Den viktigaste lagen inom socialtjänsten på enhet ekonomiskt bistånd är ramlagen socialtjänstlagen (2001:453). Utifrån socialtjänstlagen kan socialsekreterarna på enhet ekonomiskt bistånd dokumentera, bedöma, utreda och ta ett beslut gällande rätten till olika slags bistånd för enskilda individer. För att socialsekreterarna skall kunna fatta olika beslut på ett korrekt sätt måste detta göras utifrån ett rättssäkerhetsperspektiv, då det handlar om påverkandet av andra individers ekonomiska och sociala situation. Uppsatsen syftar till att förstå hur socialsekreterarna i sin yrkesroll upplever att dokumentera, bedöma och utreda rätten till ekonomiskt bistånd, ur ett rättssäkerhetsperspektiv och vilka för och nackdelar detta i sin tur kan leda till. Uppsatsen syftar även till att förstå hur handlingsutrymmet i socialsekreterarnas yrkesroll påverkas. Vi har använt oss av en kvalitativ ansats i form av semistrukturerade intervjuer för att få en djupare inblick av intervjupersonernas egna upplevelser av arbetet som socialsekreterare. Vi har intervjuat sex socialsekreterare som arbetar på socialtjänsten inom enhet ekonomiskt bistånd. Resultatet visade bland annat att socialsekreterarna ser socialtjänstlagen (2001:453) som en trygghet. De anser att de som har erfarenhet av arbetet också har möjlighet till ett stort handlingsutrymme när de fattar beslut. Rättssäkerheten kan enligt socialsekreterarna påverkas både positivt och negativt beroende på de individuella bedömningar som handlingsutrymmet och socialtjänstlagen (2001:453) ger utrymme för. / The most important law in social services at economic assistance is the framelaw “socialtjänstlagen” (2001: 453). Based on the “socialtjänstlag”, the social workers at the economic assistance should document, assess, investigate and make decisions regarding rights to various kinds of assistance for individuals. Social workers should be able to make different decisions in a proper way. This must be done from a legal certainty perspective, when it comes to exerting influence of other individuals’ economic and social situation. The purpose of this study is to explore and understand how the professional role of social workers at economic assistance on social services experience to document, assess and investigate rights to economic assistance, from a legal certainty perspective and what advantages or disadvantages for the social workers, this can lead to. Also how the social workers experience that their discretion can be affected in their professional role. We have used a qualitative approach in the form of semi-structured interviews to gain a deeper insight of the interviewees’ own experience of working as a social worker. We interviewed six social workers working in social services within the economic assistance. The results showed that the social workers see “socialtjänstlagen” (2001:453) as a security. They believe that those social workers who have a longer experience of the work also have the opportunity for a wide discretion when making decisions. The legal certainty according to social workers affected both positively and negatively, depending on the individual assessments that discretion and the “socialtjänstlagen” (2001:453) provides space for.

The Institute of Nutrition Quality of Life Scale for the Elderly (INQLS) was studied and then modified by the researcher. The new version was referred to as the modified INQLS. In the modified INQLS, nutritional quality of life is defined as the satisfactory intake and utilization of nutrients as influenced by social support, financial status, perceived health status (physical, mental and emotional), and physical well-being. The modified INQLS was pretested in the Petersburg, Virginia area among participants in the Crater Area Agency on Aging program. Field testing of the final modified INQLS was done in Richmond, Virginia, and the New River Valley area of Virginia. Both sheltered and free-living individuals were field tested. In the study, there were 94 respondents (70 women, 24 men) between the ages of 65 and 102. Statistical analyses of the scores from the modified INQLS included frequencies, correlational analysis, multiple regression equations, and ANOVA. No statistical significance were found between the Nutrition scale score and the independent variables of Socia-Economic score, Health and Well-Being scale score, Mobility scale score, Emotional scale score, Age, or Sex. / Master of Science

Household vegetable expenditure patterns are examined using data from the 1972-1974 Bureau of Labor Statistics Consumer Expenditure Diary Survey. Tobit analysis is employed to measure the effects of changes in household socioeconomic and demographic characteristics on changes in the probability of purchase and the magnitude of expenditure for vegetables. The study examines expenditure for the major processed forms and five vegetable subgroups. The results indicate that household total annual income and age-sex composition are important factors explaining vegetable expenditure patterns. Increases in income are associated with increases in vegetable expenditure, and economies of size occur in households with adult females. The number of household members in other age-sex categories are found to be important for expenditures on particular vegetable forms and subgroups. Mean expenditure for vegetables is affected by U.S. region, population density of residence, employment status, race, food stamp purchase, and educational level. Changes in household characteristics are found to affect probability of purchasing vegetables and the magnitude of expenditure. Household vegetable expenditure profiles are illustrated as a means of applying the results. / Master of Science

The study assess the roles played by cooperative societies’ savings and loans services on members’ economic condition, standard of living and in meeting participants financial needs in rural locations where there is no bank nor other formal financial providers. Using a combination of interview, focus group discussion and questionnaire techniques, the study covers the activities of cooperative societies located in rural communities and villages outside the state capital and local government headquarters where there is no electricity, water and tarred road in Ogun State, Nigeria. From its findings, this study identified and discussed potential areas for the improvement of cooperative societies that could be of benefit to rural finance providers and the cooperative members. The study is the first empirical investigation in Nigeria that focuses on the relevance of cooperative societies on members’ standard of living in rural communities and villages. The study shed light on how rural communities function – how their relationships develop, how individual esteem is increased, how interdependence grows, how hierarchies are maintained – and how this is facilitated in part by the loan-making of members promoted cooperatives. It has also provided more evidence on the importance of land ownership, and how this is enhanced when rural communities have access to cheap and affordable loans. It has also provided insights into the development of rural businesses, how complex they are, and how they require more input than the financing received through cooperative loans. The study breaks new ground in informal cooperative functioning, community development and rural finance research by providing a distinction between standard of living and quality of life variables in measuring the economic condition of rural dwellers, and the production of circle of social capital theory that the role of cooperatives to the members involve financial capital, physical capital and social capital which are interrelated. This helps to appropriately identify the roles of cooperative societies in rural finance to increase in household income, ownership of household assets and acquisition of enterprise assets. However, participation in the cooperative does not lead to enterprise profitability, while rural financial needs are more accessible from cooperatives than other sources.

Uppsatsen undersöker via fem intervjuer hur biståndshandläggare resonerar kring ett biståndsärende gällande hemtjänstinsatser i äldreomsorgen och hur de motiverar sina bedömningar och beslut. Intervjuerna har företagits på biståndsenheten i Östersund i Jämtlands län. En vinjett som beskriver ett påhittat biståndsärende har stått som utgångspunkt för alla intervjuer och en fenomenologisk hermeneutisk analysmetod har använts vid framtagandet och tolkandet av resultaten. Resultaten som framkommit i studien antyder att biståndshandläggarna i Östersund tenderar att se till både sociala, fysiska, medicinska och psykiska behov hos kunden vid biståndsbedömning. När det kommer till gränssättning av hemtjänstinsatsers omfattning tenderar handläggarna också att vara relativt generösa i sina bedömningar. Hur gränserna sätts verkar emellertid vara något otydligt, delvis eftersom de inte har hjälp av några fastställda riktlinjer och att begreppet skälig levnadsnivå är så pass svårdefinierat. Förslag på framtida forskning, som ges i uppsatsen, är dels att utreda om det stämmer att biståndshandläggarna i Östersund är lika bra på att se helhetsbilden vid biståndsbedömning som studiens resultat föreslår. Att mer noggrant undersöka hur socialtjänstlagens begrepp skälig levnadsnivå tolkas av biståndshandläggarna – och hur det påverkar dem i deras bedömningar – är också ett förslag till vidare forskning. / Through five interviews the essay examines how care managers reason about a case concerning home help services in elderly care and how they motivates their judgments and decisions. The interviews have been undertaken in the city of Östersund in Jämtland. A vignette describing a fictitious case has been the starting point for all interviews and a phenomenological hermeneutical analysis has been used in the producing and interpretation of the results.                       The results emerging from the study suggests that care managers in Östersund tend to look to both the social, physical, medical and psychological needs of the customer when making their decisions. When it comes to setting boundaries of home care interventions the care managers also seem to be quite generous. How to set the boundaries does however appear to be somewhat unclear, partly because they do not have the help of established guidelines and that the concept of decent standard of living (skälig levnadsnivå) is so difficult to define. One suggestion for future research that is proposed in the paper is to investigate whether it is true that care managers in Östersund are as good as it seems to see the big picture of customers needs as the study suggests. Another suggestion is to more closely examine how the concept of decent standard of living is interpreted by care managers and how it affects them when they make their judgments and decisions.

The level of savings in South Africa has been described as dismal and on the verge of becoming an economic crisis. Household savings has declined to a level of dissavingand is therefore in need of rectification. Savings can be broken down into household, corporate and government saving. The purpose of this research is to identify measures to improve household savings in South Africa. A critical review of household savings is conducted in chapter two utilising secondary data to examine household savings, identify factors affecting savings as well as establish measures to improve household savings. The study gathers primary data from 10leading economists and financial experts located in South Africa.A qualitative study is undertaken as it helps provide intrinsic information on the thoughts and opinions of the sample group on measures to improve household savings. The research has revealed that South African households are not saving sufficiently and that there are a few key factors affecting households savings. The key factors are indentified and investigated in the literature review and further examined by the respondents for their expert opinions. The respondents have identified thathousehold savings behaviours are insufficiently contributing to savings and there is a lack of a savings culture to encourage positive savings growth. Consumers are caught up in a web of consumerism with easy access to credit as a result of financial liberalisation. These two factors have created a debt trend and left many households in a downward spiral of debt. The respondents have identified the main factors affecting households as: savings culture,financial literacy, consumerism, income levels, education and interest rates. Measures identified to improve household savings are: Tax breaks, government incentives to saving, education, budgeting as well as developing a national culture of saving. These suggestions help outline a path for government, corporations and individuals to follow in achieving greater household savings. The research has outlined measures to improve household savings and stressed that there is no one single measure to rectify the savings dilemma, but rather it is to identify and acknowledge that the savings solution lies in addressing each of the factors affecting saving with a view to improving saving as a whole. / Thesis (MBA)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2011.

The aim with this study is to understand how social workers at the individual- and family sector think about child poverty and how they work with and reason about the preventive and facilitate work they do for financial vulnerable families. We have in our study used qualitative method through semi-structured interviews with social workers at the individual- and family sector to answer our purpose. The results showed that child poverty is a concept hard to define and not well established. The social workers have divided views on child poverty but still at the same time mean that it exists amongst the families they meet. There is also a big difference between municipalities and their reasoning on what a reasonable standard of living is for a financial vulnerable family and how they work with preventing child poverty. The social workers shows different ways on how to work with prevention but there is lack of understanding if their work really benefits the child.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2006. / Supervisor: Thomas Crossley. Includes bibliographical references.

This study commences with an overview of the concept “quality of life” as perceived from a developmental point of view. The study focuses on the current measures of the improvements in quality of life which operate at different measurement levels. Most of the measures are economic in nature like household income and income per capita, gross domestic product (GDP) and Gross national product (GNP) (Todaro, 1997). Other quantitative measures considered by the current study include measures of wealth particularly the Living standards measurement (LSM) by the South African advertising and research foundation (SAARF), Consumer confidence index (CCI), Index of economic well-being and the Human Development index (HDI) among others (Hagerty et al., 2001). A household-based measure using nominal level data, the LSM in particular tracks improvements in household wealth (as opposed to household income) through changes in household possession of durable items. Subjective measures of quality of life and changes in life satisfaction are looked at by the current study, including studies by Erikson (1993), Moller (1987, 1996, 1997) and, the wellbeing measures by Diener and Suh (1997) amongst others. Quality of life however, is not just about money as economics might have it portrayed. It is not just about how individuals feel because, according to Diener and Suh (1997), feelings are in most cases a response to external influences. Quality of life is a complex and multidimensional phenomenon which needs to be viewed holistically. As a result this study embarked on developing a measure of quality of life (a quality of life index) using household data pertaining to socio-economic aspects. The level of measurement for the data is ordinal. Operatinalised at household level, the measure was intended to analyse changes in household quality of life (QOL) between 1996 and 1999. Data for October household surveys for the period 1999-1996 was used in the study. The analysis focused on changes in household access to selected indicators of quality of life. The study applied cluster analysis to group households accessing similar QOL indicators into QOL groups. Identifying the indicator or indicators which differentiate the QOL conditions among QOL groups was achieved through the use of discriminant function analysis. The entire array of QOL groups or clusters from a particular set of data (OHS 1996-OHS1999) constituted the QOL index. The main findings of this study are that broadly, there has been an improvement in household quality of life (QOL), basing on the developed measure of quality of life. This is revealed by an increase in the number of clusters of households or QOL groups from five in 1996 to eight in 1999. The study attributes the increase in QOL groups to an increase in households’ ability to access the selected QOL indicators. In spite of the increase in the number of QOL clusters, the study finds that proportionally fewer households are found in the QOL groups with better material living conditions (i.e. measurable QOL) than otherwise. This is contrary to the expected pattern in development terms based on empirical evidence in South Africa (see SAARF, 2002; SAARF, 2004; Stats SA, 1996; Stats SA, 2001; Stats SA, 2004). The study also finds that female headed households are generally predominant in groups with poor QOL. Discriminant function analysis results highlight access to toilet, refuse disposal services and water source as discriminant indicators in addition to Highest level of education completed by a household head and, Employment status of household head, among others. The latter consistently differentiate between groups of households throughout the reference period except in 1999. Findings relating to the influence of household material conditions on perceived quality of life show that proportionately more households in groups with the better access to the selected QOL indicators being satisfied with life than otherwise. A point worthy noting is the consistency in the proportions of households which felt that things had not changed after all, irrespective of the groups’ ranks, throughout the reference period. The key conclusion drawn from these findings is that low levels of education and employment status among household heads strongly influence household quality of life. These two indicators have been found to consistently differentiate the QOL conditions among the QOL groups that emerged. Groups on the poor side of the QOL index are characterized by high unemployment, illiteracy and dysfunctional levels of education for most household heads therein. Most households belonging to the poorest QOL groups are rural-based (found in Eastern Cape, Limpopo, Kwazulu Natal and Mpumalanga), with poor access to basic services identified under discriminant function analysis. The situation is likely to be complicated by the existence of substantial proportions of households headed by people aged 15-19 identified in this study. This needs to be taken seriously particularly in the current era of the HIV/AIDS pandemic (see HSRC, 2002; Rosa, 2003). The study’s findings have revealed that poor QOL among households is not related to the sex of the household head. Although female headed households are predominant in groups of households with poor QOL conditions, adjacent to such groups are households in groups with almost equally poor living conditions the majority of which are males-headed. What is needed therefore is a holistic focus on the factors that impede households’ ability to sustain better living conditions. Most of the study’s recommendations reinforce initiatives which are being undertaken in the development agenda. For instance the need to improve people’s level of education does not need any more emphasis given the study’s results. Sustaining improved household QOL will require households to have a capability of meeting their needs. Successful completion of education – tertiary as opposed to functional literacy- opens channels for households to lead a better life. Achieving this level of education requires time, which from a demographic point of view, most of the currently uneducated household heads may not have. While much has been done in enabling households to access basic services like housing, electricity and water, payment for such services remains the responsibility of individual households. Inability to pay for services – due to unemployment and lack of education-will just perpetuate household dependency on social grants. It is also recommended that in-depth qualitative studies be undertaken to establish the apparent consistent gap between objective living conditions and subjective life satisfaction among households if realistic policy objectives are to be achieved. The study recommends a further application of the formulated QOL index particularly on current data with similar indicators. A more rigorous thinking around the weighting of individual QOL indicators will iron out the inconsistencies observed in the study’s results. This will provide an opportunity to standardise the indicators, update the results of the QOL index while enhancing triangulation at the same time. / Thesis (DPhil(Sociology))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Sociology / DPhil / unrestricted

Структура магистерской диссертации включает в себя введение, три главы, заключение, список использованных источников и приложения. в которых подробно проанализированы проблемы здравоохранения, в т.ч. в части оплаты труда медицинских работников, представлена система государственного финансирования здравоохранения РФ, проведено международное сравнение целевых показателей (смертность, рождаемость, продолжительность жизни, доля расходов на здравоохранение от ВВП). В заключении предложены мероприятия по повышению эффективности здравоохранения. / The structure of the master's thesis includes an introduction, three chapters, a conclusion, a list of sources used and appendices. In which the problems of healthcare are analyzed in detail, including in terms of remuneration of medical workers, the system of state financing of healthcare in the Russian Federation is presented, an international comparison of targets (mortality, fertility, life expectancy, the share of healthcare costs from GDP) is carried out. In conclusion, measures to improve the efficiency of healthcare are proposed.