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Governments in many countries are redefining policies and strategies in order to respond to the profound and growing social security needs of their citizens. Good governance in social security administration is indispensable to achieve the desired results because new policies and strategies can only be as good as their implementation. The article focuses on good governance at two levels of authority: i) the social security organization, and ii) national Government. At the level of a social security organization, we discuss a stylized governance framework that provides an overview of what is involved in the implementation of a social security programme. The discussion is elevated to the national level in order to focus on the governance of a social security system. From a governance point of view, this article underscores the primary role of governments to facilitate national consensus on the overall objectives of the country's social security system. It argues for the designation of a national authority on social security to ensure the coherent implementation and development of the various programmes that comprise the country's social security system. Greater synchronization of social security policy with employment and labour market policies is important to ensure positive synergies and joint effectiveness in providing access to work opportunities in the formal sectors of the economy, which is key to tackling poverty and social exclusion and to enabling the poor greater access to more comprehensive forms of social security protection. Good governance will better ensure the sustained and lasting contribution of social security to national economic growth and development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Little sociological attention over the last two decades has focused on the deprivation experienced by indigenous people. Fusing insights from American Indian history and the race and labor market inequality literatures, we address this gap in this article through a historically informed labor market analysis of poverty-an analysis that considers the pervasiveness of contemporary Native poverty, its potential basis in labor market opportunities, and the extent to which it has been patterned by two major demographic and economic shifts: (1) the rapid urbanization of the American Indian population and (2) the proliferation of tribally owned casinos. Findings reveal, most notably, the incredibly rigid and durable character of poverty for this population, historically and currently and across geographic space, and with little overall impact of local labor market opportunity. The presence of tribal casinos reduces such poverty, but only to a small degree and not nearly enough to compensate for sizable American Indian and white poverty differentials. Group history is key, we conclude, to shaping how space, labor markets, and economic development reduce or buttress relations of inequality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although there has been some research on the impacts of federal tax and transfer policies on poverty rates for immigrants, virtually no previous work investigates the most disadvantaged group of immigrants: refugees. We estimate probit models for three standard measures of poverty. We find that while immigrants and refugees in particular had much higher poverty rates in the early 1990s, the strong economic growth of the 1990s led to a convergence of those poverty rates by 2000. Our analysis demonstrates that the improvement was largely because of economic conditions and that welfare reform policies appear to have little differential impact on immigrants or refugees. We also find that refugees show a markedly greater response to local labor market conditions than other immigrants or native born. ( JEL H3, I3, J1) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Nordic welfare states offer some lessons in a development context. A main achievement has been sustainable poverty reduction. Another important lesson is that, while democratization often leads to greater pressures for social policy expansion, social policy can also contribute to democratization. The Nordic countries further demonstrate that is possible to unify social protection with a competitive and growth-oriented economy. In a number of policy areas, particularly in relation to social services and labor market policy, the Nordic countries have also become leading modernizers. The women-friendly dual-earner model not only combats poverty among families with children, but also enables women to participate in the labor market. The future sustainability of the Nordic model of social policy hinges on the number of taxpayers that can be mobilized. In order to be successful in this, governments need to take a combined, or holistic, approach, and consider both micro motives and macro considerations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite strong national economic growth and significant poverty reduction during the late 1990s, high poverty persisted in remote rural areas. This study uses a geographical information system county database to examine the nexus between rural U.S. poverty and remoteness. We find that poverty rates increase with greater rural distances from successively larger metropolitan areas (MAs). We explain this outcome as arising from the attenuation of urban agglomeration effects at greater distances and incomplete commuting and migration responses to lower labor demand in rural areas. One implication is that remote areas may particularly experience greater reductions in poverty from place-based economic development policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]