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Objectives: ‘Undetectable’, a term describing HIV viral load at the level of non-transmissibility, appears to be used as a stigma-reducing term on dating apps and is predictive of condomless sex. Anecdotal evidence about the meaning of the term suggests that a mix of both accurate data and misinformation can abound. We sought to uncover what range of meanings the term ‘undetectable’ holds for a cohort of HIV testers at a free HIV testing facility along mid-Market St, San Francisco.Design: A four question survey with additional demographic questions was administered to 130 individuals at the testing site. The resulting answers were then coded as ‘informed’, ‘uninformed’, or ‘misinformed’ and correlated with demographic measures, including residential zip code of the respondent.Results: Residents in the Castro district were most likely to associate ‘undetectable’ status with medication adherence. The most misinformed zip code with respect to the meaning and implications of the term ‘undetectable’ was the Tenderloin, which corresponds to the San Francisco zip code with the lowest rates of HIV suppression. Compared to MSMs, heterosexuals were the most uninformed; while racially, Asians were the most misinformed and Blacks the least misinformed. Older men seem most cautious about using ‘undetectable’ as a risk-reduction strategy.Significance: The study highlights the degree to which certain neighbourhoods and demographics have assimilated the concept of ‘undetectable’ and how viral suppression is maintained, while pinpointing neighbourhoods for additional outreach to correct identified misinformation.

Charitable activity is a core tenet of most faith traditions, and many charitable organizations have a religious identity. However, little is known about the prevalence and scale of faith-based foundations, and how they differ from secular foundations. This study identifies the field of public foundations, differentiates between faith-based and secular foundations, and compares their characteristics by analyzing Form 990 data. Our analysis estimates that 24% of all public charities operate as foundations and that 17% of public foundations are faith-based. We use these findings to generate first-ever estimates for the entire field of public foundations. Based on our analysis and calculations using nonprofit sector data, there are approximately 300,000 public foundations in the U.S., and we estimate that 52,000 of them are faith-based. Collectively, these faith-based public foundations have at least $90 billion in assets, and in 2015, they contributed at least $8 billion to charitable causes. Additional analyses comparing faith-based and secular foundations indicate that faith-based foundations tend to be older, have greater revenue and more assets, receive less money from the government, and distribute more money in grants, especially to international causes. This study provides an important lens through which to examine the field of public foundations and better understand similarities and differences among faith-based and secular foundations. It can help scholars analyze relationships between religion and philanthropy, help grantmakers assess foundations through a faith-based-secular grid, and help grantees identify funders who share a similar orientation toward religion. Overall, this study reveals the meaningful presence of faith-based foundations, indicates the scale of their impact, and underscores religion’s enduring and significant influence in the philanthropic sector.

This paper uses data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation to investigate how intra-year caregiver work-hours volatility is related to child poverty, measured through both the official poverty measure (OPM) and the supplemental poverty measure (SPM). I further assess varying degrees of buffering effects of cash benefits, in-kind benefits, and tax transfers on income in the context of work-hours volatility. Results indicate that Black and Hispanic children, as well as those living with unpartnered single mothers, faced substantially higher variability in household market hours worked. Hispanic children experienced not only greater volatility in their caregivers’ work hours, but also higher poverty levels, even after taking government programs into account. I find that a 10 percent increase in intra-year hours volatility is linked to roughly a 2 percent and 1.6 percent increase in OPM and SPM child poverty, respectively. In-kind benefits are more effective in buffering household income declines resulting from unstable caregiver work hours, followed by tax transfers and cash benefits, which each offer somewhat less of a buffering effect. The effectiveness of near-cash benefits is particularly salient among Black children and children of unpartnered single mothers. Hispanic children also benefited from these transfers’ compensating effects, but to a lesser degree. These results provide new evidence to inform public policy discussions surrounding the best ways to help socioeconomically disadvantaged families to retain benefits and smooth their income in the face of frequent variation in work hours and, thus, earnings.

Labor market structures and job characteristics have changed in the United States over the last few decades – often making work more unpredictable. Employment instability, or job churning, may have distinct consequences for households’ economic well-being. Meanwhile, American social policies have shifted from cash-based benefits toward in-kind and work-conditioned programs. Yet, we know little about how social programs buffer the financial hardships imposed by economic shocks due to job churning. This paper harnesses novel data collected at 3-month intervals to study the associations between household members’ employment trajectories and (1) household income packages, (2) poverty status, and (3) material hardships, paying particular attention to whether government benefit receipt buffers against the adverse financial consequences of unstable employment. We find that consistent unemployment is most strongly associated with low income and poverty but not material hardship. Unstably employed households have almost twice the likelihood of experiencing all domains of material hardship relative to consistently employed households. Our results also suggest that cash transfers buffer against the negative impact of persistent unemployment, while in-kind transfers buffer against the impacts of unstable employment. Altogether, the results highlight the roles and extent of impacts of cash, in-kind benefits, and tax system, which can inform future policy recommendations in an age of high levels of economic inequality.

The objective of the paper is to explain a case of social innovation in mental health services, moving from a psychiatric hospital, classically a total institution, to a healthier, diversified, and personalized care service. The research was conducted by a participant observation method, on the long run, from 1996 to 2006 in Milan (Italy): more than 25 meeting and 40 semi structured interviews were conducted. It looks at a case of ‘social entrepreneurship’ in Milan which contributes to the transformation of a large, closed psychiatric hospital into a more open and therapeutic environment for mental health services users, as well as for ordinary citizens of the whole metropolitan area. Most of the literature correctly emphasize governance and administrative capability as crucial variable for satisfaction of needs, recognition of capability and sustainability of projects. The paper shows the relevance of exogenous resources, non-local mobilisations, and loosely connected social movement networks to enact communicative spaces and challenge closed and inertial policy communities.

Worldwide women spend 4.5 hours daily on unpaid work while men spend about half of that time. The study aimed to estimate the time spent by both men and women on the various types of unpaid care labour find the economic estimates of unpaid labour. A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted for a period of 3 months in 2020 in the rural area of South India. 360 study participants of 15 -60 years were recruited using simple random sampling and enquired for the time spent on care activities using time use survey . Cumulative hours spent per year and its economic estimate was calculated using Oxfam global care calculator. Female participants did significantly higher hours of unpaid care (3596.5 hrs) as compared to male participants (2938.3 hours) (p

The kuluna phenomenon is a social pathology having many causal factors in multidimensional systems such as the microsystem and the macrosystem. So the changing process requires first the prevention by elaborating a public policy with a multisector impact. But many times reaction is applied instead of preventing to avoid gangsters among young in the city of Kinshasa by the public managers. In this article, we give some prerequisites for the elaboration of a multisector public policy and the praxis, concerning legal authorities and the Christian social workers through the churches and other Christian social organizations which are called to work in the sense of a contextual mission, and deal with spiritually in addition to the psycho-sociological questions. The findings of this research show evidence in the hyper military environment of Kinshasa city and the Kuluna phenomenon. Demilitarization of the city is imperative

The topic of Aadhaar links with the Indians in various ways. Aadhaar can be thought of as a digital infrastructure that has been an enabler and disabler in its ways. I exploresome of these ways through my article. I tried to question the proposition of introducing Aadhaar and carefully studied its theoretical bene?ts. Furthermore, I wish to explore the abominable ways in which welfare, particularly the issues, has changed with the integration of Aadhaar. We shall refer to the various themes in infrastructure studies and Foucault's works. In this research, I try to link my analysis with the major themes explored from a shared pool of resources.

This paper analyses how the characteristics of the recipient country shapes individual support for financial help across borders. Existing literature has shown that individuals are more likely to show solidarity with their co-nationals than for individuals in other countries. However, people might show different levels of solidarity towards different foreign countries depending on their geographical or cultural proximity, their economic conditions or political ties. We make use of a survey experiment asking respondents in 14 European countries whether they think their country should provide financial help to 35 foreign countries in the event of a major crisis to assess different heuristics of international solidarity (need; reciprocity; identity; attitude). We show that shared borders, a common language, geographical proximity and common membership in the European Union are associated with a higher probability of solidarity. We find that ideology has a substantial moderating effect: left-wing and right-wing individuals differ substantially in how they support solidarity with other countries: the solidarity of right-wing individuals across borders is much more conditional (on EU membership, geographical proximity, trade ties) than the solidarity of left-wing individuals.

Administrative Literacy is the capacity to obtain, process, and understand basic information and services from public organizations needed to make appropriate decisions. Citizens’ competencies necessary for successful interactions with public administration are an important resource that remains widely neglected. While interactions with public organizations impose a considerable administrative burden on citizens, that burden may differ quite significantly depending on their available resources to cope with such a burden. Research from other fields such as data or health literacy suggests that these concepts influence a variety of outcomes for both the individual and society. Such competence may change behavior and perception when interacting with public organizations, indicating its potential as an important factor influencing behavior such as compliance, and other outcomes. Citizens with high administrative literacy have a better understanding of procedures, structures, and rules. The article develops a concept and scale for measuring administrative literacy using data from a citizen survey.

Background Although the COVID-19 pandemic has led to worsening mental health outcomes throughout the Canadian population, its effects have been more acute among already marginalized groups, including people with disabilities and chronic health conditions. This paper examines how heightened fears of contracting the virus, financial impacts, and social isolation contribute to declining mental health among this already vulnerable group. Objective/hypothesis This paper investigates how increases in anxiety, stress, and despair are associated with concerns about getting infected, COVID-19-induced financial hardship, and increased social isolation as a result of adhering to protective measures among people with disabilities and chronic health conditions. Methods This study uses original national quota-based online survey data (n=1027) collected in June 2020 from people with disabilities and chronic health conditions. Threelogistic regressionmodels investigate the relationship between COVID-19’s effects on finances, concerns about contracting the virus, changes in loneliness and belonging, and measures taken to combat the spread of COVID-19 and reports of increased anxiety, stress, and despair, net of covariates. Results Models show that increased anxiety, stress, and despair were associated with negative financial effects of COVID-19, greater concerns about contracting COVID-19, increased loneliness, and decreased feelings of belonging. Net of other covariates, increased measures taken to combat COVID-19 was not significantly associated with mental health outcomes. Conclusions Findings address how the global health crisis is contributing to declining mental health status through heightened concerns over contracting the virus, increases in economic insecurity, and growing social isolation, speaking to how health pandemics exacerbate health inequalities.

This study examines how people with disabilities and chronic health conditions—members of a large and diverse group often overlooked by Canadian public policy—are making sense of the Canadian federal government’s response to COVID-19. Using original national online survey data collected in June 2020 (N= 1,027), we investigate how members of this group view the government’s overall response. Although survey results show broad support for the federal government’s pandemic response, findings also indicate fractures based on disability type and specific health condition, political partisanship, region, and experiences with COVID-19. Among these, identification with the Liberal party and receipt of CERB stand out as associated with more positive views. Further examination of qualitative responses shows that these views are also linked to differing perspectives surrounding government benefits and spending, partisan divisions, and other social and cultural cleavages. La présente étude porte sur la façon dont les personnes atteintes de handicap ou de maladie chronique — appartenant à un vaste groupe diversifié, souvent ignoré des politiques publiques canadiennes — interprètent la réaction du gouvernement fédéral canadien à la COVID‑19. À l’aide de données nationales exclusives tirées d’un sondage en ligne effectué en juin 2020 (N= 1 027), nous analysons le point de vue des membres de ce groupe quant à la réaction globale du gouvernement. Bien que les résultats du sondage témoignent d’un large appui à la réaction du gouvernement fédéral à la pandémie, nos observations révèlent également des failles selon la nature du handicap et les particularités liées à l’état de santé, l’allégeance politique, la région et les expériences en ce qui a trait à la COVID‑19. Entre autres éléments, l’allégeance au Parti libéral et le statut de bénéficiaire de la PCU se signalent comme étant associés à des points de vue plus positifs. Un examen plus approfondi des réactions qualitatives montre que ces points de vue sont également liés à des perspectives divergentes entourant les prestations et les dépenses gouvernementales, les divisions partisanes et autres clivages sociaux et culturels.

In this brief research article, I demonstrate how predictive analytics or machine learning can be used to predict outcomes that are of interest in public policy. I developed a predictive model that determined who were not able to work during the past four weeks because the COVID-19 pandemic led their employer to close or lose business. I used the Current Population Survey (CPS) collected from May to November 2020 (N=352,278). Predictive models considered were logistic regression and ensemble-based methods (bagging of regression trees, random forests, and boosted regression trees). Predictors included (1) individual-, (2) family-, (3) and community or societal- level factors. To validate the models, I used the random training test splits with equal allocation of samples for the training and testing data. The random forest with the full set of predictors and number of splits set to the square root of the number of predictors yielded the lowest testing error rate. Predictive analytics that seek to forecast the inability to work due to the pandemic can be used for automated means-testing to determine who gets aid like unemployment benefits or food stamps.

Population ageing is presented as one of the ‘grand challenges’ of the twenty-first century. Yet, policies designed to offset these challenges seem to be a jumbled, disjointed mix with no clear, overarching narrative. One of the successes of climate change science is the development of a clear, distinguishable framework to plan action: adaptation, mitigation, and resilience. This framework can be applied to designing better policy for ageing: adapting to support people in need today; mitigating future challenges by ensuring that people and institutions ‘age better’; and building resilience by developing both a longer-term perspective and policy learning framework.

In this paper we explore whether the recent rise in food bank usage in the UK has been induced by the roll-out of Universal Credit. We bring together official statistics on the introduction of Universal Credit with data on food bank usage from the UK’s largest food bank network. We test the relationship between Universal Credit and food parcel distribution using a range of causal identification strategies (such as fixed-effects model, Granger causality tests, and matching designs) and consistently find that an increase in the prevalence of Universal Credit is associated with more food parcel distribution. We also find that the relationship between Universal Credit and food parcel distribution is stronger in areas where food banks are active, suggesting food insecurity arising from Universal Credit may be hidden in places where food banks are largely unavailable. Though it is challenging to implement any large-scale change to social security, our analysis suggests systemic and persistent problems with this new system. Whilst the logic of Universal Credit is intuitively appealing, it has also proven to be unforgiving, leaving many struggling to make ends meet.

This paper explores the problem of low accuracy in disability benefit assessments, using the UK as an example. The UK's disability benefits system has been subject to substantial reforms in the previous decade, and continues to be in flux. I suggest the introduction of financial incentives to shift the assessment process towards treating claimants' statements at face value (and running the risk of false positives), away from the current practice of treating all claimants with scepticism (and running the risk of false negatives).

One in every two Indian households continues to rely on highly-polluting solid fuels to meet their cooking and other energy demands. Recent evidence demonstrates that people suffering from preconditions associated with air pollution and those with short-term exposures to air pollution are highly susceptible to the novel Coronavirus infection and associated morbidity and mortality. And as for many Indians, especially those with pre-existing health conditions and the elderly, home-based isolation and confinement practices are likely to continue to prevent the infection, exposure to household air pollution may render such population groups more susceptible to COVID-19. This warrants caution and demands immediate and specific actions; which are discussed. To protect the health and wellbeing of millions of Indians, during the COVID-19 crisis and beyond, addressing household air pollution should be prioritized and aligned with long term environmental health initiatives in the country.

COVID-19 is proving more disruptive to tourism and hospitality than World War II. Workers in these industries are hardest hit because few of them had continuous employment contracts before the pandemic, instead relying on non-standard and contingent arrangements including self-employment, subcontracting, and casual work. Non-standard workers typically lack entitlements such as annual, sick and carers leave. Of all hospitality workers, 65% are non-standard workers. A 25% loading on hourly wages is designed to allow them to build a safety net, but this loading is insufficient to ensure workers’ livelihoods for an extended period of time without work. This research note proposes a new post-COVID-19 model of tourism and hospitality workforce resilience.

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only caused significant challenges for health system all over the globe but also fueled the surge of numerous rumors, hoaxes and misinformation, regarding etiology, outcomes, prevention, and cure of the disease. This misinformation are masking healthy behaviors and promoting erroneous practices that increase the spread of the virus and ultimately result in poor physical and mental health outcomes among individuals. Myriad incidents of mishaps caused by these rumors was reported across the world. To address this issue the frontline healthcare providers should be equipped with the most recent research findings and accurate information. The mass media, health care organization, community-based organizations, and other important stakeholders should build strategic partnerships and launch common platforms in disseminating authentic public health messages. Advanced technologies like natural language processing or data mining approaches should be applied in detection and removal online content with no scientific basis from all social media platforms. Those involved with the spread of such rumors should be brought to justice. Telemedicine based care should be established at a large scale to prevent depletion of limited resources.

We explore the effect of historical ethnic borders on contemporary non-civil conflict in Africa. Exploiting variations across artificial regions (i.e., grids of 50x50km) within an ethnicity's historical homeland, we document that both the intensive and extensive margins of contemporary conflict are concentrated close to historical ethnic borders. Following a theory-based instrumental variable approach, which generates a plausibly exogenous ethno-spatial partition of Africa, we find that grid cells with historical ethnic borders have 27 percentage points higher probability of conflict and 7.9 percentage points higher probability of being the initial location of a conflict. We uncover several key underlying mechanisms: competition for agricultural land, population pressure, cultural similarity and weak property rights.

While there has been a long-standing concern about the role of policy within social work education and social work practice, most of the emphasis has been on social work education at the BSW and MSW levels. This article examines policy education at the PhD level. It first explores how policy is taught in social work PhD programs in the United States, with an emphasis on how policy theory and research methods are included. Next, it explores the nature of policy research conducted by social work PhD students in the United States by examining the policy content in their doctoral dissertations. This study finds that policy research methods and policy study theories are only taught in a minority of social work PhD programs. In addition, very few social work doctoral dissertations have a policy focus. Of those that do, over half focus on program evaluation.

This article criticises the social policy literature for equating universalism to the universal coverage of citizens. The current so-called ‘universal’ social protection systems guarantee social citizen rights, while the revisited truly universalism guarantees social human rights for everyone. Crisp-set qualitative comparative analysis (csQCA) is used to map and track the level of exclusiveness or inclusiveness into social pensions in the existing 30 social pension programmes on 28 Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) countries. The article examines the various paths of eligibility requirements in social pensions conditioning three specific outcomes: (1) access for every older-age individual (truly universal), (2) access for every category of immigrant (no targeting by citizenship or residency) and (3) access for older-age immigrants with legal resident status (targeting by residency but not by citizenship). The research makes several contributions. First, it offers a useful inventory of the eligibility requirements for access to the 30 social pensions in LAC. Second, it proposes an analytical framework to redefine universalism after considering the migration-social policy nexus. Contrary to what the literature claims, there are no universal social pensions in the region. Third, the analysis indicates that only in two countries, Cuba and Jamaica, social pensions have immigrant-friendly targeting rules, requiring neither citizenship nor any length of residency to become a beneficiary. A total of 12 countries require citizenship and 24 of them a certain number of years of residency. Moreover, the overwhelming majority of social pensions are means tested. Finally, the csQCA allows identifying patterns of targeting mechanisms and is used to propose five exploratory regimes of inclusionary social pensions. The article calls for protected international mobility of the older-age population in the form of a truly universalistic system in which the entire aged population has the right to a social pension. Only then, countries would truly adhere to Article 22 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

The recent elections in Greece reflects an enormous change in the political behavior of the electorate. The citizens have not chosen a simple switch on the power, but contributed with their votes to a strategic defeat of populism and in same time they paved the way for the search of a new type of leadership, which is close to realism in handling with social problems that can't be implemented with calculated financial costs. The vote of 7 th Juli is a vote against the over-promising and under-delivery experienced under Syriza’s rule. The voting for conservative ND is not an ideological choice. It's a choice that runs counter to the logic of falsely or hypocritical negotiating austerity measures opposed to Greece buy his Lenders (memorandum) and the consequent tax-tornado as a result of negotiating failure with the partners in the EEC and the IMF. The positive vote for ND also reflects the contradiction with the misguided manipulations of public opinion regarding the Skopje-Question and finally the strategy of micro concessions and micro- allowances as a means of concluding a “political-social alliance” with an undefined hostile establishment.

Political developments since the 2008 financial crisis have sparked renewed interest in the electoral implications of economic downturns. Research describes a correlation between adverse economic conditions and support for radical parties campaigning on the populist promise to retake the country from a corrupt elite. But does the success of radical parties following economic crises rely on people who are directly affected? To answer this question, we examine whether individual-level changes in economic circumstances drive support for radical parties across the ideological divide. Analyzing eight waves of panel data collected in The Netherlands, before, during, and after the Great Recession (2007–2015), we demonstrate that people who experienced an income loss became more supportive of the radical left but not of the radical right. Looking at these parties’ core concerns, we find that income loss increased support for income redistribution championed by the radical left, but less so for the anti-immigration policies championed by the radical right. Our study establishes more directly than extant research the micro-foundations of support for radical parties across the ideological divide.

There is an ongoing debate between focalization and universalization on welfare policies as the best way to develop the welfare state in Latin America and the Caribbean. However, there is a need to develop a measure that exhibits the multidimensional nature of the welfare state, instead of focusing on the social spending dimension. Segura-Ubiergo (The political economy of the welfare state in Latin America: globalization, democracy and development. Cambridge University Press, New York, 2007) constructed a welfare effort index (WEI) to facilitate understand the relative degrees of welfare state development among Latin American countries. The WEI focuses mainly on social spending and ignores the other dimensions of welfare. Based on a comparative analysis of 17 Latin American countries and following the methodology of Segura-Ubiergo, a new index that aims at enriching the WEI was constructed. The new index is multidimensional in that it has eight indicators relating to three dimensions of welfare: social spending, coverage of welfare programs and outcome of welfare institutions. Principal component analysis was used for reducing the indicators into three indexes that represent three proposed dimensions of welfare. The combination of these three indexes gives the multidimensional welfare index. The results of the index account for more than 75 % of the data variance.

The main purpose of this article is twofold: (1) an examination of welfare regimes using a bottom-up approach, which enables a comprehensive analysis of welfare production based on recipients perceptions; and (2) an examination of more than one type of welfare-mix coexisting inside the national level across policy sectors. A classification of welfare regimes is carried out following a bottom-up approach and relying on the basis of the importance of welfare providers to satisfy social risks and promote well-being. Three traditional (e.g. state, market, family) and one alternative welfare providers (e.g. community) are considered. Data is collected through twenty semi-structured interviews in seven marginalised communities of Puerto Rico. The results show five configurations of intra-national welfare-mixes across the following welfare areas: housing, nourishment, health, education, maternity/paternity, disability, work-unemployment and older-age. This paper contributes to the theoretical proposals of intra-national welfare regimes, and alternatives providers in the welfare-mix., This paper is in part possible by funding of the Spanish Ministry of Education, Culture and Sport (Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte) (FPU 2009-0069)

Several scholars have confirmed the role that the welfare state (WS) plays in reducing poverty, promoting equality and ensuring the common wellbeing. One of the limitations of the scholarship has been the conceptualization and operationalization of the WS and poverty as one-dimensional variables. The purpose of this paper is to examine the relationship between welfare state development –as a one-dimensional and multidimensional variable-, single-dimensions deprivations and income inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean, before and after controlling for demographic and cyclical factors. The WS is operationalized taking into account its multidimensional nature. Three individual deprivations suffered by people on poverty and two income inequality indicators are used as dependent variables. Three pooled time-series cross-section regression analyses with panel-corrected standard errors models were carried out on 18 countries in the region around 2000, 2005 and 2010. This paper shows that the development of social-welfare programs and institutions seems to be an effective way of tackling individual deprivations suffered by people on poverty in the region. On the other hand, the WS development didn’t appear to be effective to reduce income inequality. The outcomes of welfare institutions appear to be the pivotal dimension to reduce income inequality and income deprivations in the region.

Las comunidades marginadas en Puerto Rico presentan cicatrices sociales por la estigmatización, desigualdad y falta de oportunidades experimentadas durante décadas. Está obra recoge expresiones de este sector tradicionalmente marginado por el gobierno, mercado y la misma sociedad puertorriqueña. Dos son los principales propósitos del libro: (1) realizar un análisis histórico del desarrollo e institucionalización del Estado de bienestar emergente en Puerto Rico, y (2) examinar las relaciones del bienestar y la distribución de riesgos sociales entre los principales actores garantes del bienestar en las comunidades marginadas del archipiélago caribeño.Para cumplir el primer propósito se realiza una revisión histórica sobre el desarrollo de las instituciones y programas del bienestar puertorriqueño. El segundo objetivo del libro se materializa mediante la exposición de datos y relatos recopilados mediante entrevistas semiestructuradas y encuestas en siete comunidades marginadas del país (Daguao, Dulces Labios, El Rabanal, Playita Cortada, San Antón, Toro Negro y Tras Talleres).El valor añadido de este libro a los estudios de regímenes de bienestar es la conceptualización de la comunidad como uno de los principales actores garantes del bienestar junto a la familia, Estado y mercado. Asimismo, se demuestra el grado de (des)mercantilización, (des)familiarización y estadocentrismo/residualismo de los programas de bienestar puertorriqueños en las áreas de vivienda, maternidad/paternidad, educación, alimentación, salud, incapacidad, (des)empleo y vejez. Los resultados demuestran la existencia de un Estado de bienestar limitado y estratificado, el cual sigue el tipo de régimen de bienestar residual aunque con un gran peso en la familia tradicional en el área de cuidado y con programas subsidiarios de tipo corporativista para la población trabajadora en el mercado formal.

The purpose of this paper is to re‐examine from a multidimensional perspective the possible existence of a single path that could have conditioned the degree of welfare state development (WSD) in Latin America. Economic/industrial development, trade‐openness, democracy and the strength of leftist parties‐labour movement are used as explanatory variables in the qualitative comparative analysis. In contrast to previous findings, this paper shows that there is no evidence of a common path followed by countries with a relatively high/medium WSD. Nevertheless, countries that experienced a low economic/industrial development combined with a low democratic experience were conditioned to have low WSD.

The purpose of this paper is to present two alternative indicators in order to rethink and reevaluate the coverage of the conditional cash transfer programs (CCTs) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). The term effective coverage, introduced by the World Health Organization, was used as a reference to adjust the aggregate indicators on the ECLAC database taking into account the target population of the programs. (1) Effective coverage of beneficiaries is a metric that shows the potential proportion of population living in monetary poverty that benefits from the CCTs. (2) Effective coverage of benefits shows the potential proportion of the monetary poverty line value invested by the CCTs. Only three CCTs presented an effective coverage of beneficiaries higher than the total population in monetary poverty, and nine over the total population in extreme monetary poverty. Meanwhile, ten CCTs presented an effective coverage of benefits higher than the extreme monetary poverty line value, and seven higher than the monetary poverty line value.

The Syrian Civil War has entered its seventh year and has accounted for more than 500,000 killed, over 1 million injured and over 12 million Syrians living as refugees or Internally Displaced Persons (IDPs). It started in 2011, partially due to the ripple effect caused by Arab Spring in the nations along the West Asian and North African (WANA) regions, and also due to the resentment of the population to the Syrian regime led by Bashar Al Assad. What began as peaceful protests in March 2011 erupted into violent, brutal attacks, all culminating into the bloodiest conflict in the 21st century, which saw intervention by many State and non-State actors like Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusra Front and the like. The involvement of foreign powers led by the US and its allies in Europe and West Asia exacerbated the situation, when they started arming, funding and training rebels and/or terrorist groups. The other prominent actors like Turkey, Qatar, Saudi Arabia supported the rebels and/or terrorist groups, while the Syrian forces were supported by Iran, Iraq and Lebanon-based militia group, Hezbollah, and lately by the Kurdish groups. In 2015, Russia too intervened in Syria to back the government forces. In April 2017, the US administration carried out its first direct military action against the Syrian government, launching cruise missiles at a Syrian air force base.

As the rental housing market moves online, the internet offers divergent possible futures: either the promise of more-equal access to information for previously marginalized homeseekers, or a reproduction of longstanding information inequalities. Biases in online listings’ representativeness could impact different communities’ access to housing search information, reinforcing traditional information segregation patterns through a digital divide. They could also circumscribe housing practitioners’ and researchers’ ability to draw broad market insights from listings to understand rental supply and affordability. This study examines millions of Craigslist rental listings across the USA and finds that they spatially concentrate and overrepresent whiter, wealthier, and better-educated communities. Other significant demographic differences exist in age, language, college enrollment, rent, poverty rate, and household size. Most cities’ online housing markets are digitally segregated by race and class, and we discuss various implications for residential mobility, community legibility, gentrification, housing voucher utilization, and automated monitoring and analytics in the smart cities paradigm. While Craigslist contains valuable crowdsourced data to better understand affordability and available rental supply in real time, it does not evenly represent all market segments. The internet promises information democratization, and online listings can reduce housing search costs and increase choice sets. However, technology access/preferences and information channel segregation can concentrate such information-broadcasting benefits in already-advantaged communities, reproducing traditional inequalities and reinforcing residential sorting and segregation dynamics. Technology platforms like Craigslist construct new institutions with the power to shape spatial economies, human interactions, and planners’ ability to monitor and respond to urban challenges.

Prisoner reentry has received great interest in political sociology, criminology, and beyond. Research documents the struggles of individuals trying to find their way back into society. Less attention has been given to the organizational aspects of reentry. This is unfortunate given the rapid growth of nonprofit reentry organizations in the United States, which introduces a new set of questions about the context and challenges to prisoner reentry. Drawing on an ethnography of Safe, a nonprofit reentry organization in the Northeast, I describe the organization's pivotal role in institutionalizing the pathway to prisoner reentry: a road to reentry, which takes former prisoners through a process that reconfigures their morality, identity, and social relationships. The road-to-reentry concept helps bring together scholars of the welfare state and criminology by highlighting how the challenges of prisoner reentry rely on how this process is organized. The way in which prison reentry is organized, in turn, affects former prisoners' agency and shapes the relationship between these men and women and their respective families and communities.

Working conditions refer to an individual’s working environment as well as terms andconditions of employment. This covers various aspects, such as working time, task autonomy, pay, career prospects, work-life balance, type of contract, safety and wellbeing. This chapter gives an overview over working conditions in Europe.

There has been a lack of debate between and frameworks for theories of the causes of poverty. This essay proposes that most theories of poverty can be productively categorized into three broader families of theories: behavioral, structural, and political. Behavioral theories concentrate on individual behaviors as driven by incentives and culture. Structural theories emphasize the demographic and labor market context, which causes both behavior and poverty. Political theories contend that power and institutions cause policy, which causes poverty, and moderates the relationship between behavior and poverty. I review each theory’s arguments, contributions and challenges. Further, I explain how to integrate, classify studies into, and distinguish between theories. Ultimately, I argue that poverty research would benefit from more explicit theory and theoretical debate, as well as greater interdisciplinarity and integration between studies of the U.S., rich democracies, and developing countries.

This study investigated the Australian private rental sector (PRS) focusing on institutional change, including formal rules (policies and regulation); organisations and structures; and informal rules (social norms and practices). It also reviewed the PRS in ten countries: Australia, Belgium, Canada, Germany, Ireland, New Zealand, Spain, Sweden, the United Kingdom and the United States.

This research investigated Social impact investment (SII), which aims to generate and actively measure social and financial returns. There are several promising SII models—including housing supply bonds, property funds, funding social enterprises, social impact bonds and social impact loans. Effective SII requires suppliers of goods and services, intermediaries, suppliers of capital, government and beneficiaries to work together.

Poverty reduction strategies (PRS) have become a popular instrument for addressing poverty globally. In Canada, all ten provinces have committed to adopting PRS. The province’s commonalities and differences provide an ideal testing ground for studying their effects. Do PRS actually reduce poverty? According to their detractors, governments use PRS as ‘window dressing’ to gloss over unsuccessful poverty reduction efforts. In this study, I identify the timing of the introduction of PRS action plans and explore whether they have coincided with changes in provincial poverty rates. I find that more often than not rates have dropped before rather than after the introduction of PRS. This suggests that governments have indeed used PRS as window dressing, but to showcase and claim credit for poverty reduction successes.

Social security and taxation operate jointly to overcome individual deprivations, reduce income inequality and promote development, bringing ‘taxation into social protection analysis and planning’. There are several ways in which governments can create fiscal space to finance social protection programmes (e.g. social pensions). The idea is to create new sources of revenue –sustainable in the long-run – which can be used to finance social pensions, without building new liabilities and without distorting macroeconomic stability. The literature specifically addressing the potential fiscal space that could be created to finance social pensions is limited. This paper aims to begin filling some of those gaps and identify sources for creating fiscal space for social pensions through the revenue side (i.e. examine the revenue-generating potential of taxation for social pensions). Specifically, examine the potential funding power of three types of taxes (income tax, corporate tax, and trade tax) using cross-country tax revenues and tax rate data in a global perspective. The paper demonstrates that the three taxes have a revenue-generating potential to finance social pensions in several countries. There is not a magic prescription useful for every country, but there are numerous options to design a tailored mix of sources to create fiscal space., This study was funded by Help Age International, while the author was a Research Fellow

Preprint, final version in American Journal of Sociology available at: http://doi.org/10.1086/674005. Methodological appendix available at: http://osf.io/t93xj/.

In this article, I propose a multidimensional deprivation measure of poverty for the EU with the aim of improving the measurement performance of existing deprivation scales. The paper stands on the claim that a deprivation measure can be adequate, both conceptually and empirically, to capture poverty in the EU defined in Townsendian terms. Yet existing deprivation scales have three conceptual problems such as data-driven specification, neglected dimensionality and missing dimensions, and four data problems such as limited extent, cross-cultural equivalization, behavioral choices and reporting error. To address conceptual problems, I offer a concept-led methodology to construct a multidimensional measure. To address data problems, I apply a post-hoc adjustment strategy using dual criteria of income poverty and financial strain. The proposed measure has four dimensions, namely needs for basic goods, health, education, leisure and social relationships, where each dimension is evaluated separately with relevant scales. When compared to the formal EU 2020 poverty target measure, the proposed measure is more likely to capture people with needs and lower resources as well as those in less affluent countries than those in more affluent countries. The (adjusted) proposed measure can be used as a stand-alone indicator to identify a target population for policy; or the unadjusted proposed measure can be combined with an income poverty measure to identify a worst-off group within that target population.

In this paper, nuances of identity, intersectionality and welfare are explored. I begin with a historical overview of the subject followed by an evolution of the concept. I move on to different realizations of intersectionality in politics and policy-making, healthcare, education, employment and property. I end the paper with a statement, based on the workings of the paper, that true welfare is always intersectional, in nature.

Existe una abundante evidencia empírica sobre la relación negativa entre el esfuerzo de bienestar y la pobreza. Sin embargo, los indicadores de pobreza tradicionalmente utilizados han sido representativos del enfoque monetarista, inhibiendo del análisis su realidad multidimensional. Además el análisis trasnacional en América Latina y el Caribe entre las variables ha excluido generalmente factores demográficos y cíclicos. Utilizando tres técnicas de regresión para el periodo 1990-2010 y controlando para la población en edad avanzada, población desempleada y el PIB per cápita, se evaluó la relación entre el gasto social per cápita –como indicador de esfuerzo de bienestar- y la pobreza en hasta 21 países de la región. La proporción de población con ingresos inferiores a la canasta básica de alimentos y servicios (PM1) y la proporción de población con ingresos inferiores al 50% de la mediana de ingresos per cápita (PM2) fueron los dos indicadores de la pobreza desde el enfoque monetarista. Desde el enfoque de capacidades se utilizó la proporción de población con insuficiencia alimentaria (PC1) y la proporción de la población sin acceso a agua potable ni facilidades sanitarias (PC2). Los resultados confirman que efectivamente el gasto social es útil para explicar las cambios en la pobreza (PM1, PC1 y PC2), ya que existe una alta correlación negativa y significativa entre las variables antes y después de controlar para factores demográficos y cíclicos. En dos de las técnicas de regresión, el gasto social per cápita no presentó una relación negativa con la PM2. Los países que presentaron un mayor esfuerzo de bienestar para el periodo 1990-2010 no fueron necesariamente los que ostentan un menor nivel de pobreza. Por último el gasto social per cápita fue mas útil para explicar los cambios en la pobreza desde el enfoque de capacidades.

Diversos investigadores han realizado críticas a los ODM por la arbitrariedad en la formulación y fijación de metas, así como en el uso de indicadores que pueden afectar la perspectiva del éxito exhibido por un país o región, favoreciendo a algunos y perjudicando a otros. El propósito principal de este artículo es realizar un balance alternativo crítico del avance ante la pobreza en 38 países latinoamericanos y caribeños. Utilizando indicadores positivos y negativos se contrastaron los resultados (1) de la consecución de la meta oficial 1.A y 7.C de los ODM y (2) de la aceleración del progreso en la reducción de las tasas de pobreza en 4 periodos temporales entre 1980-2015. Se utilizaron dos indicadores de pobreza para examinar la meta 1.A –reducir en un 50% la proporción de población con ingresos inferiores a 1,25 dólares diarios (PPA)- y la meta 7.C –reducir en un 50% la proporción de población sin acceso a fuentes mejoradas de agua potable e infraestructuras sanitarias. Los resultados confirman algunas de las críticas presentadas sobre los ODM. El uso de indicadores negativos y la conceptualización del éxito como aceleración del progreso en la reducción de pobreza presentan una imagen más favorable para la región, Several researchers have criticized the MDGs because of the arbitrariness in the formulation and goal setting, as well as in the use of indicators that may affect the perspective of success exhibited by a country or region, favouring some and hurting others. The main purpose of this paper is to conduct a critical alternative assessment of the success on poverty reduction in 38 countries of Latin America and the Caribbean. Using positive and negative indicators, the results on (1) the achievement of the official 1.A and 7.C MDG targets and (2) the accelerating progress on the reduction of poverty rates were contrasted in 4 periods between 1980-2015. Two poverty indicators were used to evaluate the target 1.A – half the proportion of people whose income is less than 1,25 dollars (PPP) per dayand the target 7.C –half the proportion of the population without sustainable access to safe drinking water and basic sanitation. The findings confirm some of the criticism made of the MDGs. The use of negative indicators and the conceptualization of success as accelerating the progress on poverty reduction show a more favourable image of the region, Esta investigación es posible en parte por la financiación del Ministerio de Educación, Cultura y Deporte (Formación de Profesorado Universitario)

"Public charge," a term used by U.S. immigration officials for more than 100 years, refers to a person who relies on, or is likely to rely on, public assistance at the government's expense. Foreign-born individuals who are deemed at high risk of becoming a public charge can be denied green cards; those outside of the U.S. can be denied entry. Current public charge policy largely applies to cash benefits. The Department of Homeland Security has proposed a regulation that will allow officials to consider the take-up risk of both cash and non-cash benefits when making public charge determinations. According to Current Population Survey (CPS) data, nearly 90% of children with immigrant parents are U.S.-born and therefore eligible for public benefits. Most of these children live in a household with at least one non-citizen. Using CPS data, we examine the potential child poverty impact of the proposed DHS public charge regulation. Our simulation results show that, depending on the chilling effect, up to 3 million U.S. citizen children could lose access to SNAP as a result of the new public charge regulation.