Perceptions of Program Abuse and Support for Social Insurance

2020 ◽  
Vol 49 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-75
Author(s):  
Scott E. Bokemper ◽  
Albert H. Fang ◽  
Gregory A. Huber
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Laboratory Experiments ◽  
Disability Insurance ◽  
Causal Link ◽  
Government Programs ◽  
Program Support ◽  
Perceptions Of Abuse

Do perceptions of abuse in social insurance programs undercut program support? Answering this causal question is difficult because perceptions of program abuse can arise from multiple potential causes. Examining the case of disability insurance, we circumvent this challenges using laboratory experiments to study the interplay between program abuse and program support. Specifically, we test whether participants vote to reduce benefit levels when they observe program abuse, even if that abuse is not directly costly to them. We use a labor market shock to induce program abuse and show that the observation of a healthy worker receiving benefits causes workers who are unaffected by the shock to vote to lower benefits. This effect arises only when reducing benefit levels also reduces taxes. Our results demonstrate a causal link between program abuse and diminished support for social insurance, validating accounts that stress how violations of cooperative norms can undercut socially beneficial government programs.

scholarly journals Social Security Enrollment as an Indicator of State Fragility and Legitimacy: A Field Experiment in Maghreb Countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (7) ◽  
pp. 266
Author(s):  
Walid Merouani ◽  
Claire El Moudden ◽  
Nacer Eddine Hammouda
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Discrete Choice Models ◽  
Formal Sector ◽  
Social Security Systems ◽  
State Fragility ◽  
Informal Workers ◽  
Informal Labor ◽  
State Legitimacy

State legitimacy and effectiveness can be observed in the state’s approach to delivering welfare to citizens, thus mitigating social grievances and avoiding conflicts. Social security systems in the Maghreb countries are relatively similar in their architecture and aim to provide social insurance to all the workers in the labor market. However, they suffer from the same main problem: a low rate of enrollment of workers. Many workers (employees and self-employed) work informally without any social security coverage. The issue of whether informal jobs are chosen voluntarily by workers or as a strategy of last resort is controversial. Many authors recognize that the informal sector is heterogeneous and assume that it is made up of (1) workers who voluntarily choose it, and (2) others who are pushed into it because of entry barriers to the formal sector. The former assumption tells us much about state legitimacy/attractiveness, and the latter is used to inform state effectiveness in delivering welfare. Using the Sahwa survey and discrete choice models, this article confirms the heterogeneity of the informal labor market in three Maghreb countries: Algeria, Morocco, and Tunisia. Furthermore, this article highlights the profiles of workers who voluntarily choose informality, an aspect that is missing from previous studies. Finally, this article proposes policy recommendations in order to extend social security to informal workers and to include them in the formal labor market.

scholarly journals Peer Effects in the Workplace

2017 ◽  
Vol 107 (2) ◽  
pp. 425-456 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Cornelissen ◽  
Christian Dustmann ◽  
Uta Schönberg
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Real World ◽  
Peer Effects ◽  
Laboratory Experiments ◽  
Peer Groups ◽  
Knowledge Spillover ◽  
Social Pressure ◽  
Local Labor Market ◽  
Estimation Strategy

Existing evidence on peer effects in the productivity of coworkers stems from either laboratory experiments or real-world studies referring to a specific firm or occupation. In this paper, we aim at providing more generalizable results by investigating a large local labor market, with a focus on peer effects in wages rather than productivity. Our estimation strategy—which links the average permanent productivity of workers' peers to their wages—circumvents the reflection problem and accounts for endogenous sorting of workers into peer groups and firms. On average over all occupations, and in the type of high-skilled occupations investigated in studies on knowledge spillover, we find only small peer effects in wages. In the type of low-skilled occupations analyzed in extant studies on social pressure, in contrast, we find larger peer effects, about one-half the size of those identified in similar studies on productivity. (JEL J24, J31, J41, M12, M54)

‘The age of entitlement has ended’: designing a disability insurance scheme in turbulent times

2017 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 95-113 ◽  
Author(s):  
Pavla Miller
Keyword(s):  
Social Insurance ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
Disability Insurance ◽  
Insurance Scheme ◽  
Transformative Potential ◽  
Turbulent Times ◽  
General Revenue ◽  
Unpaid Labour ◽  
Policy Analysts ◽  
Liberal Government

AbstractIn a period of welfare state retrenchment, Australia's neo-liberal government is continuing to implement an expensive National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS). Australia is among the pioneers of welfare measures funded from general revenue. Until recently, however, attempts to establish national schemes of social insurance have failed. The paper reviews this history through the lenses of path dependence accounts. It then presents contrasting descriptions of the NDIS by its Chair, the politician who inspired him, and two feminist policy analysts from a carers’ organisation. Path dependence, these accounts illustrate, has been broken in some respects but consolidated in others. In particular, the dynamics of ‘managed’ capitalist markets, gendered notions of abstract individuals and organisations, and the related difficulties in accounting for unpaid labour are constraining the transformative potential of the NDIS.

scholarly journals Influence of Fiscal Policies and Labor Market Characteristics on Sustainable Social Insurance Budgets—Empirical Evidence from Central and Eastern European Countries

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (11) ◽  
pp. 6197
Author(s):  
Adriana Florina Popa ◽  
Stefania Amalia Jimon ◽  
Delia David ◽  
Daniela Nicoleta Sahlian
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Social Protection ◽  
Least Squares Method ◽  
Panel Study ◽  
Ordinary Least Squares ◽  
Political Agenda ◽  
Fiscal Policies ◽  
Protection Systems ◽  
Social Protection Systems

Social protection systems are a key factor for ensuring the long-term sustainability and stability of economies in the European Union, their reform being nowadays present in the political agenda of member states. Aging and the dependence on mandatory levies applied to the employed population on the labor market represent a threat for the sustainability of public social protection systems. In terms of sustainability, our purpose was to highlight the factors influencing social insurance budgets, considering the fiscal policies implemented in six countries of Central and Eastern Europe and their particular labor market characteristics. Therefore, a panel study based on a regression model using the Ordinary Least Squares method (OLS) with cross section random effects was used to determine the correlations between funding sources and labor market specific indicators. The data analyzed led to relevant results that emphasize the dependence of social insurance budgets on positive factors such as the average level of salaries, the share of compulsory social contributions, the unemployment rate, and the human development index, suggesting the continuing need for professional and personal development of the workforce.

Social insurance for individualised disability support: implementing the Australian National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS)

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christiane Purcal ◽  
Karen R. Fisher ◽  
Ariella Meltzer
Keyword(s):  
Social Service ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Disability Insurance ◽  
Insurance Scheme ◽  
Action Research Project ◽  
New Approach ◽  
The Public ◽  
Service Support ◽  
Disability Support ◽  
Insurance Model

Australia is implementing an ambitious new approach to individualised disability support based on a social insurance model. In a world first, the National Disability Insurance Scheme (NDIS) is funded through a levy on income and general taxation and gives Australians with disability an entitlement to social service support. This chapter describes the NDIS approach and implementation so far and summarises concerns and challenges about the NDIS discussed in the literature. It uses data from an action research project to inform feasibility questions about how people find out about and receive the individualised support they need. The chapter highlights a basic gap in people’s familiarity with what individualised support is, how it works and how they might benefit from the new approach. A policy implication is that, with the expansion of individualised support, the public is likely to need various opportunities and forms of information sharing, to explore and learn from each other about what the new approach is and what its possibilities are.

scholarly journals Employment at 55+: Do We Want to work Longer in Lithuania?

Ekonomika ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 99 (1) ◽  
pp. 50-68
Author(s):  
Kristina Zitikytė
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Older People ◽  
Older Workers ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
The Elderly ◽  
Employment Rate ◽  
Term Care ◽  
Demographic Aging

 The Lithuanian population is aging, and it causes many difficulties for public finances by increasing expenditures on health care, long-term care, and pensions, and also for the labor market by creating labor shortages. One of the ways to cope with demographic aging is to rise the employment rate of older people. According to Eurostat, the employment rate of the elderly aged 55–64 years increased from 49.6 percent in 2005 to 68.5 percent in 2018 in Lithuania and it is higher than the average employment rate of older workers in European Union, which was 58.7 percent in 2018. This paper focuses on older people in Lithuania, aged 55 and over, trying to answer a question whether the elderly in Lithuania willingly work or try to find alternatives such as receiving long-term social insurance benefits. The research findings show that the activity of older people in the labor market grows, and even the share of people with disabilities staying in the labor market increases. However, this analysis also shows that older people are more under risk to lose their job during an economic crisis, and this suggests that trying to find work alternatives can be closely related to one’s economic situation. Moreover, health problems remain one of the main factors limiting the activity of older people in the labor market. It is also noticeable that some labor force reserves exist among people with disabilities and this supposes that creating better adapted working conditions for older and disabled workers in Lithuania could probably contribute to meeting the needs of an aging workforce.

scholarly journals Current Problems of the Public Regulation of Labor Market in Ukraine

2017 ◽  
pp. 90-96
Author(s):  
О. V. Аkilinа
Keyword(s):  
Labor Market ◽  
Public Administration ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Labor Relations ◽  
Negotiation Process ◽  
Qualitative Assessment ◽  
Employment Policy ◽  
The Public ◽  
The Social ◽  
Legislative Reforms

The article is devoted to changes of some legislative acts of reform public administration in employment. Analysis and qualitative assessment of the Draft Law of Ukraine “On Amending Certain Legislative Acts of Ukraine to reform of public administration in the employment and social insurance in case unemployment” has been done in the work. The author considers that in developing of legislative reforms in employment necessary to expand the list of sources of funding for implementing public policy through gradual attracting resources of separate trust funds for the implementation of employment policy. It is necessary to create mechanism for attracting funds from private foundations and differentiate the expenditure of the Fund of Compulsory public social insurance Ukraine in case of unemployment with the allocation of urban and rural units. Implementation of these reforms requires pre reforming of social insurance in case unemployment. In addition greater attention should be paid to the development of methodology measures to facilitate employment and assessment of their effectiveness in the short and long terms. Voucher systems can be effectively introduced to the labor market once the labor market actors (local employment offices, education institutions and private sector) interact and the potential users are prepared to accept them (have the required awareness and stimuli). Transfer of voucher systems is possible, but the introduction won’t be effective without well proven practices and due account to the available resources. Also, the problem of building social dialog should not be overlooked when elaborating regulatory reforms in the employment. Ways to enhance the effectiveness of social dialogue and activate the positions of all the entities involved in the negotiation process need to be found, in order to preserve the development prospects for the already existing system of social and labor relations, although not quite acceptable for a major part of the Ukrainian community. The social stability in Ukraine is largely dependent on the quality and controllability of the mechanisms underlying the social and labor relations system, and on the capacity of its actors.

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