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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]

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]

Mucho se ha estudiado y debatido en torno al tema de la pobreza, sin embargo no existe una teoría económica de consenso, de aquí el interés que se tiene en seguir explorando las ventajas y desventajas de los distintos enfoque. El presente estudio realiza un análisis de la pobreza en México utilizando un enfoque multidimensional. Se trata de un enfoque alternativo a los índices de pobreza unidimensional, dicho enfoque contempla un conjunto de variables con determinada ponderación. El artículo hace una revisión de distintos enfoques de medición de la pobreza, establece argumentos teóricos y posteriormente realiza un análisis de la pobreza en México utilizando el criterio multidimensional. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social service providers are increasingly encouraged by their funders to help fashion the poor into neoliberal citizens, and this study investigates how this situation may affect the ways in which service users present themselves to service providers when seeking assistance. We suggest that our interview participants, drawn from vulnerable and marginalized populations of Winnipeg, Manitoba, are attuned to the characteristics of neoliberal citizenship that are increasingly valued among social service providers in Winnipeg. Indeed, just as neoliberal policies pressure social service agencies to embrace accountable, business-like, and individualizing models of service, so too are service users encouraged to adapt themselves to the demands of neoliberalism. In this context, our respondents represented themselves as active, prudent, autonomous, responsible, and entrepreneurial in an attempt to fashion an identity worthy of care within the contemporary bureaucratic field. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Chinese Perceived Causes of Poverty Scale (CPCPS) was constructed to assess Chinese people’s beliefs about poverty. Four categories of explanations of poverty are covered in this scale: personal problems of poor people, lack of opportunities to escape from poverty, exploitation of poor people, and bad fate. Based on the responses of 1,519 Chinese secondary school students to the CPCPS, confirmatory factor analyses provided support for these four dimensions of the scale. By splitting the total sample into two sub-samples, further analyses showed that the CPCPS was invariant with reference to factor structure (configural invariance), factor loadings (construct-level metric covariance) and factor variances/covariances across different samples. The present findings are generally consistent with the previous findings based on exploratory factor analyses and they provide support for the use of the CPCPS for assessing beliefs about causes of poverty in Chinese people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses upon factors related to the desire of social work students to work with the poor. It examines three sets of variables: students' perceptions of the causes of poverty, the best way of dealing with it, and preferred professional interventions. The sample consists of 514 graduating BSW students from Brazil, Germany, Hungary, Israel, and the United States. The findings indicate that interest to work with the poor is associated with less inclination to perceive poverty as caused by lack of motivation, effort, and responsibility; more inclination to view the expansion of state provision as the best means of dealing with poverty, less inclination to support its reduction; and more desire to employ policy practice and advocacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of welfare-to-work programs across the country has led to a number of questions about the effectiveness of this reform effort and the experiences of welfare recipients. This study of seventeen welfare recipients in the state of Oregon reports on what the welfare-to-work experience is like for women in two types of communities, one rural and one urban. Our findings suggest that women in both communities share similar frustrations, but overall assess the welfare- to-work program ideology positively. Women in the rural community do report more personal challenges in finding and keeping a job based on the lack of public transportation, limited job prospects in the rural area, and dissatisfaction with the education and job skill training available to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent developments in social protection have shifted its focus on to risk and vulnerability. These contribute to poverty directly, but also indirectly through the response of poor households to risk. The extent to which social protection interventions could address chronic poverty is unclear. A hard and fast distinction between transient and chronic poverty suggests a bifurcation in anti-poverty policy, with social protection addressing the former, and asset transfer policies the latter. To the extent that factors behind chronic poverty extend beyond the direct and indirect impact of risk on households, social protection can at best constitute a partial response. The paper discusses these issues and concludes that ‘broad’ social protection can have an important role in interrupting risk and vulnerability among the chronic poor. Les développements récents sur la protection sociale se sont concentrés sur les notions de risque et de vulnérabilité. Ces derniers contribuent directement aux phénomènes de pauvreté, et indirectement également, à travers la réponse des ménages pauvres au risque. L'impact des modifications de la protection sociale sur la pauvreté chronique reste peu clair. La distinction radicale entre pauvretés chronique et transitoire suggère une modification des politiques anti-pauvreté, la protection sociale étant affectée à la pauvreté transitoire, et les politiques de transfert d'actifs à la pauvreté chronique. Dans la mesure où les facteurs déterminants de la pauvreté chronique dépassent les questions de l'impact direct et indirect du risque sur les ménages, la protection sociale peut au mieux constituer une réponse partielle. L'article propose une analyse de ces problèmes, et conclut qu'une protection sociale peut avoir un rôle important en matière de réduction du risque et de la vulnérabilité associée à la pauvreté chronique. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article reports the results of an in-depth, descriptive study of long-term welfare recipients. A random sample of 284 respondents, all of whom had received public assistance for at least 36 months, were interviewed. Results illustrate personal barriers to self-sufficiency, including physical health problems that prevent work, severe domestic violence, educational deficits, substance abuse, learning disabilities, child behavior problems, generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, and clinical depression. Study findings underscore the complex, persistent, and multiple difficulties experienced by this population and suggest that for some welfare recipients, long-term (even lifelong) financial supports and social services may be in order. Implications for policy and programming are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 dramatically transformed the structure and goals of the public welfare system in the United States. The vast body of research and evaluation generated by the 1996 welfare reforms largely overlooked nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) despite their substantial historical and contemporary involvement in the delivery of social services to low-income populations. Therefore, this paper presents a unique assessment of PRWORA's implications based on the perspective of 90 social service NGOs operating in the Detroit metropolitan area. Examination of their services, staffing, budgets, and clients reveals many changes experienced by NGOs between 1996 and 2000 related to the welfare reforms. Overall, the findings suggest an increased role for social service NGOs in the “public” welfare system as well as concerns regarding their capacity to adequately fulfill this growing responsibility in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers reflections on social work. It explores whether social work can claim to be an international profession with an international perspective and knowledge base. Observations on the functions of social work in addressing the concerns of the poor and the fundamental conditions of poverty are tackled. The relationship between experience and practice in determining the nature and teaching of social work research is addressed. Moreover, some suggestions related to the place of research in the social work profession and a possible career structure for exploring social work in the development process are also discussed.

The article discusses certain issues related to the 20/20 Initiative launched by five United Nations organizations which aims to ensure universal access to basic social services. The basic social services are basic education and primary health care, including reproductive health and population programmes, nutrition programmes and safe drinking water and sanitation as well as the institutional capacity for delivering those services. By giving priority to basic social services, the initiative is primarily targeted on the poor. The initiative is not only about the mobilization of additional public resources for basic social services, but is also about how equitably and efficiently they are put to use. Results from some 20 developing countries indicate that health and education spending are not particularly well targeted to the poor.

Comments on the two different logics underlying the fear of a `race to the bottom' among the states in welfare policy. Error of focusing on the poor rather than on the well-endowed and mobile economic actors who influence state policymakers; Relationship of territorially bound political leaders to the holders of mobile economic resources in capitalist and democratic society.

The purpose of the article is to examine the scope of the U.S. welfare attitudes, the apparent stereotypical character of such attitudes, and their reasons for being. To explore these issues a survey of a representative sample of 1017 Americans was conducted in all sections of the country in the spring of 1969, focusing on views of the poor and welfare. The response percentages considered to be anti-welfare are in bold face type. In every case but one a plurality of these Americans took a negative position vis-a-vis those on welfare programs. On four of the seven statements, a majority took an unequivocal anti-welfare position, and at least four out of ten were anti-welfare in their responses to the other three items. In only one case, the mobility item, was the proportion willing to express uncertainty a sizeable minority. Most people on welfare who can work do not try to find jobs so they can support themselves. This criticism of the work attitudes of those on welfare is often tied to the issue of employability. The 1969 survey dropped the "not" out of the statement and asked respondents if they agreed with the sentence "Most people on welfare who can work try to find jobs so they can support themselves." More disagreed with this view of welfare recipients than agreed.

Considerations of social justice, as opposed to growth, must provide the linchpin of a social protection agenda because the chronically vulnerable and poor are typically in their predicament because of institutionalised patterns of disadvantage. Furthermore, if the primary purpose of social protection programming is to transform the lives of large numbers of vulnerable people, only a radical agenda based on considerations of (re)distribution, recognition and representation will suffice, precisely because resource transfers alone (including provision of assets or jobs) will not be able to transform the terms of engagement upon which the vulnerable and poor interface with society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents information on the issue of welfare-to-work initiatives. Welfare recipients are informed that a program is being implemented to help people get off welfare and that it is going to provide opportunities for them to get the training and education that they need to become self-sufficient. The program usually manages to hobble along with these new parameters because the people on the firing line tend to continue to treat the clients as if they wish to participate even though these clients fall into categories now legislatively defined as mandatory. Inevitably, the next generation of welfare-to-work initiatives has more coercive language and provisions for sanctions, as if the previous attempt failed because recipient refused to participate. Social workers need to more forcefully influence the sociopolitical planning process. It would be nice if they could help planners act on the already available knowledge that it is not necessary to force and cajole welfare recipients into participating in programs aimed at self-sufficiency.