scholarly journals Examining Ghana’s Cash Transfer Programme Outcomes in the Ejisu-Juaben Municipality from Conversation and Membership Categorisation Analyses Perspectives

2021 ◽  
Vol 18 (1) ◽  
pp. 120-145
Author(s):  
Dennis Puorideme

Since the start of cash transfer programmes in developing countries in the late 1990s and its spread, studies have demonstrated a variety of outcomes comprising education, health, and nutrition for the poorest households. These studies focused on macro analysis of programmes’ outcomes but paid little attention to an indepth micro study of the everyday intersubjective accounts and actions of local community focal persons and caregivers, which construct programme outcomes. The objective of this study is to highlight the everyday concrete outcomes of a cash transfer programme in Ejisu-Juaben Municipality in Ghana. This study draws on Foucault’s notion of subjectivation and discourse to construct a conversation and membership categorisation analyses framework to explore community focal persons’ and female caregivers’ conversations from focus group discussions. The Livelihood Empowerment against Poverty cash transfer programme in Ghana is the empirical case. This article demonstrates that caregivers and poor households arehappier, practice joint decision-making, and have cohesive social relations in poor households. Thus, localised programme outcomes improved participation in the decision-making, happiness, and social cohesion of beneficiary poor households. Evaluation mechanisms for programme outcomes could consider the everyday intersubjective accounts, practices of focal persons, caregivers/beneficiaries in poor households at the micro-level. Keywords: Social Protection, Ethnography, Discourse, Subjectivation, Governmentality

2018 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 233-245
Author(s):  
Md Mostafizur Rahman

Abstract Social protection programmes in Bangladesh aimed at reducing the vulnerability of the poor has become exceptionally challenging because of high exposure to weak institutional governance, and frequent natural disasters. As a matter of fact, both the coverage and the types of social protection programmes have been expanded to support the extremely poor households in Bangladesh over the last decade. However, the boundaries between ‘protection approach’ associated with risk reduction and ‘promotion approach’ regarded as the pathways to raise incomes and employment opportunities of the poor have remained understated in policy discourse. This paper addresses how an Interpretivist methodology can be used in exploring the current complexities of social protection programmes in extremely poor households with reference to disaster-affected areas in southwest coastal Bangladesh, giving a particular attention to the interpretation of the beneficiaries as well as service providers. This paper employs an interpretative framework for collecting qualitative data because of its ability to make sense of the complex situations of social protection programmes by generating multicontextual information provided by the beneficiaries of social protection programmes. During the initial fieldwork of the research, the research participants pointed out that there exist strong prevalence and dominance of local politics considered as ‘underlying issues’ in the delivering process of social protection programmes, which is further associated with power-relation between the rich and poor class of the society. However, the current policy discourses of social protection programmes have overlooked those highly pertinent phenomena both in local and national context. This paper argues that the aspects of availability, accessibility and utilisation of social protection programmes is not straightforward as each aspect is further associated with social relations and complex social understanding. An interpretive methodology along with illustrative data collection and analysis techniques can become effective to explore those complex societal understanding related with social protection programmes. Finally, within the adopted interpretive framework, the integrated view related with availability, accessibility and utilisation aspects of social protection programmes need to be addressed while creating a sense of meaning and understanding of overall situation of social protection programmes.


2015 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 377-397 ◽  
Author(s):  
LEILA PATEL ◽  
TRUDIE KNIJN ◽  
FRITS VAN WEL

AbstractDespite the growth of cash transfers to reduce poverty, promote child and family well-being and women's empowerment, the gender dynamics and impact of social protection remains poorly understood. We hypothesise that poor female care-givers receiving a cash transfer for their children are better able to contribute to the material and social well-being of their children than female care-givers who do not receive a cash transfer. This paper reports results of a household survey in one of the poorest wards in Johannesburg, South Africa. Structural equation modelling is used to analyse the data. We found that cash transfers increase women's individual income, which is in turn positively associated with increased financial independence, decision-making power over financial resources and decisions about children's well-being. Beneficiaries were more actively engaged in care activities with their children. There are two implications for the insertion of gender and care into social protection policies. First that it is not necessary to attach behavioural change conditions to social protection policies in order to stimulate female care-givers to be more engaged in developmental activities with their children. Second, there is no risk of promoting a maternalistic model of care or ‘maternalism’ in the South African context as the transfer contributes to both women's individual incomes and their financial decision-making power.


2010 ◽  
Vol 4 (6) ◽  
pp. 243
Author(s):  
Budi Hidayat

Pemerintah Indonesia sedang melakukan uji coba program bantuan tunai bersyarat (BTB), yakni Program Keluarga Harapan (PKH). Program ini memberikan bantuan tunai kepada rumah tangga miskin dengan mensyaratkan mereka melakukan investasi sumber daya manusia. Pelaksanaan BTB di berbagai negara selalu diikuti upaya sistematis untuk mengukur efektivitas dan memahami dampak yang lebih luas dari program pada perilaku rumah tangga. Artikel ini menyajikan bukti nyata bahwa BTB telah meningkatkan kehidupan penduduk miskin. BTB dipuji sebagai cara untuk mengurangi kesenjangan terutama di sejumlah negara Amerika Latin; membantu rumah tangga keluar dari lingkaran setan kemiskinan yang ditularkan dari satu generasi ke generasi berikutnya; meningkatkan status kesehatan dan gizi anak, serta membantu negara memenuhi tujuan-tujuan pembangunan millenium. Artikel ini juga mengupas lebih dalam mengenai rancang bangun PKH, termasuk alasan-alasan pengembangan PKH kesehatan serta proses penetapan persyaratan kesehatan.Kata kunci: Program keluarga harapan, bantuan tunai bersyaratAbstractThe Government of Indonesia is testing a conditional cash transfer (CCT) program, e.g., Family Hope Program. This program provides money to poor households conditional on investments in human capital. CCTs implementation in various countries has been followed by systematic efforts to measure their effectiveness and understand their broader impact on households’ behavior. The article shows empirical evidence that CCTs have improved the lives of poor people.CCTs have been hailed as a way of reducing inequality, especially in Latin America countries; helping households break out of a vicious cycle whereby poverty is transmitted from one generation to another; promoting child health and nutrition; and helping countries meet the Millennium Development Goals. This article explores more deeply on the design of the Indonesian CCT program, including the reasons for the development of CCT health and health conditionalitiesdetermination process. Key words: Family hope program, conditional cash transfer


Author(s):  
Jeffrey Ch. Alexander ◽  
Carlo Tognato

The purpose of the article is to demonstrate that the civil spheres of Latin America remain in force, even when under threat, and to expand the method of theorizing democracy, understanding it not only as a state form, but also as a way of life. Moreover, the task of the authors goes beyond the purely application of the theory of the civil sphere in order to emphasize the relevance not only in practice, but also in the theory of democratic culture and institutions of Latin America. This task requires decolonizing the arrogant attitude of North theorists towards democratic processes outside the United States and Europe. The peculiarities of civil spheres in Latin America are emphasized. It is argued that over the course of the nineteenth century the non-civil institutions and value spheres that surrounded civil spheres deeply compromised them. The problems of development that pockmarked Latin America — lagging economies, racial and ethnic and class stratification, religious strife — were invariably filtered through the cultural aspirations and institutional patterns of civil spheres. The appeal of the theory of the civil sphere to the experience of Latin America reveals the ambitious nature of civil society and democracy on new and stronger foundations. Civil spheres had extended significantly as citizens confronted uncomfortable facts, collectively searched for solutions, and envisioned new courses of collective action. However when populism and authoritarianism advance, civil understandings of legitimacy come under pressure from alternative, anti-democratic conceptions of motives, social relations, and political institutions. In these times, a fine-grained understanding of the competitive dynamics between civil, non-civil, and anti-civil becomes particularly critical. Such a vision is constructively applied not only to the realities of Latin America, but also in a wider global context. The authors argue that in order to understand the realities and the limits of populism and polarization, civil sphere scholars need to dive straight into the everyday life of civil communities, setting the civil sphere theory (CST) in a more ethnographic, “anthropological” mode.


Author(s):  
Lyudmyla Mishchenko ◽  
◽  
Dmytro Mishchenko ◽  

The actualization of the results of financial decentralization in Ukraine as part of the reform of decentralization of power and the development of proposals for its improvement is explained by the fact that a clear division of functions, powers and financial resources between national and regional levels is the basis for the well-being of our citizens. opportunities for its sustainable socio- economic development on a democratic basis. It is noted that financial decentralization is a process of giving authority to mobilize revenues and expenditures of local governments in order to increase the effectiveness of the implementation of these powers and better management of community budgets. It is established that unlike traditional entrepreneurship, which focuses on profit generation, the purpose of social entrepreneurship is to create and accumulate social capital. Abroad, social enterprises operate successfully in the fields of education, the environment, human rights, poverty reduction and health care, and their development and dissemination is one way to improve the living conditions of citizens. A similar mission is entrusted to local governments, which allows us to consider the revival of social entrepreneurship as an important element in improving self-government policy. It is determined that in modern conditions social entrepreneurship is one of the tools to ensure the ability of the local community to provide its members with an appropriate level of education, culture, health, housing and communal services, social protection, etc., as well as plan and implement programs efficient use of available natural and human resources, investment and infrastructural support of territorial communities. Due to financial decentralization, local governments have received additional resources that can be used to create economic incentives to promote social entrepreneurship in small and medium-sized businesses at the community level.


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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 417-417
Author(s):  
Hyo Jung Lee ◽  
Jacobbina Jin Wen Ng

Abstract This study aims to investigate whether attitude and perception on late-life death and dying, end-of-life care plans and preferences could be better understood from current values shared between aging parents and their adult children in the multi-cultural city-bound country, Singapore. We are in the process of interviewing 20 aging parent-adult child dyads. Up to date, six semi-structured interviews were completed and transcribed. We performed Content analysis to analyze the transcripts. Preliminary findings showed that both aging parents and adult children rarely discussed this issue, although parents had their own plans or preferences. The major barriers against open conversations about death and dying of aging parents include: the perception of not-yet time to talk about this issue (without knowing when the right time is) and tendency to have conversations about death in tandem with finances, but not death itself. Although specific end-of-life care plans or arrangements were not thought out thoroughly, aging parents expressed a high level of trust and reliance on close family members’ decisions regarding their end-of-life care. They tended to agree on joint decision-making process within family, even though adult children had no or unmatched ideas about their aging parents’ end-of-life wishes. This did not necessarily align with previous findings in Western countries, underscoring individuals’ control over their own death and dying process. Open conversation within family, family-involved advance care planning, or joint decision-making processes may be warranted to promote quality of life and death in older Singaporeans and well-being of their family members of all ages.


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.


2020 ◽  
Vol 30 (Supplement_5) ◽  
Author(s):  
B Barr

Abstract The European Health Equity Status Report makes innovative use of microdata, at the level of the individual, to decompose the relative contributions of five essential underlying conditions to inequities in health and well-being. These essential conditions comprise: (1) Health services (2) Income security and social protection (3) Living conditions (4) Social and human capital (5) Employment and working conditions. Combining microdata across over twenty sources, the work of HESRi has also produced disaggregated indicators in health, well-being, and each of the five essential conditions. In conjunction with indicators of policy performance and investment, the HESRi Health Equity Dataset of over 100 indicators is the first of its kind, as a resource for monitoring and analysing inequities across the essential conditions and policies to inform decision making and action to reduce gaps in health and well-being.


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