scholarly journals Antipoverty Programmes in Venezuela

2011 ◽  
Vol 40 (4) ◽  
pp. 835-852 ◽  
Author(s):  
ANNE DAGUERRE

AbstractThis article analyses Venezuelan antipoverty programmes under the presidency of Hugo Chávez, the leader of the ‘Bolivarian Revolution’ (1998–present). Support for poor people has become the government's trademark since the creation in 2002–03 of a series of emergency social programmes, the Missions. These programmes attend to the basic needs of low-income individuals in terms of nutrition, health and education. The Missions are characterised by a pattern of institutional bypassing which makes their long-term institutionalisation difficult. Do the Missions really introduce a break with previous social policies? To answer this question, we first analyse the evolution of the Venezuelan social state. Second, we review the development of the Missions, especially the MissionVuelvan Caras, nowChe Guevara, an active labour market programme. Third, we provide an assessment of the Social Missions and identify ruptures and continuities with past social assistance policies. The main contention is that the Missions exhibit a strong pattern of path dependency, despite the ideological and discursive ruptures that have attended the presidency of Hugo Chávez.

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (5) ◽  
pp. 369-373 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fatih Guvenen ◽  
Fatih Karahan ◽  
Serdar Ozkan ◽  
Jae Song

Drawing on administrative data from the Social Security Administration, we find that individuals that go through a long period of non-employment suffer large and long-term earnings losses (around 35-40 percent) compared to individuals with similar age and previous earnings histories. Importantly, these differences depend on past earnings, and are largest at the bottom and top of the earnings distribution. Focusing on workers that are employed 10 years after a period of long-term non-employment, we find much smaller earnings losses (8-10 percent). Furthermore, the large earnings losses of low-income individuals are almost entirely due to employment effects.


2019 ◽  
Vol 39 (3/4) ◽  
pp. 276-295 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luc Benda ◽  
Ferry Koster ◽  
Romke J. van der Veen

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate how active labour market policy (ALMP) training programmes and hiring subsidies increase or decrease differences in the unemployment risk between lesser and higher educated people during an economic downturn. A focus is put on potential job competition dynamics and cumulative (dis)advantages of the lesser and higher educated. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses multi-level data. The fifth wave (2010) of the European Social Survey was used and combined with macro-level data on labour market policies of the OECD. The sample consisted of 18,172 observations in 19 countries. Findings The results show that higher levels of participation and spending on training policies are related to a smaller difference in the unemployment risks of the educational groups. Higher training policy intensity is associated with a lower unemployment risk for the lesser educated and a higher unemployment risk for the higher educated. This implies that the lesser educated are better able to withstand downward pressure from the higher educated, thereby, reducing downward displacement during an economic downturn. Hiring subsidies do not seem to be associated with the impact of education on unemployment. Originality/value The paper adds to the discussion on ALMP training and hiring subsidies that are primarily rooted in the human capital theory and signalling theory. Both theories ignore the social context of labour market behaviour. The job competition theory and cumulative (dis)advantage theory add to these theories by focussing on the relative position of individuals and the characteristics that accompany the social position of the individual.


2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 746-769 ◽  
Author(s):  
Allison Suppan Helmuth

Urban sociologists and gentrification scholars have long been interested in examining the combination of structural and micro–level forces that result in the displacement and exclusion of low–income residents from changing neighborhoods. However, the types of everyday activities and the social and spatial practices that exclude residents who remain in these neighborhoods are an understudied part of the gentrification story. How are exclusive spaces created? What are the specific social processes that lead to exclusive space? I draw on in–depth interviews and ethnographic fieldwork to examine how white residents in a historically black neighborhood claim space through their everyday actions and interactions. These space–claiming practices are at times subtle and at times overt, but often draw on a repertoire of physical, mental, and social practices that combine to create spaces that exclude black people—including long–term black residents, black gentrifiers, and black visitors to the neighborhood—from public space.


Author(s):  
Bumke Christian ◽  
Voßkuhle Andreas

This chapter discusses the principle of social state as articulated in Art. 20 of the Grundgesetz (GG). In contrast to the democracy principle, GG contains only a few provisions which can be assumed to be specific manifestations of the social-state principle. As a result, interpretation and application of the principle become problematic. As an objective right, the social-state principle requires the state to provide actual benefits. Art. 1 para. 1 GG, in combination with the social-state principle, justifies a claim ‘to the guarantee of a minimum livelihood in accordance with human dignity’. The chapter examines the Federal Constitutional Court's jurisprudence concerning individual social benefits that may be provided by the legislature to fulfill its obligations under the social-state clause, with particular emphasis on long-term care insurance, and the state's obligations under the social-state principle to create and maintain public social-welfare facilities.


2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (3) ◽  
pp. 425-442 ◽  
Author(s):  
Rik van Berkel ◽  
Paul van der Aa

AbstractDebates about the new welfare, and the new social policies that go (or should go) with it, share an emphasis on risk-prevention strategies and pluralistic risk management. Focusing specifically on the risk of unemployment, this article discusses the case for so-called preventive worker-directed active labour market policies as part of the new welfare architecture. These policies are aimed at preventing unemployment and promoting labour-market transitions and employability. They involve responsibilities on the part of the state, social partners and employers. First, the case for these policies is elaborated by analysing the social investment, flexicurity and transitional labour-market literature. In this context, several issues related to the feasibility of the pluralistic management of preventing unemployment, as well as the possible impact of pluralistic risk management on dualisation, are discussed. Secondly, recent policy initiatives in the Netherlands are presented as an illustration of the incremental emergence of preventive worker-directed active labour-market policies. It is argued that although these policy initiatives were initially introduced as responses to the crisis, they may eventually turn out to reflect a more fundamental reorientation in managing and dealing with the risks of unemployment. The conclusion critically reflects and argues that pluralistic risk management may exacerbate, rather than mitigate, the insecurities of flexible and non-standard workers.


2019 ◽  
Vol 49 (3) ◽  
pp. 483-506 ◽  
Author(s):  
LUC BENDA ◽  
FERRY KOSTER ◽  
ROMKE VAN DER VEEN

AbstractEvaluation studies of active labour market policy show different activation measures generate contradictory results. In the present study, we argue that these contradictory results are due to the fact that the outcomes of activation measures depend on other institutions. The outcome measure in this study is the long-term unemployment rate. Two labour market institutions are of special interest in this context: namely, employment protection and unemployment benefits. Both institutions, depending on their design, may either increase or decrease the effectiveness of active labour market policies in lowering long-term unemployment. Based on an analysis of macro-level data on 20 countries over a period of 16 years, our results show that employment protection strictness and unemployment benefit generosity interact with the way in which active labour market policies relate to long-term unemployment. Our results also indicate that, depending on the measure used, active labour market policies fit either in a flexible or in a coordinated labour market. This suggests that active labour market policies can adhere to both institutional logics, which are encapsulated in different types of measures.


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