and their partners. Identification relies on a difference-in-differences setting that exploits the heterogeneous increase in age eligibility for retirement caused by an unexpected pension reform. We detect a rise in the participation rate of middle-aged women that spills over into the labour supply of their husbands, who choose to postpone their retirement. The overall labour supply response has important implications for the extent of the fiscal externality associated with pension reforms that increase the retirement age.

Rural lives during COVID-19: crisis, resilience and redistributing societal risk

ABSTRACT This paper explores the redistribution and rescaling of societal risk in rural Britain during the COVID-19 pandemic, as one episode of the permacrisis. Drawing on empirical work in three contrasting areas of Scotland and England, we analyse individuals’ experiences of risk and of the institutions which offer them support in times of crisis (markets, state, voluntary and community organisations, and family and friends). Our findings reveal the unequal distribution of societal risk during the pandemic, exacerbated by a legacy of precariatisation and individualisation in the labour market and welfare reforms. Although the state acted to mitigate risk and financial hardship during the lockdown, it was often voluntary and community organisations that filled the gaps left by the inability of the state to reach effectively into rural areas. Social infrastructure and institutional capital are therefore central to the mitigation of vulnerability and societal risk. This raises important questions about the capacity of institutions to provide support in times of crisis to rural citizens. Unless there is societal pooling of risk through such institutions to ensure social protection and that nobody is disadvantaged by where they live, future episodes of the permacrisis are likely to exacerbate inequalities and vulnerabilities in rural communities.

Working life and human capital investment: Causal evidence from a pension reform

In this paper, we analyze if an increase in the working life leads to more human capital investment via on-the-job training. We obtain RDD-estimates from a sharp date-of-birth cut-off, generated by a pension reform that increased the Early Retirement Age (ERA) by three years for many women in Germany. In our preferred specification, we find that this reform causally increased on-the-job training by 4.4 percentage points – a relative increase of 28.8 percent. We explore heterogeneity and additional outcomes and show that this effect is driven by the behavior of women with high initial levels of education. Our results speak to human capital models as well as policies towards extending or shortening working life.

The Volunteer State: Latinx youth and the making of membership in Nashville, Tennessee.

Volunteering has long held a vaunted position in the United States, which has only increased in the wake of welfare reform and the retraction of the state from the provision of public goods. This article explores how immigrant-origin Latinx youth in Nashville, Tennessee, who are active community volunteers linked volunteering to moral personhood and their claims to national membership. This linkage is based on an internalized deficit perception of the Latinx immigrant person as an immoral national interloper and a stigmatization and racialization of economic need. However, youth also engaged in a reframing of the meanings of membership and volunteering rooted in their relational commitments to each other and their undocumented peers' blocked paths to citizenship. These socially reproductive and more transformative understandings of volunteering, and their links to self-as-citizen, reveal the contingent value of civic engagement for immigrant-origin Latinx youth. It also reveals their central roles in defining the parameters of membership in an era of increased nativist racism and decreased state social service provision in the United States.

CHALLENGES OF REFORMING THE ACCUMULATED PENSION SYSTEM IN GEORGIA

Implementation of well-timed and successful reforms is an important cornerstone of economic strength in Georgia. An important element of economic development and long-term economic growth is the reform of the compulsory cumulative pension system, which began in Georgia in 2019 and is being successfully implemented to this day. But, the problem is that the implementation of any long-term and large-scale reform faces certain challenges that require a deep analysis of the reform and the development of effective mechanisms for sustainable development. Due to the low investment culture of the society, the reform of the cumulative mandatory pension system has great social importance and is characterized by high public interest.

Delay the Pension Age or Adjust the Pension Benefit? Implications for Labor Supply and Individual Welfare in China

We develop and calibrate a life-cycle model of labor supply and consumption to quantify the implications of alternative pension reforms on labor supply, individual welfare, and government budget for Chinas basic old-age insurance program. We distinguish low-skilled and high-skilled individuals, who differ in their preferences, health and labor income dynamics, and medical expense processes. We use the calibrated model to evaluate three potential pension reforms: (i) increasing the pension eligibility age from 60 to 65, but keeping the current pension benefit formula unchanged; (ii) keeping the pension eligibility age at 60, but proportionally lowering pension benefits so that the pension program’s budget is the same as under Reform (i); and (iii) increasing the pension eligibility age to 65 and simultaneously increasing the pension benefits so that individuals of both skill types attain the same individual welfare levels as in the status quo. We find that relative to the baseline, both Reforms (i) and (ii) can substantially improve the budgets of the pension system, but at the cost of substantial individual welfare loss for both skill types. In contrast, we find that Reform (iii) can modestly improve the budget of the pension system while ensuring that both skill types are as well off as in the status quo. We find that Reforms (i) and (ii) slightly increase, but Reform (iii) slightly decreases, the overall labor supply.

Социально-психологические программы: «Активное долголетие» и «Антистарение XXI» – оценка эффективности по показателям биопсихологического возраста

<p style="text-align: justify;"><strong>Objective.</strong> Comparative analysis of the effectiveness of socio-psychological programs "Active Longevity" and "Anti-Aging XXI" in terms of their impact on biopsychological age. <br><strong>Background.</strong> Against the background of the growing aging of the population of developed countries, as well as the ongoing pension reform, there is an increasing demand for the development of social programs to increase longevity and improve the health of older age groups. <br><strong>Study design</strong>. For six months, a natural experiment was carried out, in which biopsychological age indicators were assessed in pensioners who participated in the "Active Longevity" and "Anti-Aging XXI" social programs and in the control group. Kruskal-Wallis statistics, Anova analysis of variance, Student's test for connected samples were used. <br><strong>Participants</strong>. Pensioners attached to the site of the Moscow polyclinic: 345 people (272 women (55-70 years old, M = 62,8; SD = 4,45), 73 men (60-70 years old, M = 65,9; SD = 2,99). <br><strong>Measurements</strong>. Tests for measuring biological age according to Voitenko, psychological age according to Abulkhanova-Berezina, expected retirement age. <br><strong>Results</strong>. In the absence of supportive training, there was a natural increase in the biological age of pensioners in the control group (by 2,6 years for women in six months, and 0,2 years for men). Participation in the "Active Longevity" program led to the absence of significant aging, and the selection of personal resources through the "Anti-Aging XXI" program led to a significant decrease in biological age by 0,7 years, and the biological aging index by 1,1 years. <br><strong>Conclusions.</strong> 1) The effectiveness of using social health programs is higher for women than for men. 2) The greatest effect is achieved with a combination of programs. "Antiaging XXI" is used to select resources, and classes take place in the centers of Moscow Longevity.</p>

Can Universal Basic Income work for disabled people? An examination of existing UK organisational and academic positions

Universal Basic Income (UBI) has been proposed as a means of addressing a range of issues relating to welfare systems, including by removing disincentives to economic, social and physical activity. However, UK disability organisations and figures have expressed concerns about whether UBI could lead to unintended consequences for people who currently receive support conditional on needs, means and/or behaviour. In this article, we outline prominent positions regarding disabled people in the literature on UBI and welfare reforms. We find that while there are reservations about the intentions and designs of UBI, there are means of securing positive outcomes and collaboration between its supporters and disability organisations. We also attempted a consultation but were unable to obtain a significant response. This was sometimes due to an expressed inability to respond meaningfully. This serves as a call for organisations to engage with UBI as a key issue of interest to disabled people.

The expected impact of the 2019 Brazilian pension reform on survivors’ pensions

AbstractThis study analyses the expected changes in survivors’ pensions resulting from the permanent rules of the 2019 pension reform in Brazil. Actuarial annuities are used for representative worker profiles. The dispersion in the replacement rate values decreases, except for the highest income level. The rates needed to finance survivors’ pensions decrease relatively more than do the rates for old‐age pensions. The internal rates of return significantly decrease. There is a heterogeneous change in the distributive aspects of the pension system. The reform shall affect the adequacy and intragenerational equity of old‐age and survivors’ pensions.

Policy Escalation: Richard Nixon, Welfare Reform, and the Development of a Comprehensive Approach to Health Insurance

AbstractI argue that health insurance emerged as an important aspect of Nixon’s domestic policy agenda as a result of “policy escalation.” By policy escalation, I mean a cascading line of reasoning that causes policy makers focused on one apparently discrete issue to formulate approaches for dealing with other interconnecting policy areas. Policy escalation serves as an internal agenda-setting mechanism: as policy makers contemplate policy changes, they may attempt to imagine the ways in which change will affect the rationale, fiscal position, and execution of programs in other policy areas. In the case of health insurance, the Nixon administration’s proposal for replacing Aid to Families with Dependent Children with a guaranteed minimum income forced policy makers to consider how the new program would interact with the existing Medicaid program. Consideration of this question ultimately led them to formulate an approach to overhauling the nation’s entire health insurance system.

Intermittent Citizens: Scotland's Travellers, Welfare, and the Shifting Boundary of State and Voluntary Action in the Early Twentieth Century

AbstractThis article explores the shifting relationship between Scottish Travellers, voluntary and mission action, and the state. Examining missionary and state attempts to settle, assimilate, and turn Scots Travellers into so-called good citizens in the first decades of the twentieth century—initially during the First World War and later in a designated camping scheme in Perthshire—reveals three things. First, many of the techniques used to manage Travellers’ behavior were not exceptional but rather can be seen as part of the wider armory deployed by welfare workers and reformers in this period. Often they used the particular sites of the mission hall, schoolroom, and camping ground to inculcate good citizenship. Second, the boundary between state and voluntary action was never fixed. And third, exploring how this boundary shifted over time can lead to a better understand of how Travellers were positioned as citizens at a time when both who was considered a citizen and what that might mean were profoundly changing. In this way, this article not only extends our understanding of Gypsy and Traveller history but also contributes to histories of the state, citizenship, and voluntary action.