Philanthropy and the “Management” of Working-Class Women: The West Gate Bridge Disaster

The West Gate Bridge collapse in 1970 is one of the worst industrial disasters in Australian history. Closely examined for the engineering lessons it provides, scholarly interest in its historical, social, and industrial import is far less extensive. This article examines the role of union leaders, employers, and a private welfare organisation called the Citizens Welfare Service (CWS) in the management of funds raised to support the victims and families of the disaster. More broadly, it reveals philanthropic attitudes and practices adopted to manage working families’ needs in the 1970s that were not altogether dissimilar from those of nineteenth-century philanthropists. Despite the families’ raw grief in the immediate aftermath of the tragedy, “home visitors” from the CWS felt entitled to offer heavily gendered and class-based advice to widows about frugal budgeting, domestic order, and composed behaviour. The case management style employed by this welfare agency demonstrated a derivative commitment to capitalist mores that promoted hard work and thrift, while stigmatising welfare dependence.

How Substance Problems Affect Individual Family Members

The effects of SUDs on family members are well documented. Some people grow stronger through exposure to an SUD in their family despite negative effects. They show resilience. There is evidence that children of parents with an SUD are at higher risk for problems than are children whose parents do not have an SUD. Problems include those related to substance use, health or mental health, trouble with the law, and problems at work or in school. Parental SUDs underlie many family problems such as divorce, spouse abuse, child abuse and neglect, welfare dependence, and criminal behaviors. Studies show that women who use alcohol or drugs during pregnancy are more likely to have premature births.

The power of linked data: Evaluating diverse multi-program projects designed to reduce welfare dependence

This presentation showcases the innovative use of linked government administrative data in Australia to evaluate a range of diverse social interventions aimed at supporting vulnerable groups to achieve economic independence. The interventions were developed and funded as part of the Australian Priority Investment Approach to Welfare, an approach supported by actuarial analyses of administrative data designed to deliver targeted support for groups at-risk of long-term welfare dependence. In 2018, the Australian Government, commissioned an impact evaluation to assess the effectiveness of the approach in achieving its intended outcomes. The evaluation is based on analyses of linked administrative data to assess the extent to which the new interventions enabled pathways out of welfare dependence. Our presentation will outline the strengths and weaknesses of using government administrative data to evaluate the outcomes. Strengths include easy comparison across diverse programs designed to achieve the same goals; reduced respondent reporting burdens; robust quasi-experimental techniques such as a matching design based on exact matching on a few key characteristics and/or propensity score matching on a broad range of pre-program characteristics; and evidence-based investment practice decisions. Weaknesses include the adoption of an observational rather than experimental design and the lack of information on some social characteristics such as orientations to work, attitudes and social values. The presentation not only assesses the compilation of administrative data used for the first time to evaluate multi-program projects, it will also describe how these data feed into visual interactive dashboards used to monitor the outcomes of the interventions.

Early-Life Adversity and Dysregulation of Adult Diurnal Cortisol Rhythm

Objectives Exposure to life stresses can lead to diminution in the capacity of stress response systems to mount a robust response to new challenges, with blunting of dynamic range—the spread between maximal attainable and minimal resting levels. We investigate the association between early-life adversity and the dynamic range of adult diurnal cortisol secretion. Method In 35- to 86-year-old adults, cortisol assayed from 16 saliva samples over 4 consecutive days was used to compute diurnal dynamic range and area under the curve (AUC). Economic adversity in childhood was indexed by recalled parental education, family welfare dependence, and perceived financial status; and childhood social adversity by parental separation, death, and abuse. Results Adjusted for age, gender, and race/ethnicity, both childhood adversities were strongly associated with smaller adult cortisol diurnal dynamic range, but not with AUC. The association with cortisol dynamic range was explained by adult social and economic variables. Discussion Early-life adversity appears to leave a long-term imprint on cortisol secretion dynamics, reducing diurnal dynamic range without increasing total secretion. This points to the importance of examining the adaptation capacity of physiological systems when studying the impact of early-life and chronic stresses on adult health.

The Janus face of precarity – Securitisation of Roma mobility in the UK

Technological developments and the free movement of people within the EU have enabled Member States to implement new geopolitical control measures to increase migration control and social sorting of undesired migrant groups. As part of a securitisation process, these measures are often expanded upon and justified in terms of economic threat that aims to restrain ‘opportunist Central East European migrants’, who are associated with welfare dependence and cheap labour. Although unemployed Roma migrants are exposed to social exclusion due to the stigma of ‘benefit shoppers’, this paper explores how current neoliberal labour market structures facilitate new securitisation processes and fuel the precarity of Roma, even if they are employed in the host country. Based on a multi-sited ethnography completed in The United Kingdom, it will be illustrated how communitarianism of Member States stratifies the moral values of migrants’ labour in a manner that defines the preconditions of social inclusion of newcomers in host societies. In short, this paper argues that even for migrants who are not welfare dependent and who are self-sustaining, their social inclusion is defined by engagement in the sort of labour that is culturally acknowledged by the host society.

Differences in welfare take-up between immigrants and natives – a microsimulation study

Purpose International empirical evidence suggests that immigrants have a significantly higher risk than their native counterparts of being on welfare due to their observed characteristics. Nevertheless, it remains unclear if immigrants are also more prone to take-up benefits, conditional on being eligible. The authors explicitly focus on this potential explanation for higher welfare take-up rates. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to analyze the take-up of social assistance in Germany by immigrants and natives, conditional on being eligible, and hence focus on take-up behavior rather than on determinants of eligibility. Design/methodology/approach To simulate welfare entitlements, the authors employ a Tax-Transfer Microsimulation Model. It is a static microsimulation model that consists of a detailed implementation of the German tax and transfer system as well as an econometrically estimated labor supply model. After the simulation of welfare entitlements, the authors analyze take-up behavior within a discrete choice framework. The authors estimate probit models of observed welfare benefit take-up for the sample of eligible households taking into account unobserved heterogeneity. Findings The estimation results do not reveal a significant effect of being a migrant on the probability of taking-up entitlements. The authors found a significant negative effect for citizens from European countries on the take-up probability, which disappeared after controlling for unobserved heterogeneity. Research limitations/implications The authors find that it is worthwhile to focus on different groups of immigrants. Although not statistically significant, the rates of non-take-up of welfare benefits differ between different immigrant groups. The analysis further shows that controlling for unobserved heterogeneity is important when analyzing welfare differences between immigrants and natives. Practical implications The higher welfare rates of immigrants are explained mainly by their higher risk of welfare dependence. Thus, given that reducing the welfare dependence of immigrants is a political goal, social policy measures to improve welfare recipients’ labor market prospects are contested. However, restricting eligibility rules to reduce entitlements does not seem to be the appropriate measure, because the take-up probability does not differ between immigrants and natives after controlling for individual characteristics. Originality/value The authors build on Castronova et al. (2001) and analyze the take-up behavior of individuals who are entitled to basic means-tested welfare benefits for employable persons in Germany. The analysis differs from Castronova et al. (2001) in four points. First, the authors provide first evidence of immigrant-native differences in welfare benefit take-up under the new welfare system in Germany after its reorganization in 2005. Second, the authors apply a microsimulation model of the comlete tax and transfer system in Germany to determine welfare eligibility. Third, the authors extend the analysis to a panel framework and take into account individual unobserved heterogeneity. Fourth, the authors distinguish between different groups of immigrants.