Alternative measures of economic success among TANF participants: Avoiding poverty,hardship, and dependence on public assistance

Current debates about the success of TANF reforms have been obscured by the use of inconsistent indicators of success, as well as by measurement difficulties associated with alternative indicators. This paper considers conceptual and measurement issues associated with three different indicators of economic well‐being: independence from public assistance, having income above the poverty threshold, and freedom from material hardship. Survey and administrative data from a sample of TANF participants illustrate the sensitivity of conclusions to alternative ways of measuring each indicator. Also considered is the extent to which dependence, poverty, and hardship coincide, or capture important differences in outcomes. The principles underlying TANF reforms have implications for appropriate measures of economic well‐being, as the empirical importance of these implications demonstrates. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Selling Eastern Europe's social housing stock: Proceed with caution

Abstract

As the countries of Eastern Europe begin to reorient their housing sectors toward the private market, many quarters are advocating selling the units in the social sector—typically about one‐fourth of the housing stock—to the tenants. Whether purchasing their units is attractive to tenants depends on the sales price, current and expected rent levels, availability and terms of financing, and the strength of tenant rights of occupancy. Drawing lessons from the experiences of three countries—China, Hungary, and the United Kingdom—in selling social sector rental units, this paper concludes that too much emphasis has been placed on lowering the sales price compared with changing other conditions. This practice results in a substantial loss of revenue to government and a questionable distribution of the nation's wealth.     

在地资源利用:社会工作参与精准扶贫路径探索

精准扶贫是我国现阶段扶贫开发的重要形式和全面建成小康社会的重要举措。社会工作如何参与精准扶贫?其实践路径是什么?既往的案例是否对社会工作参与精准扶贫有借鉴意义?本文针对当前社会工作参与精准扶贫所面临的问题,以国际NGO组织援建我国的CBHFA项目为例,就项目运作逻辑、在地资源的培育、使用及其在社会工作实践中的作用进行了深入分析。最后,基于CBHFA项目的启示,对社会工作介入精准扶贫工作路径进行了讨论,对社会工作参与精准扶贫具有现实意义。     

Clinton and volunteerism: The poverty of American social policy at the end of the century

Abstract

Volunteerism has resurfaced in late 20th century America as an alternative to comprehensive state social policies. The impression given is that voluntary involvement—“human contact”—is the answer to the vast social problems facing the millions of America's poor today and to the growing class inequalities and social polarization. The present article argues that the shift to volunteerism is prompted by fiscal constraints, the radical shift in the balance of power between capital and labor, and the conversion of the state into an instrument of overseas expansion for the interests of financial capital and the multinationals. Its authors advance the claim that the philosophy of volunteerism is a great deception—an ideology of the rich and powerful that aims to deny that social problems are structural and related to the capitalist system and thereby to disguise the exploitation of the poor and the inequality of classes.     

The politics of social assistance in South Africa: How protests and electoral politics shape the Child Support Grant

Since the 1990s, South Africa, like many other countries from the Global South, has provided extensive social assistance for the poor. The literature on these policies, however, is largely dominated by structuralist accounts, and it largely overlooks political factors. We conducted quantitative analyses regarding the South African flagship Child Support Grant (CSG) program and investigated how contentious and electoral political dynamics jointly shape the provision of this program. Based on a logistic regression analysis, we measured the effect of protest participation, voting preference, and their interaction on the likelihood of CSG receipt. Our analysis showed that CSG receipt is much higher among “uncontentious supporters” of ANC and “contentious nonsupporters,” as well as those who join violent protests. This lends support for our argument that CSG is being used as a tool for electoral politics and containment of unrest, providing fresh evidence for political mediation theories of social policy.     

Risks,predictions and other optical illusions: Rethinking the use of science in social decision-making

This article examines two examples of what has been called mandated science - risk analysis and long-term energy demand forecasting - with a view to disentangling the implicit assumptions underlying their use in public policy debates and in the policy process. In both fields, there has emerged a growing and very similar challenge to traditional views of the role and status of mandated science in informing decision-making. This challenge has led to the reformulation of some of the attributes of the standard view, without however causing changes in the underlying view of the nature of the problem or the role of science in principle. A deeper critique suggests that mandated science is inherently value-laden, producing conclusions that are strongly affected by theoretical presuppositions that in turn reflect underlying values (e.g., about rationality, knowledge or the role of technology). Thus a sharp separation of science and policy is untenable and amounts to a hidden policy bias in favor of the business-as-usual policies supported by conventional science. There is a need for a new concept of science, one that is more integrated into the policy context, more contextual and openly value-laden, less oriented to mastery over natural and social processes, and more accessible to the public at large.