Social Welfare Policy

Poverty in India is a serious problem for which many poverty eradication programs have been run by the government time to time. Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana (PMSGY) is one of them which are defined in term of ‘road connectivity’ for rural poor remedies by policy makers. A successful steps has been made to lessen the poverty by connecting the rural area through PMSGY. The objective of this study is to understand the realism of PMSGY in rural development. Under this study, an attempt has been made to get how much this program has been supportive in increasing the income and employment opportunities for non-agricultural labourers. The result of this study shows that PMGSY have a significant impact on increasing the employment and income opportunities of the people. This study will contribute the role of
the road connectivity in the rural employment and income opportunities.

This article examines the organizational context of social workers in Philippine municipal governments. Recognizing the influence of the organizational context on social work practice, the article analyzes the distribution of power in Philippine municipal bureaucracies and the extent of influence municipal mayors have over the administration of local social welfare programs and services and the social workers who manage them. The analysis explores how workers manage to thrive in the face of the highly unequal relationship they have with their superiors and considers the implications for social work practice.

This article examines the devolution of social welfare services in the Philippines, focusing on its ideological underpinnings and implications for social welfare. It argues that the devolution resulted in a policy environment that allows for varying levels of social support across municipalities and, consequently, the fragmentation of Filipino citizenship.

This paper analyses the implication of behaviour in realm of selective targeting under enabling state to understand young third country immigrants' employment-related transition from welfare to work in Austria, Finland and Czech Republic. Existing research pointed the economic meltdown that began in the 2008 destroyed the economic security and job prospect of many millions that has put policy makers under intense budgetary pressure and fiscal burden to selective target social benefits in industrialized and transitional countries of the former socialist block. Selective targeting emphasizes a mode of operation that defines a pattern of policy approach assuming that welfare expenditure on the basis of individual need and reductive categorization of eligibility reduce "leakages" in social assistance programs, ease the burgeoning difficulties, and activate job seekers. Yet, selective targeting embodies huge administrative tab associated with transaction cost of conducting means test and monitoring eligibility, involves taking benefits away from the people, and also raise the threshold of eligibility. Although there seem to exist some common understanding that the main tool to solve fiscal burden and budgetary deficit is to increase policymakers' mode to targeting benefits, there have not been enough studies in CEE countries, Western European Countries and Nordic countries explaining the implication of behaviour in realm of selective targeting under enabling state to understand young third country immigrants' employment-related transition from welfare to work in Austria, Finland and Czech Republic. Based on a qualitative cross-country case-oriented research approach with fewer country comparisons, documents, observation, and scholarly text are collected and analyse with document and content analysis techniques to fill in this gap. The findings show contractual tasks, obligations, and sanction regulative tool, is a major perceived influence in enabling state selective targeting administration governance which raises access to benefits threshold that may impair equity and efficiency in targeting benefits when looking at issues such as employment-related transition of young third country immigrants and socioeconomically minority groups in selective targeting setting. The study demonstrates certain means-tested pro-poor administrative governance similarities, but dissimilarities from the countries institutional approach. This is relevant to sustainable public finance in contemporary fluid society with scarce resources that may not only impair minority, but create stigma, jeopardize belongings and the economy.

This article analyzes the underlying dynamics that shaped the response of the Philippine professional association of social workers to martial law and the human-rights abuses that accompanied it. It advances the notion of social work as a class to account for the seemingly inexplicable position taken by the professional association in relation to the Marcos dictatorship.

Synagogues are one of the most ubiquitous local institutions in Israel. Indeed, it is hard to find a single square kilometer in a Jewish Israeli city with no synagogue. Therefore, it is surprising that the social aspects of synagogues’ in Israel has not generated scholarly interest. Macro perspectives of religion and micro perspectives of individual religiosity have drawn attention amongst Israeli sociologists. Meso-level organizational research of Israel congregations is scarce. Another surprising deficiency is the lack of congregation typologies worldwide, specifically synagogue typologies.
This research employs organizational theory and theory developed in congregation research in the United States to sample synagogues and create the first comprehensive Israeli synagogue typology. By focusing on Ra’anana’s eighty synagogues, this research will offer an understanding of Israeli synagogues’ social and communal role.
Two questions will be answered in this research:
1. What is the social and communal role of Ra’anana synagogues?
2. Which characteristics determine the synagogue’s social and communal role?
Of approximately eighty synagogues, sixty-nine were sampled with a comprehensive questionnaire, completed by one of the synagogue leaders, clergy or lay. Quantitative research methods were used to analyze over one hundred variables. A two-step cluster analysis was employed to produce a model of four synagogue types, based on synagogue activity volume and communal character. After completing the typology, correlation tests were used to locate synagogue-type predictors.
The findings indicate that Ra’anana synagogues can be divided into four types. ‘Limited services synagogues’ (LSS) with minimal organizational infrastructure, religious activity only, and only a general acquaintance between congregants. ‘Houses of worship’ (HOW), which in many cases serve existing second-generation immigrant communities strengthening their group identity, and yet are primarily religious institutions. ‘Communities of prayer’ (COP) facilitate significant and active communities yet grade medium on the social activity scale. ‘Synagogue community centers’ (SCC) enjoy large communities with an extensive array of religious and social activities.
SCC’s and COP’s can be referred to as service providers and can maintain such activities thanks to congregations’ kinship and ties. HOW’s and LSS’s are less active in general and therefore provide fewer welfare programs and may only be considered religious service providers.
Synagogue ethnic identity was found to be the primary predictor of the synagogue-type. In many cases, congregants self-select their synagogue based on their ethnicity; therefore, there is no significant difference in growth between various synagogues. Fundraising customs are also affected by synagogue ethnicity.
All synagogues report their primary objectives are religious. Despite this, most Ra’anana synagogues offer social friendships to their members, and a handful of them also provide social care and benefits to the surrounding community. As found in US congregations, Ra’anana congregation’s volume of internal social activity predicts the volume of social care and services offered to the general community.
This research has two primary contributions. It is the first study investigating Israeli synagogues as social and community service hubs, and it offers a typological explanation for Ra’anana synagogues. This research is limited since it focuses only on one city, known for its high socioeconomic status and Anglo community. An additional limitation is the respondents’ possible bias, as they are all synagogue leaders. Future research should focus on synagogue members and synagogues in various cities and towns. 

This paper decomposes global inequality in redistribution, using data from the World Development Indicators data set of the World Bank. It finds that per capita income has a modest, yet persistent effect on redistribution. More provocatively, the paper also demonstrates that, over and beyond the impact of per capita GDP, global inequalities in redistribution over the last generation or so strongly reflect the double legacies of colonialism (improving the likelihood of redistribution in former-colonizer societies and sharply reducing it in erstwhile-colonized, recently independent societies). In addition, it also finds that the history of recent exposure to state socialism increases the presence of redistributive institutions, partly counterbalancing the effects of lower national incomes. The data have been obtained from the World Bank's online open-access data site World Development Indicators, http://data.worldbank.org.

This chapter examines the political development of the nation's two largest income support programs for people with disabilities, Social Security Disability Insurance (DI) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Although the creation of cash benefits for disabled workers was controversial, once established, disability benefits expanded steadily. Today DI and SSI cover a wide array of disabilities and provide support to children and adults, some of who have worked little, if at all. Yet despite dramatic program growth, disabilities still create great economic hardship. Moreover, despite the enactment of the Americans with Disabilities Act and a variety of work incentives, employment levels among the disabled are low, and DI and SSI face major challenges transitioning beneficiaries into paid employment and preparing disabled children for financial self-sufficiency in adulthood.

This article argues that the Indian state can develop the capacity to deliver economic rights in a citizen friendly way, despite serious challenges posed by patronage politics and clientelism. Clientelistic politics reveals why the Indian state fails to deliver the basic rights such as the right to work, health and education. We argue that the ability of the state to deliver owes a lot to bureaucratic puzzling and political powering over developmental ideas in a path-dependent way. We combine powering and puzzling within the state to argue the case for how these ideas tip after they have gained a fair amount of traction within the state. We test the powering and puzzling leading to a tipping point model on the implementation of the Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme (MGNREGS) in undivided Andhra Pradesh (AP). How and why did undivided AP develop the capacity to make reach employment to the rural poor, when many other states failed to implement the right to work in India?

An experienced director and researcher with extensive health and human services experience, including demonstrated success in making governmentally sponsored human services more accountable to stakeholders (e.g., consumers, citizens, managers, service providers and politicians). Employment focused on obtaining, disseminating and using information about the connection between government services and customer outcomes. Currently retired, working as a volunteer in curriculum design and community development on educational and community service committees.

Le sfide poste dalle recenti trasformazioni sociali, economiche, culturali e politiche ai sistemi di welfare europei sono profonde e significative. Gli ultimi decenni, ma anche gli anni a venire, vedono una stagione di riforme, ripensamenti e innovazioni che stimolano importanti riflessioni a livello politico, culturale e operativo del welfare. Il volume si concentra sugli effetti di questi cambiamenti sulla fase di implementazione delle politiche, in particolare sul punto d’incontro tra il sistema di welfare e i cittadini. Attori cruciali di questo processo sono gli assistenti sociali e gli altri operatori che lavorano alle “frontiere”  dei servizi, il cosiddetto street-level. Attraverso una comparazione tra due casi studio svolti nei servizi sociali di Bologna e Copenaghen, si evidenzia come il ruolo di queste figure stia cambiando per effetto dei mutamenti in atto e come esse prendano parte e contribuiscano alla riproduzione e al riadattamento del welfare.

Special Issue, The Origins of the Welfare State: Global and Comparative Approaches Co-edited by Agnoletto, S. and Palmieri, C. http://zapruderworld.org/journal/archive/volume-3/overcoming-barriers-to-voluntary-servitude-positive-thinking-and-self-help-the-post-political-ideology-of-workfare/

Unconditional basic income (UBI) is a concept intended to tackle the problem of redistributing wealth within a welfare state setting, providing citizens (or residents) of a nation a regular basic monetary transfer without preconditions on an equal basis. It is essential to discuss feasibility, theoretical background, and contexts for the possible adoption of a UBI scheme; yet, these issues lie beyond the scope of this chapter. Rather, I will focus on one singular aspect of the UBI proposal, namely, the underlying vision for a profound social transformation. More precisely, I will draw upon the theories formulated by French philosopher and UBI proponent André Gorz, who imagined the introduction of a UBI as a chance to create societies with “( . . . ) less employment and less selling of labor and services, but with growth in collective facilities and services, in nonmonetary exchange and self-providing” (Gorz 2013 [1997]: 299). While I do not intend to discuss the validity of this perspective in detail, it provides me with a framework for analyzing the activities and lifestyle of a contemporary activist network in Tokyo, whose members, in fact, share Gorz’s vision and have found their own particular way to answer the question of how to create a “better” society, and how this idea of “living beyond the wage-based society” can be put into practice.

The European project is losing support from its citizens and that comes as a result of a strong focus on macroeconomic and budgetary issues which left aside a discussion on well-being and social progress. “The message and concrete actions coming from Europe must change”, said Minister Nicolas Schmit at the beginning of the Luxembourg Presidency of the Council of the European Union.

This report, commissioned by the Ministry of Labour, Employment and the Social and Solidarity Economy of Luxembourg, focus on ‘Why’ a new start for Social Europe is necessary, and on ‘How’ a new start for Social Europe is feasible. The report identifies three pillars on which the Social Europe project should be grounded: first, an investment strategy in human capital which can set the basis for growth and competitiveness based on social inclusion and resilience; second, an enhanced and fairer labour mobility across EU member states to build a truly European labour market; third, a pro-convergence reform of the European economic governance that can reconcile social and macroeconomic objectives.

For each of these pillars, a first section introduces key challenges and outlines the policy issues at stake. A second section offers an account of the debate, visions and proposals shared by experts and policy-makers who gathered in Luxembourg for the ‘A New Start for Social Europe?’ round tables, jointly organized by the Jacques Delors Institute and the Ministry of Labour, Employment and the Social and Solidarity Economy of Luxembourg.

The publication aims at fostering debate on making progress toward Social Europe and building up a policy agenda for the coordination of social policies in Europe. It highlights some policy areas where concrete improvements are feasible or more urgent and presents concrete policy recommendations.

Abstract: The dawn of a new decade, the year 2020, has come with unprecedented mixed trends as the world is
engulfed with the Corona virus pandemic (COVID-19), which has thrown nations into great turmoil. Since the
Nigerian political economy is more than 70% monolithic and highly dependent on crude oil, it was already
vulnerable and ill-prepared for any crisis. The rapid and drastic decline in crude oil prices in the global market
made the Nigerian economy even more vulnerable. COVID-19 pandemic’s sudden emergence and impact on the
already weakened Nigerian economy is already having some devastating effects on the nation to extents and
dimensions still unfolding. This study examines critically the impact of COVID-19 on the political economy of
Nigeria. It identifies the various government support and economic relief packages initiated to steer recovery and
ameliorate the resultant difficulties for the citizens, and the effectiveness of the government interventions. The
study concludes that Nigeria should collaborate with the private sector stakeholders to garner resources and
procure quality medical, commodity relief packages and create fiscal policy measures that can support rapid
deployment of responders and provide socio-economic succor for the most vulnerable population, as it gets the
political-economy wheels back, and running after the pandemic. The study underscores the urgency for the
government’s implementation of appropriate economic stimuli to free the nation’s economy from overdependence on oil.

Keywords: Coronavirus (COVID-19), Pandemic, Political Economy, Nigeria.

Comparative essay on 2 papers from Kimberly Earles and Ann Shola Orloff discussing whether the emergence of welfare states implied gender equality within these societies and whether family policies could actually bring more equality between men and women.

The life of the elderly people have to be better off, context, they should be taken care of through adequate social security measures and the government is seems to be one of most responsible agency who can interfere in to this issues legally and as a responsible service of the government. In India the government have been implemented numerous number of social security measures through different policies and programmes. This paper focuses on the programmes implemented by the government of India for the social welfare of elderly people. This paper used secondary data from government published sources and from the survey of review of related literature on various dimensions of social support of silver India. The enquiry found out that, the government implemented numerous numbers of policies and programmes which are effective to revamp the risky life of elderly people in India.

This paper reflects on the human rights of older persons in South Africa and considers the manner in which they are violated, despite the country having a progressive Constitution that enshrines such rights. It interrogates this paradox while taking into account South Africa's rights-based approach to service provision. In regard to older persons, South Africa's social welfare policy, which is spelt out in the White Paper for Social Welfare (Government Gazette 386, No. 18166, 1997), guides the provision of welfare services to these citizens, from a rights-based perspective. However, there seems to be a disjuncture between what is professed in the country's Constitution and social welfare policy, and what is actually happening in the daily lives of older persons. Hence, the paper critically analyzes this contradiction.

This article critiques policies aimed at income redistribution within the framework
of Marx’s critique of political economy. The ‘Neoliberal’ characterization of
capitalist history, the tendency to divide capitalism into distinct sub-periods or
phases, continues to play a significant role for describing changes to social policy
in the United States. Prominent academics and public intellectuals continue to
hold spirited debates over whether or not welfare spending in the United States
has become less generous over the years, owing to increasing ‘neoliberalization’
of the American economy. This mixed-methods research paper analyzes trends in
social welfare spending and income inequality for the United States. To supplement
the analysis, a novel dataset on Distributional National Accounts from the Bureau
of Economic Analysis is also analyzed. Evidence suggests previous concerns in
the literature are unfounded and are not borne out by empirical evidence.

ABSTRACT
The primary contribution of this scholarly work to the literature is to extend the instruments for discussing the Europeanisation of social policies by applying isomorphism theory of sociology literature to Turkey, as a candidate country to the EU, and utilise this theoretical framework for analysing social security reform of Turkey between 2006 and 2013. The search is for diversifying possible explanations of specific Europeanisation trends. Moreover, the paper intends to contribute the literature of Turkey’s welfare regime, which is classified within the extended family of Mediterranean welfare states, by scrutinizing policy inputs and outcomes of social security reform, thus to contribute the literature on clusters and regime typologies. For this purpose, the study subsume three separate study areas of the literature – Europeanisation/convergence, pension reform agenda, and social security system of Turkey – within the scope of understanding the change and continuity in social security policies in Turkey. By using empirical evidences alongside a conceptual discussion, the study aims to provide a critical analysis that questions whether a convergence or a divergence can be identified between Turkey and European Social Model within the recent developments.

This new edition updates a highly acclaimed work with an analysis of the most recent developments in welfare "reform" and welfare rights activism. Drawing on first-hand reports of women forced to leave welfare and other newly available data, Mimi Abramovitz documents the impact ...

India is a developing country where still many people are below the poverty line. Some people in villages like laborers and migrant workers who come from other states to work, and the people below the poverty line don’t even have the capacity to buy LPG connections for their household work. For such people, the government of India has introduced the “Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana” for the welfare of the people. This scheme provides subsidized LPG connections for women below the poverty line. However, even after giving these connections, there were a huge number of inactive connections which were gradually increasing up to the year 2019. In this paper, the impact of PMUY (Pradhan Mantri Ujjwala Yojana) on the poor and life of rural women was discussed.

The design of the Nigerian social security system has being to provide pension for life and to protect against the risk of poverty in old age among others, yet, the fear of not being able to maintain the pre-retirement standard of living, financial dependence on family and relatives has become quite worrisome to pensioners'. It is to this end that several successive governments has embarked on numerous pension schemes one of which is the Pension Reform Act of 2014 which repealed the 2004 PRA. In spite of the effort, the living condition of the people has not really improved due to untimely payment of retirement benefits. Therefore, the study assessed social security scheme on pensioners' welfare in AMAC. Agency theory was used to underpin the work. The study employed census method and data were collected through structured questionnaire administered to a sample of 50 respondents in AMAC, of which 48 were correctly filled and returned. Multiple regression analysis was used to analyze the data. The results revealed among others that there is positive and significant relationship between additional voluntary contribution and pensioners' welfare in AMAC. However, based on the findings, the study recommended among other things that the Commission review its money laundering guideline which has greatly discouraged a lot of retirees from increasing their savings percentage.