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Social protection has grown in importance in framing the relationship between citizens and states across much of Africa. Botswana's conservative welfare regime relies heavily on local officials – many of whom are trained social workers – to exercise discretion in assessing the needs of poor people and registering them on social protection programmes. Interviews with local officials reveal that they attribute poverty and destitution primarily to the deficient attitudes and behaviour of poor people. These are in turn seen as the consequence of social protection policies that disempower people by fostering 'dependence' on state provision. Local officials prefer programmes that 'empower' poor people. Whilst they recognise that the state has responsibilities towards the poor, they implement policies that reinforce and reproduce the status of poor citizens as often undeserving claimants on public charity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the ways in which the urban poor in Argentina help one another in the arduous task of making ends meet when neither the formal labor market nor state welfare policies are able to secure their subsistence. Drawing on long-term ethnographic fieldwork, the article makes one substantive, one analytic, and one theoretical claim. Substantively, the article argues by way of empirical illustration that the urban poor are hardworking bricoleurs. Analytically, the article demonstrates the advantages of studying poor people's strategies in a simultaneously historic and ethnographic fashion through joint collaborative fieldwork. Theoretically, the article pushes toward replacing the notions of 'strategy of survival or subsistence' with the more encompassing notion of 'strategy of persistence'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Evidence for what diseases occur more commonly in older people from a poor residential environment (PRE) is limited. Objective: We investigated characteristics, especially the underlying reason (disease) for visiting an emergency department (ED), of older people from a PRE in ED settings. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted on people aged ≥65 years who presented to the EDs of 2 hospitals in Okinawa, Japan, between 2015 and 2019. PRE cases were identified by searching relevant words, such as a house overflowing with garbage from hoarding or housing squalor (gomi-yashiki in Japanese), in electric medical records. Controls (2 controls per case) were randomly selected from those without a PRE, with both living at home and matching each PRE case for age and sex. Characteristics of interest between cases and controls were compared using a χ2 test. Results: PRE cases (n = 67), compared with controls (n = 134), were more often transported by ambulance (79.1% vs. 61.9%; p = 0.01). A family member or relative (43.4%) or professional supporter (20.8%) called an ambulance for most PRE cases. PRE cases were more likely to visit the ED due to injury/fracture (16.4% vs. 8.2%), rhabdomyolysis (11.9% vs. 1.5%), undernutrition/dehydration (10.4% vs. 1.5%), and cancer (9.0% vs. 5.2%) than controls (p < 0.001). PRE cases had a higher prevalence of being underweight (35.4% vs. 14.9%), dementia (41.8% vs. 16.4%), decubitus ulcer (29.9% vs. 8.2%), living alone (73.1% vs. 23.1%), and receiving public welfare assistance (35.8% vs. 9.0%) than controls (all p ≤ 0.001). Conclusion: In EDs, older people from a PRE exhibited certain diseases and characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article uses a microhistorical approach to investigate the "workhouse experience" of a single pauper in late nineteenth-century London. Its subject is Frank Burge, a remarkably prolific (though by no means unique) correspondent who wrote several lengthy letters of complaint from the Poplar workhouse to the Local Government Board (the central poor law authority) between 1884 and 1885. It places these letters, and the official responses they stimulated, alongside other public and official documents and uses a blended methodological approach to uncover a rich narrative of hardship, struggle, and personal agency. In doing so, it argues that, in contrast to more orthodox histories of welfare, it is only through this kind of painstaking and sensitive historical reconstruction that we truly can understand the nature, and the legacy, of poverty and the "workhouse experience" on the nineteenth-century poor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The functioning of the U.S. social safety net as a support for low-income families depends on various means-tested programs and a system of both public agencies and nonprofit organizations. Using in-depth interviews (n = 5) and a survey of nonprofit employees (n = 73), we seek to understand the role of nonprofits in promoting equitable access to the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. Our findings reveal that public assistance programs are a necessary support for families, but that access is not always easy or equitable, and nonprofits form a protective layer of support providing resources and guidance for those most in need. Implications for policy and partnerships between the various components of the social safety net are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employment had risen to historically high levels in Britain before the coronavirus crisis; however, whereas work is traditionally conceptualized as a route out of poverty, this is no longer necessarily the case. Participation in non‐standard or low‐income work such as zero‐hour contracts, involuntary part‐time work and self‐employment is increasingly a feature of the labour market and in‐work benefits which top‐up low incomes have been pared back. This case study undertaken in the period before the coronavirus crisis takes a multi‐disciplinary approach in relation to three key questions: are working women resorting to food bank use in times of financial hardship?; to what extent is this a function of non‐standard working practices?; and is welfare reform a contributing factor? A three‐strand approach is taken: a synthesis of literature, an analysis of national data and in‐depth interviews with stakeholders involved with referrals to or delivery of emergency food provision within northern Britain. The findings highlight a growth in precarious employment models since the 2008/2009 recession and how this intersects with increasing conditionality in welfare policy. We contribute to the debate by arguing that ideological driven policy fails to acknowledge structural deficiencies in labour market demand and misattributes responsibility for managing precarious working patterns onto individuals who are already struggling to get by. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides a corrective to the dominant celebratory narrative about the conditional cash transfer programme in the Philippines, the Pantawid, and its associated social registry, the Listahanan. Based on extensive documentary analysis and fieldwork in the Philippines in 2017 and 2018, we argue that the targeting system has in fact been unable to function according to its primary purpose of identifying the poor and providing them social protection, despite being celebrated precisely for this purpose. This has been partly – but not only – due to the increasingly obsolescent data of the registry, which the political system has been incapable of correcting, leading to stasis at a fairly low level of coverage, at a peak of about 19 percent of national households in 2014 and since subsiding to about 17 percent by 2020, with transfer amounts at a fraction of the food poverty line. This dysfunction has resulted in a quasi-permanent group of cash payment recipients, with little or no reflection of evolving poverty profiles. This revised reading of the Pantawid and Listahanan, in what might be considered as a strong case to examine social protection performance, brings us back to the perennial problems associated with poverty targeting in even best-case social protection programmes promoted by international donors and organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

At the heart of this article stand three questions that we believe are crucial to an understanding of the character of the poor law and its role in the lives of the poor who had to navigate its rules. First, what was actually 'new' about the central administrative structures and processes required to make the New Poor Law function? Second, how did those processes change over time and, in particular, how far did the central authority itself engage with the poor directly? Third, did the processes and structures of the central authority afford a space in which the poor could learn to better navigate the New Poor Law and exercise their own agency? Using a sample of letters written directly to 'the Centre' by paupers in the English midlands, and the subsequent epistolary responses of the central authorities, we trace a situation in which the Centre was duty bound to respond to poor letter writers much as they did to everyone else. Rights to contest local welfare regimes remained strong in the post-1834 period, and the central authorities, through their responses, afforded a space of agency that came to be well known. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Since the early 1990s, the social safety net for families with children in the United States has undergone an epochal transformation. Aid to poor working families has become more generous. In contrast, assistance to the deeply poor has become less generous, and what remains more often takes the form of in-kind aid. A historical view finds that this dramatic change parallels others. For centuries, the nature and form of poor relief has been driven in part by shifting cultural notions of which social groups are "deserving" and "undeserving." This line was firmly redrawn in the 1990s. Did the re-institutionalization of these categorizations in policy have material consequences? This study examines the relationship between the decline of traditional cash welfare between 2001 and 2015 and two direct measures of wellbeing among households with children: household food insecurity and public school child homelessness. Using models that control for state and year trends, along with other factors, we find that the decline of cash assistance was associated with increases in both forms of hardship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This Article begins to explore the uncharted connections between private law and poverty law, revealing a striking pattern that is only visible when these two bodies of law are viewed in the same frame. Many poverty law scholars have focused on the rules that regulate government assistance to the poor. They have left largely left unexamined the private law of the poor--meaning, laws that govern the private economic relationships of those living in poverty or in danger of falling into destitution. At the same time, the study of private law is flourishing among scholars who seek to understand the law's vision of justice in relations between private individuals. But these scholars often seek that vision within the law's doctrinal structures, which betray little overt concern with poverty. Revealing the connections between the two fields, this Article shows how concerns about public spending on poor relief have shaped debates over the private law of the poor for over a century. It traces the recurrence of one rationale for regulation, the prevention of "pauperism," that explicitly linked private law rules with poverty alleviation. Proponents of the anti-pauperism argument claimed that private law, if properly structured, could help prevent dependence on poor relief and thereby reduce the burden on the public fisc of caring for poor households. Thus, they imagined the private law of the poor as one component of a larger system of rules designed to keep families self-supporting and off the poor relief rolls. Drawing on original research across a range of source materials, this Article traces the history of the anti-pauperism argument and offers several explanations for its enduring appeal. It then describes the implications of this history for law and economics scholars, for present-day fights against economic inequality and in favor of regulatory reform, and for breaking down the silos between private law and poverty law. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Eventually, she and I started a welfare rights group in Milwaukee among professionals working in anti-poverty jobs. The Reagan administration had just destroyed all work incentives: the $30 plus one third of our work income was no longer allowed to remain clear of the deductions to the welfare check resulting from earned income. In the job search class, I would sneak to the blackboard and use it as an opportunity to teach moms why part-time and/or low-paid employment was a waste of time since all income earned reduced the welfare check dollar for dollar, leaving mothers with a welfare income despite being employed. [Extracted from the article]

The article is devoted to establishment and work of Imperial Mercy Fund in the first years of its existence. This Fund was one of the hugest charity organization in Europe in 19th century. The paper attempts to trace the development of Russian public consciousness in the early 19th century in relation to poor people. Traditionally, the problem of the relationship between society and power, which are considered in the study, is relevant. Based on historical sources, the general nature of the Fund's activity at the beginning of its foundation is presented, the data on the funds allocated from the state treasury for the needs of the poor Russian population. There is the number of people who received assistance; the number of open houses of charity are exist in the article. The paper describes the creation of the Medical and Philanthropic Committee, its activities, sources of funding and effectiveness. Special attention is paid to the establishment of hospitals for the poor people -- dispensaries, that provided assistance to people who have suffered an accident, the disabled, deaf and pregnant women. A list of doctors and their addresses to which the reception of poor patients was conducted. The committees (departments) of the Mercy Fund are listed, and their functions are described. The article particularly covers the structure of the Committee on education, whose tasks included the development of projects, translation of books, publication of newspapers and magazines promoting the idea of charity in Russia, maintaining relations with other Russian and foreign charity societies. Particular attention is paid to the description of the Institute of the Blind -- Russia's first medical school for blind children (homeless or children from poor families), as well as the establishment of the House of Education for poor boys and orphans. The content of the curriculum, the structure of education, the amount of funding are described in the article. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During the Great Famine (1845–51) hundreds of thousands of Irish refugees fled to Britain, escaping the hunger and disease afflicting their homeland. Many made new lives there, but others were subsequently shipped back to Ireland by poor law authorities under the laws of Settlement and Removal. This article explores the coping strategies of the Famine Irish in Britain, and the responses of poor law authorities to the inflow of refugees with a particular focus on their use of removal. We argue that British poor law unions in areas heavily affected by the refugee crisis adopted rigorous removal policies, and that the non-settled Irish were consequently deeply reluctant to apply for poor relief, doing so only when alternative sources of support were unavailable. Thus, the true scale of Irish hardship was hidden from the official record. The article also explores, for the first time, the experiences of those sent back to Ireland, a country suffering from the devastating effects of Famine. The combination of heavy Irish immigration to Britain and large-scale removals back to Ireland created distrust between the authorities at British and Irish port towns, as both sides felt aggrieved by the inflow of destitute Irish arriving on their shores. At the centre of all this were the Irish poor themselves. Uncertainty, dislocation and hardship were often their experience, and we argue that this endured long after the Famine had ended; that the events of the late 1840s, indeed, created a new reality for the Irish in Britain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As the Royal Commission on the Poor Laws noted in 1909, the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834 and the Poor Law (Scotland) Act of 1845 sprang from rather different motives. Whereas the first Act aimed to restrict the provision of poor relief, the second was designed to enhance it. However, despite these aims, it is generally accepted that Scotland's Poor Law continued to relieve a smaller proportion of its population and to spend less money on them. This paper revisits the evidence on which these claims are based. Although the gap between the two Poor Laws was less than previously supposed, it was nevertheless substantial. The paper also explores the links between the size of Scottish parishes and welfare spending, and demonstrates that the main reasons for the persistence of the spending gap were related to different levels of investment in poorhouses and workhouses, and support for the elderly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research examined the impact of participation in federal means-tested welfare programs on the attainment and maintenance of economic self-sufficiency. Using the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP), this quasi-experimental investigation compartmentalized 4216 low-income households into an intervention group (n = 2436) and a comparison group (n = 1780). Households in the intervention group received one or more welfare benefits for the most part of the 2008-2013 quinquennium. By contrast, those in the comparison group - although eligible for these benefits - did not receive them. The survey respondents were measured repeatedly over a 56-month period to assess whether welfare receipt impacts their household income steadily beyond 150% of the federal poverty level, after controlling for known predictors. Multivariate analyses displayed medium effect sizes indicating that participation in public assistance did decrease the likelihood of economic self-sufficiency. Macro-implications of these findings for poverty and social welfare stakeholders were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Credit has become a significant institution within the American social safety net. Accordingly, "access to credit" talk pervades the current discourse of financial rights and equality for low-income communities. Indeed, in a rare point of convergence, both progressive and conservative accounts of optimal credit regulation for the working poor rest on the shared conviction that credit is an important tool of "social provision," the range of state policies implemented to improve general welfare. The notion that credit is a valid form of social provision for low-income Americans, however, is deeply flawed. The difficulty with credit as a form of social provision for lowincome Americans is that there is an essential mismatch between the problem and the solution. At its best, credit is a mechanism of intertemporal and intrapersonal redistribution. However, low-income Americans often struggle with persistent financial instability, and decades of data show that they can reasonably expect to be in worse economic shape as time progresses. As an essential matter, then, the problem of entrenched and enduring poverty that leaves people consistently unable to afford basic necessities cannot be addressed by a device that requires future prosperity and economic growth. Moreover, the resulting debt burden transforms credit as social provision from a form of mere intertemporal redistribution into a form of regressive redistribution, in which wealth flows out of already economically vulnerable communities. This reality has broader consequences for the middle class given its own government-sanctioned, heavy reliance on credit in the broader, persistently stagnant economic environment. Thus, our increasingly unfounded dependence on a policy of access to credit as social provision must be set aside in order to begin the difficult task of surfacing and centralizing the more pressing extent of deepening economic, and thus social, inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A 'dually open' free movement system has evolved in the European Union (EU), granting EU citizens the right to free movement within the Union as well as cross-border welfare rights. Some scholarly literature and public debates have characterised the system as corrosive to the nationally organised welfare state, which will become a 'magnet' for the European poor. This paper examines how the German and Danish welfare states have responded to the 'dual open' system and its outcomes in terms of EU citizens' take-up rate of non-contributory benefits between 2007 and 2015. We show that the domestic responses were mostly restrictive and that outcomes remained rather stable. Our findings do not support the welfare magnet thesis but instead identify a tendency to a bifurcated social protection system for EU citizens in Germany. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that two types of "brainisation" hinder development studies researchers in their phronetic understanding of poor people's realities. It first provides a literature review on two types of knowledge and their differences, as well as two types of brainisation and how they prevent development studies scholars gaining a holistic understanding of the marginalised. Subsequently, a comparative analysis is conducted on two World Development Reports. Finally, alternative scenarios are outlined for the "debrainisation" of development studies and researchers' mind-sets by learning from the fundamental features of human life. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights • I examine the targeting performance of and access to social pensions in India. • Exclusion of poor older people continues to be a widespread problem. • The overall benefits from targeting are very limited. • Below Poverty Line (BPL) card as eligibility criterion can be misused by non-poor individuals. • Poor older people lacking a BPL card and/or political connections appear to be left behind. Abstract Whether social transfers should be targeted or universal is an unsolved debate particularly relevant for the implementation of social protection schemes in developing countries. While the limited availability of public resources encourages targeting, the difficulty to identify the poor promotes a universal allocation of benefits. To address this question, this study examines the targeting performance of and access to a social welfare scheme for an increasingly vulnerable group – India's poor older people. The results show that during a time period of social pension reforms, exclusion and inclusion errors were successfully reduced but the exclusion of poor older people continues to be extremely high. Comparing the existing targeting approach to a random allocation, I show that the benefits of targeting are limited. The reforms aimed at increasing the transparency of social pension allocation indeed made the Below Poverty Line ration card the most important determinant of access to social pensions for older people. However, this focus on the ration card promoted by the national government has its own weaknesses. Non-poor older people exploit the unwarranted possession of this ration card and results suggest that after the reforms individuals with direct connections to local government officials are more likely to access social pension benefits. The current targeting approach seems to be beneficial for well-connected older individuals while many poor older people typically lacking these connections lag behind. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study aimed to explore poor people's perceptions of poverty and their own experience of poverty, as well as its definition, causes and possible methods to reduce it. To achieve the study objectives, the researcher used a qualitative methodology. The study consisted of 150 poor people. Purposive sampling was used to select participants from a variety of poor situations (e.g., working poor, cash assistance recipients, unemployed). The researcher used semi-structured individual interviews, content analysis and observation as methods of collecting data and information. This was done in order to give policymakers a deeper, richer and ultimately better understanding of poverty phenomena. The results indicate that the majority of poor people said that they are very poor and that they face a lot of problems, such as socioeconomic and family problems. From the perspective of respondents, government and NGOs are largely ineffective. Poor-quality services seemed to be the norm, whether in assistance or health care. Based on the results of the study, the researcher submitted some recommendations to support the efforts of poverty reduction. More research and study in the area of poverty, especially qualitative, is recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present study researched monthly income components in families from whom the child welfare system removed children to place them in out-of-home care. Using merged Washington State administrative data on 11,247 families who experienced child removal between July 2001 and June 2008, we examined wage and public assistance income. Inflation-adjusted average monthly cash income ranged from $736 to $1518 depending on how the income of a potential second parent was counted. In most configurations, average cash income fell below conservative measures of the applicable poverty line. These findings show that families involved in child welfare are on average very poor, more so than is commonly recognized, and provide new, finer-grained detail on the generally accepted relationship between poverty status and child welfare involvement.

A policy instrument can take on multi-dimensional objectives as additional elements are added over time. I examine this through analysis of the ‘support card’ established by the Turkish district municipality of Başakşehir. In this case, a market-based system of income support and instrument for partizan mobilization subsequently transformed into a technology demonstration project. The appearance of multiple objectives is the result of the juxtaposition of target audiences, including a European-based innovation network, low income urban residents, local businesses, and volunteers for the ruling Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) party. This analysis also contributes to a better conceptualization of the AKP's capacity to enhance its legitimacy beyond electoral mobilization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study adopted content analysis to examine policy papers concerning the eligibility requirements of the Minimum Living Standard Scheme (MLSS) in China's 31 capital cities. It was found that local officials not only assess applicants’ assets and incomes, but also their living space, quality of home decoration, possession of luxury goods, leisure activities, and behavior. The local governments’ use of a lifestyle assessment approach is caused by financial constraints and the lack of an effective mechanism to check applicants’ incomes. The lifestyle approach leads to regional inequalities in accessing public assistance, because some of the terms, which define the quality of life, are too ambiguous. The lifestyle approach, which requires applicants to live in very poor living conditions and also demonstrate their hardship to local officials, will be a barrier preventing poor people from being integrated into their communities. This study suggests that the key words and terms in the policy documents need to be clearly explained and similar criteria should also be adopted across different regions. It also proposes that the gap between MLSS eligibility criteria in the policy papers and their actual implementation requires further study in order to understand the impact of special local factors and the quality of life of poor people in China. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this study is to analyze whether and to what extent welfare generosity moderates the risk of income poverty and material deprivation among disadvantaged groups, that is, people with ill health, low education and lack of employment. The data are based on the 2009 European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (cross-sectional) surveys. The analyses comprise 27 and 28 European countries, including 292,874 and 302,343 individuals between 18 and 64 years of age. Multi-level analyses demonstrated that welfare generosity moderated the risk of both material deprivation and income poverty. With few exceptions, the risk decreased among disadvantaged groups in absolute terms. Among individuals who experienced the combinations of limiting long-standing illness and either low education or non-employment, the absolute inequalities in material deprivation decreased with increasing welfare generosity. Also, the absolute inequalities in income poverty among individuals who experienced the combination of limiting long-standing illness and low education were lower in more generous welfare contexts. Results indicated lower absolute levels of both material deprivation and income poverty among disadvantaged individuals in generous welfare states. However, for material deprivation the results were more substantial and consistent than for income poverty. Taken together, these findings support the view that generous welfare states reach the worst-off and are successful in buffering material deprivation and income poverty and, hence, in reducing social inequalities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty is a persistent problem in the United States, affecting millions of people and many areas of public policy. Nevertheless, public officials have said relatively little about poverty in recent years. What do ordinary Americans think about poverty and government's role in fighting it? This article summarizes two decades of survey data-drawing on ANES, Gallup, NORC/GSS, Pew, and other national polls-to help answer these questions. Americans generally feel positively toward the poor, believe that fighting poverty should be a high priority for government, and favor spending more on the poor. But many people remain skeptical of "welfare," worry about dependence on government aid, and are dissatisfied with past efforts to reduce poverty. Thus, officials could interpret existing polls as a sign to increase or decrease government's role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Evidence is growing that Wales was a distinctive ‘welfare region’ under the New Poor Law. Higher rates of out-relief, tense relations with London and a deep dislike of the workhouse system marked the Principality out as different. This article considers Welsh distinctiveness in the context of the ‘crusade against out-relief’. Launched in the early 1870s, the crusade saw out-relief numbers tumble nationally. Little is known about the crusade in Wales but it is often assumed that it was a non-event. It is argued here that this is entirely incorrect. Official statistics reveal that tens of thousands of outdoor paupers in Wales had their relief stopped. Crusaders were successful partly due to the misleading way the Poor Law inspectorate used official figures to portray Wales as a district on the brink of crisis. The turning of outdoor paupers into ‘folk devils’ by sections of the Welsh press was also pivotal. Welsh distinctiveness was not eradicated during the crusade, but it was eroded. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This study investigates the effects of welfare reform in the United States in the 1990s on voting among low-income women. Using the November Current Population Surveys with the added Voting and Registration Supplement for the years 1990 through 2004 and exploiting changes in welfare policy across states and over time, we estimate the causal effects of welfare reform on women's voting registration and voting participation during the period in which welfare reform unfolded. During this time period, voter turnout was decreasing in the United States. We find robust evidence that welfare reform led to smaller declines in voting (about 3 to 4 percentage points, which translates to about 10% relative to the baseline mean) for women who were exposed to welfare reform compared to several different comparison groups of similar women who were much less exposed. The robust findings suggest that welfare reform had prosocial effects on civic participation, as characterized by voting. The effects were largely confined to presidential elections, were stronger in Democratic than Republican states, were stronger in states with stronger work incentive policies, and appeared to operate through employment, education, and income. (JEL D72, H53, I38, J21) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The ecological public welfare positions policy, which involves low-income people in ecological conservation work, is an essential practical innovation for China to achieve mutual benefits in ecological protection and poverty alleviation. This study explored the effect of participation in ecological public welfare positions (PEPWP) on farmers' household income composition and clarified the internal mechanism by propensity score matching (PSM) and conditional process analysis, based on the field data from 508 formerly registered impoverished households in Jiangxi Province and Hubei Province, China. Results showed that (1) PEPWP was characterized by "self-selection", which significantly increased farmers' wage level, planting income in Jiangxi Province, and husbandry income in Hubei Province after the elimination of selectivity bias. However, the effect on other sub-incomes was insignificant. (2) There was a moderated mediating model between PEPWP and agricultural income, which demonstrated that farmer's development motivation (FDM) played a partially mediating effect between PEPWP and FDM, and the frequency of skill training (FST) moderated the first part path of this model. (3) EPWP policy steadily increased farmers' income at the vulnerable livelihood level and greatly improved the regional environment. At the same time, it also played an active role in stimulating FDM and rural governance. Conclusions indicated that it was significant to diversify the channels for promoting growth in rural incomes, and pay attention to skill training and the multi-functional role of ecological custodians, in order to activate FDM and assist farmers in eradicating poverty sustainably. [Display omitted] • Reveal the effect of ecological public welfare positions (EPWP) on farmers' income. • EPWP can increase household income accompanying with sub-income diversification. • The impact of EPWP on income is mediated by farmer's development motivation. • Frequency of skill training moderates the internal mechanism of EPWP on income. • The environmental-economic-social benefits of EPWP are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Japan's stagnant economy has produced increasing income disparities, and the effect of poverty on health and health-care utilization is a significant issue. Co-payments could be a trade-off for patients when seeking medical care and limit health-care utilization. We sought primary care physicians' experiences in dealing with financially deprived patients and their perspectives about reducing co-payments by low-income patients. Methods: We used a convergent mixed-methods approach in a mail survey; it was distributed to 1989 primary care physicians practicing in areas with the highest proportions of socially disadvantaged individuals in Tokyo. The survey items included an open-ended question, seeking the participants' perspectives about reducing co-payments by low-income patients from the current 30%, and closed questions, asking their experience of patient behavior related to financial burdens during the previous 6 months. Results: We analyzed the responses of 365 physicians. Sixty-two percent of the primary care physicians agreed with lowering co-payments for financially deprived patients; however, the remainder disagreed or were uncertain. Those who disagreed were less likely to have experienced patient behavior related to financial burdens. The participants suggested challenges and potential measures for reducing co-payments by low-income patients in light of tight governmental financial resources and rapidly increasing health-care expenditures in Japan. The physicians were also concerned about the moral hazard in health-care utilization among patients receiving social welfare who obtain care at no cost. Conclusions: From their experience in having dealt with low-income patients, the majority of physicians were positive about lowering co-payments by such patients; the remainder were negative or uncertain. It may be necessary to raise awareness of patients' socioeconomic status among primary care physicians as a possible deterrent for seeking care. To maintain health-care equity, policy makers should consider balancing co-payments among individuals with differing financial levels and health-care needs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: The associations between early life-socioeconomic status and health, specifically substance use, are well substantiated. The vulnerabilities associated with adversity in childhood, particularly poverty, can have a cumulative effect on an individual's risk and resilience throughout the life course. While several studies substantiate the relationship between substance use and welfare participation, less known is the impact of and prevalence of behavioral health problems later in life among young adults who were welfare recipients before age 18.Objective: This article explores whether childhood welfare participation before the age of 18 years influences substance use until young adulthood (24-34 years).Methods: This study used Add Health data with sample sizes ranging from 12,042 to 12,324 respondents, and propensity score matching methods to balance the samples and account for selection bias. Matched data were then used to run a series of regression models.Results: Those who participated in welfare before the age of 18 years had a significant lower probability of remaining substance-free until young adulthood (marijuana-free by 30%, p < 0.001; and other illicit substances-free by 16%, p < 0.05). However, no significant between-group differences were found on any of the alcohol-related variables.Conclusions: Findings highlight long-term behavioral health risks, especially substance use, faced by young adults who participated in welfare before the age of 18 years. Acknowledging the vulnerabilities associated with welfare participation and living in poverty could help increase the effectiveness of program and treatment efforts. The prevention of long-term behavioral health disorders hinges on early diagnosis and intervention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the work of nonprofit Detroit Action Commonwealth (DAC) and its Detroit Soup Kitchens, with the aim of creating settings for members to experience individual and collective power. Topics discussed include laws and policies that create challenges for impoverished Americans such as federal REAL ID Act, history of DAC, and accomplishments of DAC such as working for the Michigan Department of State to establish a new policy of waiving ID card fees.

Federal policy changes for Head Start (HS) elevate the importance of measured academic performance over other traditional program aims, particularly those associated with the social-emotional development of children. Concerned about the possible effects of these changes on children, based on observations and interviews, detailed portraits of teachers, parents, and children in a program serving the chronically homeless were constructed. Based on these portraits, the authors conclude that the question that has largely directed studies of HS—“does Head Start do any lasting good?”—is the wrong guiding question for policy. The better question is “What is good for them now?” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The worthiness of welfare recipients has long been questioned. However, their stereotypic depictions have changed throughout the decades. In 1996, The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) authorized drug testing welfare recipients and denial of benefits for testing positive. The subsequent proliferation of drug testing policy proposals in states across the United States raises questions regarding the portrayal of the drug testing target population. We examined state legislators’ public discourse, proponent and opponent, in the welfare drug testing debate, to assess the social construction of welfare recipients. Proponent discursive statements outnumbered opponent statements nearly 5:1. Proponent discourse was overtly derogatory toward and disparaging of welfare recipients. Opponent discourse was generally more sympathetic and supportive of the target population. However, not all opponents were against welfare drug testing in principle or practice. The analysis demonstrates a strong negative construction of welfare recipients as deviants, and indeed as drug abusers. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Objectives. To determine enrollment rates and predictors of enrollment for newly eligible low-income adults in California following the Affordable Care Act's (ACA's) Medicaid expansion. Methods. We used data from the 2014 to 2015 California Health Interview Survey to examine post-ACA Medicaid enrollment rates and multivariable logistic regression to assess the association of demographic factors, income, and health with enrollment. Results.Wefound a 78.5% enrollment rate for the newly eligible Medicaid population, translating to 3.8 million adults enrolled and 1.1 million adults who were eligible but did not enroll. Significant predictors of enrollment were participating in a public welfare program (odds ratio [OR] = 6.59; 95% confidence interval [CI] = 3.09, 14.04), having heart disease (OR = 4.03; 95% CI = 1.34, 12.15), being in the top quartile of income (OR = 3.59; 95% CI = 1.64, 7.85), enrolling in 2015 (OR = 3.28; 95% CI = 1.94, 5.56), being unemployed (OR = 2.10; 95% CI = 1.15, 3.82), and being female (OR = 1.71; 95% CI = 1.03, 2.85).Wedid not find significant disparities across race/ethnicity, education level, or geography. Conclusions. Repeal of Medicaid expansion would have a substantial effect on health insurance coverage among California's low-income adults, many of whom report chronic health conditions and no alternative sources of affordable coverage. Future research should examine the mechanisms explaining the higher enrollment rates among California's Medicaid expansion population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although the New Poor Law was passed by the Westminster Parliament, it was implemented at the most local level through newly established parochial boards. By tracing the case of a Paisley widow in need of poor relief through the changing landscape of the Scottish Poor Law in the 1850s, this article analyses the changing interpretation of the law regarding widows' settlements and highlights the interplay between local bodies and higher courts in interpreting the law. Individual experience and practice in localities worked together to create a national system that reflected Scottish understandings of gender, marriage, and independence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poverty analytical approaches have recently considered households' deprivation in several welfare attributes in what has been tagged multidimensional poverty. This approach has been well embraced due to acceptability of human development indices as a parameter for comparing welfare across different segments of the population. In this study, non-monetary indicators of welfare were aggregated into composite welfare indicator for pro-poor growth assessment. The 1999, 2003 and 2008 Demographic and Health Survey data were analyzed using the poverty equivalent growth rate (PEGR) and growth incidence curves (GICs). Results show that although sometimes pro-poor, non-income growth rates in many of the zones and states were negative between 1999 and 2003. In the 2003-2008 period, some more positive values were obtained. Specifically, between 1999 and 2003, there was pro-poor growth in non-income poverty in the north-western zone with urban areas benefiting more than rural areas. In the North East zone, there was pro-poor growth between 1999 and 2003, while none was pro-poor between 2003 and 2008. In the North Central zone, all the sectoral results for between 1999 and 2003 had negative growth rates. In South West zone, the growth rates for all the analyses are with negative growth rates between 1999 and 2003. In the South South zone, all the sectoral results had negative growth rates and pro-poor. In South East zone, between 1999 and 2003, all the sectoral results are with positive growth rates and pro-poor. In the combined households (Nigeria) analysis, that all the results had negative growth rates. There is therefore the need for ensuring proper monitoring of non-income poverty across different zones and states in order to ensure adequacy of different mechanisms for tackling it. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Estimates show only 56 percent of poor households who are eligible for benefits under the Program of Advancement Through Health and Education (PATH) in Jamaica actually applied to the program. Also, application rate among urban households is approximately half the rate that exists among poor rural households. This study investigates potential reasons for the relatively low application rate. Using data compiled by the Statistical Institute of Jamaica (STATIN), we conclude that single male household heads are two to four times less likely to apply for benefits compared to households headed by females and married couples. Problems regarding information about PATH and the complexity of the application process have the greatest impact on the decision not to apply. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over recent decades, vagrancy has been deinstitutionalised and a welfare approach has been developed in which the problem definition of “vagrancy”, perceived as a criminal problem, has shifted into a problem of “homelessness”, defined as a poverty problem. In this article, we discuss the findings of a case study in Ghent, Belgium, in which the implications of this welfare approach to homelessness in social work practices are examined. The research method involved interviews with social workers and coordinators of homelessness care programs, analysis of policy documents and observations of intake conversations. The following issues are discussed: (1) conditionality in regular homelessness care; (2) conditionality in organisations that are directly accessible; (3) counterproductive dynamics of residual care; and (4) invisibility of those labelled as “care avoiders”. In our concluding reflections, we argue that a new sort of institutionalisation of the problem of homelessness can be identified. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The working-class is typically regarded as the driving force of welfare state development. Yet, some argue that the middle-classes' beneficial involvement in the welfare state is crucial for its financial sustainability and popular legitimacy. Against this backdrop, we investigate how recent welfare state reforms in Germany which affect the status of the middle-class are viewed and discussed by this group. Germany is a particularly interesting case because its welfare state is seen to be centred on the desires of the middle-class, especially through its focus on status maintenance and horizontal redistribution over the life-course. However, the move from status maintenance to minimum income support in unemployment provision and the strengthening of private old age provision challenge this assumption. Thus, we ask how the German middle-class views the emerging abandonment of the principle of status maintenance and the shift from collective to individual responsibility. Based on qualitative material from focus groups, we find that individual responsibility is generally supported, but that the state is still assigned responsibility for providing basic levels of social security. Furthermore, for those groups seen as less capable of acting individually responsible (e.g. the poor or long-term unemployed) the 'inducement' of -- or assistance for -- individually responsible behaviour by the state is demanded. Overall, while the principle of 'individual responsibility' seems to find some resonance among the middle-class members interviewed, they still try to balance individual and collective responsibility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Children raised in families with low socioeconomic status (SES) are more likely to exhibit symptoms of psychopathology. However, the strength of this association, the specific indices of SES most strongly associated with childhood psychopathology, and factors moderating the association are strikingly inconsistent across studies. We conducted a meta-analysis of 120 estimates of the association between family SES and child psychopathology in 13 population-representative cohorts of children studied in the US since 1980. Among 26,715 participants aged 3–19 years, we observed small to moderate associations of low family income (g = 0.19), low Hollingshead index (g = 0.21), low subjective SES (g = 0.24), low parental education (g = 0.25), poverty status (g = 0.25), and receipt of public assistance (g = 0.32) with higher levels of childhood psychopathology. Moderator testing revealed that receipt of public assistance showed an especially strong association with psychopathology and that SES was more strongly related to externalizing than internalizing psychopathology. Dispersion in our final, random effects, model suggested that the relation between SES and child psychopathology is likely to vary in different populations of children and in different communities. These findings highlight the need for additional research on the mechanisms of SES-related psychopathology risk in children in order to identify targets for potential intervention. • In a meta-analysis, youth with lower socioeconomic status had greater psychopathology. • This effect was small and consistent for many indices of socioeconomic status (SES). • Youth with indicators of serious financial hardship had the most psychopathology. • SES was more strongly related to behavior problems than depression or anxiety. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]