scholarly journals Trapped in inactivity? Social assistance and labour supply in Austria

Empirica ◽  
2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Christl ◽  
Silvia De Poli

AbstractFinancial incentives affect the labour supply decisions of households. However, the impact usually varies significantly across household types. Whilst there is a substantial amount of literature on the labour supply effects of tax reforms and in-work benefits, the impact of changes in social assistance benefits has received less attention. This paper analyses labour supply responses to changes in social assistance. We show that labour supply elasticities vary substantially across gender and household type. Women exhibit higher labour supply elasticities, both on the intensive and the extensive margins. Additionally, labour supply elasticities are typically higher for singles and for households with children. Using these results, we analyse the impact of the Austrian reform proposal “Neue Sozialhilfe” (New Social Assistance), which was introduced in 2019 and substantially cut social assistance benefits for migrants and families with children. The overall effects of the reform are especially strong for men and migrants. Migrants and couples with children, that is, the groups hardest hit by the reform’s social assistance reductions, show the strongest labour supply reactions to the New Social Assistance. Furthermore, we show that overall, the reform is expected to have a positive, but small, effect on the intensive margin of labour supply.

2014 ◽  
Vol 5 ◽  
Author(s):  
Troels Fage Hedegaard

What is the impact of a predominantly negative debate about social assistance on public and individual support for the social benefit? Over the course of a year the public debate about social assistance flared up twice in Denmark. The debates drew on classic stereotypes of the social assistance recipients lacking both the financial incentives and the will to work. According to theories of the impact of media on welfare attitudes, this had the potential to undermine public support. A two-wave panel survey, however, showed only a small drop in public support for spending on social assistance, in a comparison of attitudes before and after the debates. The small overall impact on public opinion, however, hid a polarization of attitudes on the individual level. This shows that there was not a uniform reaction to welfare debates, but that people tend to seek out a version of reality that is consistent with their values and self-interest. The article thus shows that people when faced with public debates on welfare policies will seek to confirm their personal biases and this limits the possibility for overall changes in public support.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Yuqian Xu ◽  
Baile Lu ◽  
Hongyan Dai ◽  
Weihua Zhou

Author(s):  
Julie Vinck ◽  
Wim Van Lancker

Belgium has been plagued by comparatively high levels of child poverty, and by a creeping, yet significant, increase that started in the good years before the crisis. This is related to the relatively high share of jobless households, the extremely high and increasing poverty risk of children growing up in these households, and benefits that are inadequate to shield jobless families with children from poverty. Although the impact of the Great Recession was limited in Belgium, the crisis seems to have had an impact on child poverty, by increasing the number of children living in work-poor households. Although the Belgian welfare state had an important cushioning impact, its poverty-reducing capacity was less strong than it used to be. The most important lesson from the crisis is that in order to make further headway in reducing child poverty, not only activation but also social protection should be improved.


This collection of twelve original essays by an international team of eminent scholars in the field of book history explores the many ways in which early modern books were subject to reworking, re-presentation, revision and reinterpretation. Their history is often the history of multiple, sometimes competing, agencies as their texts were re-packaged, redirected and transformed in ways that their original authors might hardly recognize. The essays discuss the processes of editing, revision, redaction, selection, abridgement, glossing, disputation, translation and posthumous publication that resulted in a textual elasticity and mobility that could dissolve distinctions between text and paratexts, textuality and intertextuality, manuscript and print, author and reader or editor, such that title and author’s name are no longer sufficient pointers to a book’s identity or contents. The essays are alive to the impact of commercial and technological aspects of book production and distribution (discussing, for example, the career of the pre-eminent bookseller John Nourse, the market appeal of abridgements, and the financial incentives to posthumous publication), but their interest is also in the many additional forms of agency that shaped texts and their meanings as books were repurposed to articulate, and respond to, a variety of cultural and individual needs. They engage with early modern religious, political, philosophical and scholarly trends and debates as they discuss a wide range of genres and kinds of publication (including fictional and non-fictional prose, verse miscellanies, abridgements, sermons, religious controversy) and of authors and booksellers (including Lucy Hutchinson, Richard Baxter, Thomas Burnet, Elizabeth Rowe, John Dryden, and Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Lucy Hutchinson, Henry Maundrell, John Nourse; Jonathan Swift, Samuel Richardson, John Tillotson, Isaac Watts and John Wesley).


2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (12) ◽  
pp. e003621
Author(s):  
James Manley ◽  
Yarlini Balarajan ◽  
Shahira Malm ◽  
Luke Harman ◽  
Jessica Owens ◽  
...  

BackgroundCash transfer (CT) programmes are implemented widely to alleviate poverty and provide safety nets to vulnerable households with children. However, evidence on the effects of CTs on child health and nutrition outcomes has been mixed. We systematically reviewed evidence of the impact of CTs on child nutritional status and selected proximate determinants.MethodsWe searched articles published between January 1997 and September 2018 using Agris, Econlit, Eldis, IBSS, IDEAS, IFPRI, Google Scholar, PubMed and World Bank databases. We included studies using quantitative impact evaluation methods of CTs with sample sizes over 300, targeted to households with children under 5 years old conducted in countries with gross domestic product per capita below US$10 000 at baseline. We conducted meta-analysis using random-effects models to assess the impact of CT programmes on selected child nutrition outcomes and meta-regression analysis to examine the association of programme characteristics with effect sizes.ResultsOut of 2862 articles identified, 74 articles were eligible for inclusion. We find that CTs have significant effects of 0.03±0.03 on height-for-age z-scores (p<0.03) and a decrease of 2.1% in stunting (95% CI −3.5% to −0.7%); consumption of animal-source foods (4.5%, 95% CI 2.9% to 6.0%); dietary diversity (0.73, 95% CI 0.28 to 1.19) and diarrhoea incidence (−2.7%, 95% CI −5.4% to −0.0%; p<0.05). The effects of CTs on weight-for-age z-scores and wasting were not significant (0.02, 95% CI −0.03 to 0.08; p<0.42) and (1.2%, 95% CI: −0.1% to 2.5%; p<0.07), respectively. We found that specific programme characteristics differentially modified the effect on the nutrition outcomes studied.ConclusionWe found that CT programmes targeted to households with young children improved linear growth and contributed to reduced stunting. We found that the likely pathways were through increased dietary diversity, including through the increased consumption of animal-source foods and reduced incidence of diarrhoea. With heightened interest in nutrition-responsive social protection programmes to improve child nutrition, we make recommendations to inform the design and implementation of future programmes.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-24
Author(s):  
Fatima A Fagbenro ◽  
Tessa Lasswell ◽  
Sarah A Rydell ◽  
J Michael Oakes ◽  
Brian Elbel ◽  
...  

ABSTRACT Objective To report perspectives of participants in a food benefit program that includes FAS restrictions and FAS restrictions paired with F/V incentives. Design Randomized experimental trial in which participant perspectives were an exploratory study outcome. Setting Participants were randomized into one of three SNAP-like food benefit program groups - (1) Restriction: not allowed to buy FAS with benefits; (2) Restriction paired with incentive: not allowed to buy FAS with benefits and 30% financial incentive on eligible F/V purchased using benefits; or (3) Control: Same food purchasing rules as SNAP. Participants were asked questions to assess program satisfaction. Participants Adults in the Minneapolis-St. Paul, MN metropolitan area, eligible for but not currently participating in SNAP who completed baseline and follow-up study measures (n=254). Results Among remaining households in each group, most found the program helpful in buying nutritious foods (88.2%-95.7%) and were satisfied with the program (89.1%-93.0%). Sensitivity analysis results indicate that reported helpfulness and satisfaction with the program may in some instances be lower among the Restriction and the Restrictions paired with Incentive groups in comparison to the control group. Conclusions A food benefit program that includes restriction on purchase of FAS or restriction paired with a financial incentive for F/V purchases may be acceptable to most SNAP-eligible households with children.


Author(s):  
Mouctar Sow ◽  
Myriam De Spiegelaere ◽  
Marie-France Raynault

Variations in social policy between countries provide opportunities to assess the impact of these policies on health inequities. This study compares the risk of low birth weight in Brussels and Montreal, according to household composition, and discusses the impact of income support policies. For each context, we estimated the impact of income support policies on the extent of poverty of welfare recipients, using the model family method. Based on the differences found, we tested hypotheses on the association between low birth weight and household composition, using administrative data from the birth register and social security in each region. The extent of poverty of welfare families differs according to household composition. In Quebec, the combination of low welfare benefits and larger family allowances widens the gap between households with children and those without children. The risk of LBW also differs between these two contexts according to the number of children. Compared to children born into large welfare families, first-born children are more at risk in Montreal than in Brussels. In addition to the usual comparative studies on the topic, our study highlights the importance of an evaluative perspective that considers the combination of different types of income support measures to better identify the most vulnerable households.


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document