The Food Stamp Program and Supplemental Security Income

The Food Stamp Program (FSP) and Supplemental Security Income (SSI) are important parts of national public assistance policy, and there is considerable overlap in the populations that the programs serve. About half of all SSI recipients reside in FSP recipient households. This article uses Social Security administrative data and the Food Stamp Quality Control samples for federal fiscal years 2001-2006 to study the prevalence of food stamp receipt among households with SSI recipients, the contribution of FSP to household income, and the importance of various FSP features in contributing to the well-being of recipient households. The prevalence of FSP participation among households that include SSI recipients is estimated to have grown steadily over the entire 2001-2006 period, rising from 47.4 percent in 2001 to 55.6 percent in 2006. This growth has occurred across all age groups of SSI recipients. The FSP contribution to household income has grown as well. In 2001, FSP increased the income of the households of SSI/FSP recipients by 13 percent; by 2006 the increase was 16.8 percent. Almost 80 percent of the food stamp recipient households that include SSI recipients receive increased benefits because of excess housing costs. In 2006, 44 percent of SSI recipients lived in households that did not receive food stamps. Given available information, it is difficult to gauge the FSP eligibility of nonparticipating households and, therefore, to assess the potential benefit of outreach efforts. Currently available measures of FSP take-up probably overstate participation among eligible households that include SSI recipients, and there is some evidence that enhanced state promotion of the FSP raises participation among households with SSI recipients. We conclude with recommendation for review and renewal of collaboration between the Food and Nutrition Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (the agency responsible for administering the FSP) and the Social Security Administration in ensuring that eligible SSI recipients utilize FSP benefits.     

Block Grants: A Perennial, But Unstable, Tool of Government

During 1995 and 1996, the Congress and the president gave considerableattention to block granting over $200 billion in federal intergovernmentalgrant programs, ranging from large entitlement programs to smallerprograms in housing, vocational education, and law enforcement.In the end, the record of successes was modest—highlightedby welfare-reform legislation that, in some respects, resembleda block grant and in others did not. The contrast between processand outcomes in this most recent block-grant cycle reinforcesthe point that block-grant prospects depend on fundamental fiscal,political, and programmatic forces that are separate from federalismconsiderations. The states' maturation as leaders in many domesticpolicy areas strengthens the performance rationale for blockgrants. The federal fiscal crisis will continue to stimulateinterest in block grants among fedeal as well as state policymakers.The proposals offering the greatest fiscal advantage (i.e.,Medicaid and AFDC) may not be those with the strongest performancerationale. Although recent congressional developments suggeststronger support for states, nationalizing forces remain embeddedin domestic policymaking. Thus, substantial questions remain,posing obstacles to a fundamental and sustained role for blockgrants in the federal system.     

社会福利指数、政府支出规模及其结构优化

政府支出规模及其结构优化应以提高社会福利水平而不是以经济增长为其最终目标。构建了政府支出与消费、社会福利之间的理论分析模型,利用优化控制理论与方法,从理论上论证了在最大社会福利的基础上存在最优政府支出规模与支出结构安排,设计了衡量社会福利水平的新指标,并以此指标为基础,利用中国1982年—2005年的年度数据,对政府支出规模及其结构优化进行计量分析。其基本结论是:我国政府支出规模及其各种单项支出与社会福利指数之间存在较强的相关性,为满足我国不断增加的公共服务需求,应增加政府支出规模,优化政府支出的内部结构体系,即适度提高中央政府支出在政府总支出中所占的比重,减少投资性支出和行政管理支出,增加以教育、公共卫生、公共安全、社会保障为主体的公共服务性支出,以促进我国社会福利水平的提高。     

Race, Bureaucratic Discretion, and the Implementation of Welfare Reform

This article explores the impact of the race of individual clients and of the local racial context on the implementation of sanctions for recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) in a Midwestern state. We find that although nonwhites are sanctioned at lower rates than whites overall, nonwhites are sanctioned more compared to whites in each local area. This paradox occurs because nonwhites tend to live in areas with lower sanction rates. Consistent with the literature on race and policy, we find that sanction rates increase as the nonwhite population increases until a threshold is reached where nonwhites gain political power .     

The Politics of Social Welfare Reform in Urban China: Social Welfare Preferences and Reform Policies

China’s social welfare reform since the mid-1980s has been characterized as incremental and fragmented in three dimensions—social insurance, privatization, and targeting. This paper attempts to explore the micro-foundation of China’s urban social welfare reform by examining the diverse social welfare preferences and the cleavages among societal groups. It argues that the diversity of the societal groups’ preferences for social welfare has given rise to two lines of cleavage in urban China with respect to social welfare—between state sector and non-state sector employees and between labor market insiders and outsiders. The Chinese authoritarian regime’s political priority—economic growth with social stability—has induced the government to accommodate public social welfare preferences in social welfare policies. Therefore, the three dimensions of Chinese social welfare reform policies since the mid-1980s reflect and respond to the social cleavages derived from societal groups’ different preferences for social welfare.     

Welfare Reform: Assessing its Political, Economic, and Social Effects

Books reviewed: Rebecca M. Blank, It Takes a Nation: A New Agenda for Fighting Poverty Anne Marie Cammisa, From Rhetoric to Reform?: Welfare Policy in AmericanPolitics Martha Shirk, Neil G. Bennett, and J. Lawrence Aber, Lives on the Line: American Families and the Struggle to Make Ends Meet Robert M. Solow, Work and Welfare     

电子政务悖论与政府管理变革

电子政务工程绝不是简单的IT在政府中的应用,电子政务作为新技术,其实是政府经营系统的一部分,必须和经营系统的各部分相互协调才可以发挥其作用。政府再造是电子政务实施的理论依据。电子政务是借助信息技术来实现的政府再造,是新时期政府管理变革的一个良好的契机。我们应该在继承政府再造先进理论成果的基础上整合电子政务系统,防止信息悖论在电子政务中重演。电子政务败因和电子政务项目的复杂性有直接关系。复杂性可以从4个维度来描述:衔接、变革的幅度、人员、时间。这4个维度可以说是电子政务项目成功的关键成功因素。最后,给出了我国当前在电子政务建设中实现政府管理变革的出路。     

学术期刊公益性保护的悖论

学术期刊的公益性源于学术期刊的特殊性,这种特殊性表现在,它不同于商业期刊有很大的受众市场,它的价值在于其是学术成果的载体和交流的平台,肩负着推动学术发展、促进社会科学文化进步的责任.学术期刊的公益性要求其应该受到主办单位、相关部门以及全社会的保护和扶持,不能走完全的市场化道路.但是,学术期刊的公益性并不应该成为学术期刊逃避竞争、不求创新的借口.强调学术期刊的公益性本来是为了促进学术期刊的发展,但如果这种公益性发生异化,保护扶持也会阻碍其发展,这无疑形成了学术期刊公益性保护的悖论.在公益性的背景下,学术期刊需要整个社会的保护和扶持,但经常将保护挂在嘴边的学术期刊,却往往正是不应该受到保护的对象.畸形的存活换来高投入和少产出,却要美其名日"保护",这种情况应该引起我们的重视.     

Asymmetric Effects of Intergovernmental Grants: Analysis and Implications for U.S. Welfare Policy

Theories of federal grants to states and localities suggestthat these grants have a stimulative effect on spending, causingrecipient governments to expand and contract programs alongwith changes in the grants. However, policymakers may responddifferently to grant decreases than to grant increases becausethey face political and bureaucratic pressures to expand programs.These asymmetric reactions may depend on specific politicalstructures. Pooled time-series regressions of data from theAid to Families with Dependent Children program across 46 statesfrom 1965 to 1994 demonstrate state government responses togrant changes. Bureaucratic pressures and proposals lead statesto expand their welfare benefits upon increases in federal grants,but not to contract them upon decreases in federal grants. Withregard to the 1996 welfare reforms, this study indicates thatthe switch to block grants will lead to little or no state reductionin welfare payments.     

Reagan's Welfare Reforms: Were the Program Savings Realized?

This paper provides a discussion of the impact of the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1981 (OBRA) on AFDC caseloads and expenditures. Intervention analysis and regression analysis are used to examine whether OBRA resulted in either temporary or permanent changes in the levels of these variables. This study indicates that while OBRA may have resulted in a decline in AFDC caseloads, it did not have a significant effect on total AFDC expenditures.     

Implementing Welfare Reform in Kansas: Moving, But Not Racing

Will welfare reform lead some states to race to the bottom?At least for Kansas, the answer appears to be a resounding no.Data gathered as part of the State Capacity Study's analysisof welfare reform suggest that in Kansas, elected officialsand the bureaucracy have responded in a fashion consistent withthe state's political and administrative culture: cautiouslyand incrementally. First, Kansas' welfare reform policy hasbeen driven primarily by bureaucratic decisions. Welfare administrators,supported by the governor, have minimized legislative resistanceto their policy objectives. Second, from the perspective ofwelfare generosity, Kansas has not deviated significantly fromits typical "middle" position relative to other states' policies.Third, Kansas' administration of reform embraces three primarystrategies: decentralized management authority; new links withother agencies to tackle specific welfare problems; and a newlyintegrated approach to frontline welfare case-management.     

The Family Support Act of 1988: Federalism, Developmental Policy, and Welfare Reform

Revising the usual distinction between developmental and redistributivepolicies, I suggest that state and federal governments eachseek programs they believe will help them gain their developmentalgoals. But there is little consensus on the types of welfareprograms that actually do create economic development. Stateand federal participants in welfare reform consequently promotethe kind of federal arrangements that are likely to producethe policies they favor. The developmental politics of the FamilySupport Act of 1988 are shown through five main reform issues:child support; national minimum benefits; transitional benefits;welfare for families having both parents present; and education,training, and employment programs.     

Welfare Reform, Mississippi Style: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Search for Accountability

Through an examination of the implementation of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in the state of Mississippi, we explore the adequacy of traditional two-actor principal-agent theory. Using this as our lens, we suggest that the choices made by Mississippi in the area of welfare reform to privatize much of the work and to add several layers to the existing principal-agent relationship substantially reduced accountability and the effectiveness of the monitoring systems. We conclude that not only is traditional principal-agent theory an insufficient tool for understanding the complex interrelationship between democratic actors in this particular case, the decisions of the state of Mississippi to complicate the principal-actor relationship through privatization also undermined the reform effort itself in ways that may have general implications for other like-minded efforts in other policy areas.
There are those who are undermining what we are trying to achieve ...
—Bud Henry, Director of Economic Assistance, Mississippi Department of Human Services     

Decentralization, Local Priorities, and the Community Development Block Grant Program in Milwaukee

This article analyzes the geographic distribution of CDBG fundsacross twenty-three neighborhoods in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, bycomparing federal, city, and neighborhood responses to localneed and by testing the impact of these responses on the finalfunding allocations. In Milwaukee, decentralizing decisionmakingto the city improved the program's responsiveness to local need.However, the funding decisions made by local officials did notalways direct funding exclusively to the most extreme need;nor did they distribute funding proportionately with respectto need, even though the city's targeting mechanisms were closelyrelated to the measure of need used in this analysis. We concludethat Milwaukee's program results were obtained through a mixtureof targeting rules and political competition over program decisions.     

The Impact of Converting Categorical into Block Grants: The Lessons from the 314(d) Block Grant in the Partnership for Health Act

Section 314(d) of P. L. 89–749, (1966), the Partnershipfor Health Act, combined nine categorical health grants intoone block grant for health. The impact of section 314(d), according to data gathered forthis study, can be summarized as follows: the block grant increasedthe administrative flexibility of state health officials; statehealth planning agencies generally did not have a major influenceon the block grant; state health planning agencies located ingovernors' offices had less influence over the block grant thanthose located in state health departments; Congress did notsignificantly increase expenditures for the block grant; nationalinfluence was increased by creating health programs that couldpotentially have been made part of the block grant; and theblock grant did not generally result in a reordering of spendingpriorities. The best explanation for the unspectacular effect of combiningseveral categorical grants into one block grant was that, withoutnew resources, the substantial (and welcome) new administrativeflexibility given state officials was insufficient to producean important substantive reordering of program priorities.