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A model of participants' take-up of welfare benefits is developed using welfare fraud and welfare stigma as reference points. Results of the model showed stigma as the significant factor that determines participation in a welfare program, underscoring the effects of informal controls, even under conditions of differing stigma perception and honesty characteristics of participants. The result implies that informal controls can be used in the formulation of effective screening strategies to ensure that the qualified needy enters the welfare program.

This research examines the quantitative impacts of welfare program characteristics and individual characteristics on both the labor force and welfare participation decisions of low-income females with children. The participation decisions are estimated jointly as a bivariate probit model using data derived from the U.S. Census Bureau's Current Population Survey for the years 1979 to 1990, inclusive. These data allow the estimation of the precise behavioral impacts of welfare. The main empirical findings are that effective welfare guarantee levels and the effective welfare tax rate on unearned income both significantly affect the probability of labor force and welfare program participation, but that such impacts are very small in magnitude. Implications for policy are discussed.

This article is concerned in part to inform the quest for an understanding of the perceptions which Muslim minorities have of Western welfare state provision, but its wider purpose is to explore the essence and the potential of the Islamic welfare state. Heuristic models constructed by social policy academics have provided insights into the influences of religion upon different kinds of welfare state, but no model exists by which specifically to understand Islamic welfare traditions. The article explains the Islamic tradition of Zakat; its significance as one of the central pillars of Muslim faith, and the principles through which it addresses the relief of poverty and the redistribution of wealth. Islamic conceptions of state and community are then explored and the ways in which Muslim faith and culture are adapting at both the global and community level. The article concludes with some speculative remarks about the scope for rapprochement between Western debates about the moral basis for welfare and Muslim perspectives on social justice.

Tanner and Moore (1995) calculate welfare equivalent wags for the six most common social programs for each of the 50 states and the District of Columbia. They assert that individuals who choose public assistance over work are responding rationally to incentives of the welfare system, but they offer no evidence. I present statistically significant support for Tanner and Moore's assertion. Among potential welfare recipients, a one dollar increase in the welfare equivalent wage is found to increase the welfare take-up rate by approximately 2.7 percentage points and decrease the labor force participation rate by approximately 2.5 percentage points. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

A model with health expenditure-based insurance payouts was created to assess the effects of providing subsidies for out-of-pocket health expenses. Findings based on the model reveal that subsidizing coinsurance payments lead to reduced health expenditures and increased welfare if health insurance premiums are payable with pretax dollars. Equal subsidies are also shown to be close to ideal in the presence of deadweight loss. In its absence, the ideal subsidy to coinsurance is greater than that provided to premiums, however, equal subsidies to both will still remain welfare improving.

After years of collective denial, most politicians (and welfare policy makers) have finally acknowledged the link between unwed parenthood and long-term welfare dependency, as well as a host of other [...]

The effects of tariff rebalancing on welfare is examined in the UK natural gas market. An econometric model of the household consumption is proposed. Tariff rebalancing between fixed and variable charges is found to highly impact distribution. Substitute methods are suggested to handle these effects: the use of the current welfare system as a mitigating factor, and the use of special tariffs for low-income consumers.

The impact of higher welfare support levels on school participation rates are examined to determine the validity of standard economic theory on education. A random sample of 18- to 25-yr. old single mothers is used for the study. Results show that increases in the welfare system do not significantly affect educational levels. This result contradicts most of the findings provided for in empirical literature.

Bulgaria provided its citizens with a comprehensive social safety net which included retirement and disability pensions, and free health and education services. It also had full employment with highly compressed wages. However, with its transition to a market economy, output declined, wages dropped, and unemployment rose. Meanwhile, self-employment income increased as sharply as unemployment and in-kind income has become a successful coping mechanism, but there was hardly any change in social transfers. Moreover, the social safety net benefits mostly the wrong target, the middle income group. Reforms in social services are clearly needed., Bulgaria is a lower-middle income country with a population of about 8.5 million. In late 1989 it began introducing radical political and economic changes aimed at transforming the country into [...]

Monthly administrative records gathered for the period between Nov. 1983 and Sept. 1991 on income assistance in British Columbia were analyzed to determine the reasons for availment, withdrawal and return by individuals of such a service. Findings show that, contrary to popular opinion, single males and not women and children comprise the biggest group of availers. As for returnees, majority are residents of the province.

Reforms to the UK National Health Service were introduced in Apr. 1991 to cut too much vertical integration by implementing a quasi-market where incentive structures and greater availability of information would allow decision makers to more effectively use resources. However, a general framework with which to examine the welfare gains or losses resulting from the quasi-market is yet to be implemented. To correct the situation, an analytical framework of a quasi-market within which distortions such as cream skimming and local monopoly can be investigated.

The factors that influence the length of time people avail of housing assistance should be identified because the present policy focuses on promptly helping physically able individuals attain self-sufficiency. Knowing who gets housing assistance for short periods can help determine the right residential composition of housing projects and targeting meager training budgets through the self-sufficiency programs of HUD. It is because of this that a study was conducted focusing on the duration of housing assistance spells. Data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation was used to develop a hazard model. Findings indicate that several individuals will continue receiving assistance for relatively long periods although some leave housing assistance after short spells. Results also show that there is no duration dependence in housing assistance spells.

The Kaldor compensation test can sometimes inconsistent in the sense that it leads to contradictory or cyclical recommendations in some situations. However, the consistency of this test has a close relationship with the rationalizability of choices from given utility possibilities sets. Given this observation, it is suggested that social decisions can be made using a social welfare ordering in the first place if the Kaldor test is consistent. Thus, the consistent application of the Kaldor test depends on the acceptance of the information assumptions in some social welfare ordering.

Designing public assistance is a controversial issue and yet a necessity due to widespread poverty. The feasibility of targeted programs has been considered by governments due to their objective of minimizing costs of macroeconomic adjustment programs while conforming to restrained government spending. A discussion of targeting as well as some of its common methods.

Barr and Hall's work of estimating the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program's implicit tax rate was extended to evaluate how group-specific characteristics affect welfare grant allocations. The development of a general welfare benefits model was followed by a proposed general welfare benefits model. Results showed statistically significant disparities in welfare allocation, using personal characteristics such as race and sex as basis.

A research effort showed that people with higher incomes are on average happier. However, increasing everybody's incomes will not increase the happiness of all because the material standards used as basis for well-being also increase proportionately along with society's actual income. The results are based on happiness, material norm and income date gathered through surveys conducted in several countries since the middle of the 20th century.

H. Clark Johnson, L. LynneKiesling and Va Nee L. Van Vleck's doctoral dissertations have all been selected as finalists for the Gerschenkron Prize for the best dissertation on the economic history of countries other than the US. Clark Johnson wrote on internationalgold deflation, Kiesling tackled the political economy of income assistance to the poor during a period of serious economic travail while Van Vleck assesses the impact of technological innovations on industry. All three dissertations contribute significantly to the field of economic history.

The potential of non-governmental agencies as providers of welfare services is increasingly recognised but little attention has been given to the welfare-providing role of religious congregations. This article draws on four case studies to describe and analyse the range of congregational welfare activities. Six types of welfare work are distinguished: welfare projects, indirect welfare work, informal care, informal care in an organised framework, mutual aid and social integration. Distinctive features of congregational welfare work are identified. The article concludes by discussing the implications of the findings and considering whether there is scope for expanding the contribution of congregations to the mixed economy of welfare.

The article examines estimates of duration models for unmarried mothers based on Survey of Income and Program Participation data for 1984 and 1985. Local variables, such as per capita sales and urbanization levels, were found to have significant impacts on welfare exit rates.

This research documents trends from 1970 through 1990 in the utilization and ameliorative effects of public assistance among poor children in nonmetropolitan (nonmetro) and metropolitan (metro) America. Results indicate that the families of nonmetro poor children rely more heavily on parental earnings and less so on public assistance when compared to their metro counterparts; that there was a sharp rise over the period in reliance on public assistance, especially among nonmetro children, and a corresponding decline in reliance on earnings; that the ability of public assistance to ameliorate child poverty is modest; and that while the ameliorative effects are always greater in metro than nonmetro areas, this disparity declined over the 1980s owing partially to improvement in nonmetro areas.

I. Introduction This paper focuses on the impact of competition by imitation, more specifically copying, for innovative activity and social welfare. In part, it is a response to recent empirical [...]

Many studies to date regarding public support for welfare-state programs do not have an adequate theoretical model and fail to consider differences in public support for contributory vs. means-tested programs. Moreover, these studies seldom take into account cross-cultural variations. This study presents and tests the validity of a three-tier model in which socio-economic variables influence social ideologies which, in turn, differentially affect support for contributory and means-tested programs. Using comparable data from two countries - Israel and the United States - a path analysis with log-linear models is applied, indicating that, while important cross-cultural differences exist, the model is generally confirmed.

A study was conducted to examine changes in social welfare arising from US merger activities in the manufacturing industries. The study focuses on market level conditions and considers data covering the period from 1985 to 1986. It is shown that over short durations, market customers lost because of the merger activities while the industry firms gained. However, the margin of gain was not enough to support consumer losses.

A year-long study of public child welfare administrators examined the effects of role conflict on their attitudes and performance. Popular belief and some of the literature have suggested that burnout is inevitable for those confronted with role conflict. Other literature has proposed that it may instead be energizing to individuals and lead to greater personal and organizational effectiveness. This qualitative study found that individuals in the study had developed specific, effective skills for responding to role conflict. Although there was a public presentation of self that indicated they were under stress and in "impossible" situations, there was in fact an energizing effect resulting from the ongoing challenge of dealing with conflict.

An analysis is made of the joint effects of third-degree price discrimination and excise taxation in several different ways. Results show that in a traditional single market monopoly model, ad valorem and specific taxes provide the same level of welfare measure at a given output level. However, for revenue neutral excise taxes, the demand ad valorem tax system produces more total output than the unit or specific tax before the revenue maximizing unit tax rate.

A study was conducted to examine public service level and the utility of wealthy families as they are affected by the growth in number of poor families in a community dominated by wealthy families. A model for analyzing these issues was developed, in which it was asssumed that local public service level was funded by a property tax and determined by majority voting. The model suggested that the expansion of a predominantly wealthy neighborhood to include more poor families may lead to fiscal deterioration. This situation, in turn, may result in the increase in 'price' of public service and in the maximization of the wealthy resident's utility.

Even though individuals generally become homeless after living in an impoverished but domiciled 'vulnerable' state, few quantitative investigations consider determinants of the decline from vulnerability. This leaves in question the rather common claim that personal deficits are direct determinants of the lack of a domicile. Using data on a sample from Chicago, the study tests whether homeless and vulnerable domiciled individuals are differentiated by three sets of deficits: alienation, disabilities, and occupational deficiencies. It also assesses whether the loss of a domicile reflects a lack of access to support offered by social institutions. Variables representing lack of access are found to be the best predictors, but certain deficits have limited importance in specific subsamples. The generally limited role of deficits, in turn, seems to occur because the most problem ridden adults are protected from homelessness and from vulnerability. Differentials across gender as well as previous homeless history are also noted and explained.