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Objective: This study aims to evaluate the impact of a community development program meant to improve living standards of poor rural families through income generating activities (IGAs) based on conditional cash transfers (CCTs) in Doti, Nepal. Method: We use cross-sectional field data from a sample of 392 families representative of the village development committees of Pokhari, Ladagada, and Gajari. After running a propensity score analysis to increase comparability between the treatment and comparison groups, we compare mean scores on a series of chosen outcome variables via t-test analyses. Results: Results suggest that, although improvements in family income and living standards are felt subjectively, crop production might have worsened as a result of IGAs, suggesting the possibility of a trade-off and of long-term effects. Discussion and Implications: This article has implications for research and practice in community development programs and data collection and evaluation of such programs.

China as a welfare system is not yet well understood in social policy circles, despite being a well‐studied case in public administration and political science. Would this party‐state care to commit for its citizens' welfare? For many, associating the idea of a welfare state with China is still something to be frowned upon. Most available literature, especially in the English language, describes social policies in China as residual, unequally distributed, strongly dependent on local finances, prone to social dumping—especially for rural residents and migrant workers—paternalistic, disregarding social needs and so on. Yet, we believe that the social dumping practices of the 1980s and 1990s are now a thing of the past. As the government has taken a decidedly pro‐welfare stance since the 2000s, it could be more reasonable to identify different historical phases through which the welfare system took shape in China. We identify and discuss three stages in particular: the 'iron rice bowl' phase of socialist China (1949–1978), the welfare shedding resulting from China's opening up to the market (1979–2002), and the 'social policy era' characterised by major welfare expansion (2002–2020). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social policy change has been discussed extensively in comparative welfare state research, beyond a mere social expenditure approach. Unfortunately, conceptually and methodologically informed debates have only marginally influenced countries other than in the Western world, leaving research on East Asian welfare states almost unaffected by the dependent variable problem. This study aims to fill this gap by summarizing some key features from the social policy change literature, and by analyzing it for the South Korean welfare state through nationally representative survey-based data (2006-2013). The findings suggest that after adjusting for needs, and disaggregating policy fields, social policies in Korea are not changing linearly; rather, it looks as if "old" social policies are fairly stable, whereas "new" ones have grown during the time under observation, following a path of institutional layering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Considering its conservative past, South Korea is undergoing an unprecedented turn to the left. Since priority was given to economic growth from the 1960s until the beginning of the 1990s, a close alliance between big business and government has characterised the country's labour market. Since the 1997 financial crisis, however, two decades of liberal and conservative governments have pushed a neoliberal agenda of labour market flexibilisation, which has resulted in growing inequality in a dualised labour market and left the trade unions in a marginal role. Following a rapid turn of events that led to the impeachment of conservative president Park Geun‐hye, left‐leaning President Moon Jae‐in seems determined to roll back this legacy of labour oppression with the strong support of trade unions and young voters. His administration is pushing for policy change with a series of expansionary active labour market policies aimed at promoting stability and full‐time employment. This article highlights the social‐democratic character of these reforms and the constraints in implementing them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]