Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2006. / Title from title screen. Wendy Simonds, committee chair; Ralph LaRossa, Charles A. Gallagher, committee members. Electronic text (289 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed June 19, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 246-275).

This paper examines British Columbia's residency requirement on social assistance implemented by the NDP government on December 1, 1995. The policy created a three-month waiting period for newcomers to the province before they could apply for social assistance. Because it violated ;the Canada Assistance Plan (CAP), the residency requirement put the BC government at risk of losing, through federal penalty, many millions of dollars more than the intended savings. To explain the BC government's decision-making, I use a rational choice nested games approach. I argue that the residency requirement policy produced two sets of interactions in two separate policy arenas. In the principal arena, the British Columbia Social Services Ministry negotiated with the federal Department of Human Resources Development (HRD). The negotiations centred on the possibility of federal concessions in- exchange for BC withdrawing the residency requirement. In the secondary arena, the federal Department of Finance was consulting with its provincial counterparts regarding the' long-term funding formula for the Canada Health and Social Transfer (CHST) set to replace CAP on April 1, 1996. Social Services interacted with the federal Department of Finance to influence the outcome of the funding decision. I propose that the BC government risked minimal resources in the primary arena to gain substantially higher payoffs from the CHST funding formula. The government linked these two arenas through a 'trade-off strategy that allowed them to apply the political pressure and communication generated by the residency requirement and negotiations with HRD to the Finance arena. This enabled them to. increase the possibility of a favourable payoff in that arena. I find that the rational, choice approach produces an explanation that reflected the government's actual decision-making more closely than other theoretical approaches. / Arts, Faculty of / Political Science, Department of / Graduate

No description available.

Previous research has shown that welfare recipients are subject to prejudicial attitudes from others while welfare recipients themselves experience feelings of shame related to their need to apply for help for their subsistence. The aim of this study was to analyse how welfare recipients are depicted in Swedish newspaper media in order to better understand the role that the media can potentially play in how welfare recipients are perceived by others and by themselves. The empirical material consists of 74 articles published in two leading Swedish tabloid newspapers - Aftonbladet and Expressen - during the years 2011 and 2017. With Ernesto Laclau & Chantal Mouffe’s discourse theory, we have been able to identify six discursive subject positions that welfare recipients are offered in the material. Our findings show that these subject positions contribute to creating a picture of “deserving” and “undeserving” welfare recipients with the latter representing a threat to the cornerstones of the Swedish welfare state. This picture, however, is not static and between 2011 and 2017, subject positions that can be seen as “undeserving” have become more dominant in the discourse around welfare recipients.

This thesis makes an argument for the importance of a high level of commitment from local departments of social services, area businesses, and community organizations to the implementation of the Job Opportunities and Basic Skills (JOBS) program. It contends that such a commitment is a necessary pre-condition for JOBS to ever be successful. It then examines the level of commitment these actors have to JOBS in Roanoke, Virginia in order to explore the process by which local commitment to JOBS is created. A case study was conducted to determine what mechanisms, if any, are currently in place to support such a commitment. Of even greater significance, this analysis suggests the importance of changing our method of evaluating social welfare policy. We need to move beyond analyzing the actions of participants and the impact a program has on participants to illuminating the entire process by which social welfare policy operates if we are to fully understand its impacts. Upon examining the legislative history of the Family Support Act of 1988 (JOBS is the centerpiece of this act) I found no substantial discussion of the importance of encouraging local commitment to JOBS. This suggests that sustaining local commitment was not considered a high priority by federal policy makers. An examination of the actual level of commitment from a local department of social services, area businesses, and community organizations suggests there is a great deal of work yet to be done in establishing an integrated community-based approach to welfare reform. Based on the results of this research, I concluded that community commitment to JOBS can best be established by increasing commitment from all three levels of government. I also developed a hypothesis. Higher levels of commitment from within a locality will be associated with more "successful" JOBS programs. Although the newness of JOBS precludes the immediate testing of this hypothesis, future research can be conducted to determine if we find higher levels of commitment in areas with more successful JOB programs. / Master of Arts

published_or_final_version / Sociology / Master / Master of Philosophy

Thesis presented in partial fulfilment for the degree of Master of Management (in the field of Public and Development Management) to the Faculty of Commerce, Law, and Management, University of the Witwatersrand, 2016 / The research aimed to find out whether one of the unintended outcomes of governments’ top-down implementation of the child support grant was increased fertility among recipients in the rural areas, which generally have higher levels of fertility in the country. South Africa does not have a fertility problem, but development is still much needed in the rural areas. The plight of government, having inherited one of the most unequal society is not minimised. According to Mcnicoll (1998), public transfers among age groups are fertility related. Government directs public expenditures towards social services benefiting the poor. Such expenditures and transfers may significantly modify the economics of fertility as seen by prospective parents. Rural households are more vulnerable because of the economic unviability rooted in the apartheid system. Our study has tried to show how the environment in Lenyenye Township and surrounding villages could make it a possibility for women to see the increment of births as a rational solution for the survival of their family. The theory of bounded rationality was used to demonstrate that rationality is more adaptive to situations based on the environmental constraints. / XL2017

No description available.

In recent decades, research from across the social sciences has demonstrated a strong, consistent and causal link between unemployment and a wide range of negative outcomes. These outcomes go beyond economic problems, incorporating issues such as low well-being, poor health and weak social capital. During the same time, successive UK governments have expanded the use of active labour market programmes (ALMPs): a wide range of interventions that aim to move unemployed people closer to the labour market. ALMPs have been widely evaluated since becoming a central part of UK social policy, yet the majority of studies focus almost exclusively on economic outcomes, such as re-employment and wage levels. This is despite the weight of evidence suggesting unemployment is as much a social problem as an economic one. This discrepancy has led to a small but growing body of research suggesting that ALMPs might play a role in modifying some of the health and social costs of unemployment: beyond simply moving people closer to the labour market. Using a mixed methods research design, this study examines whether ALMPs achieve this by considering four key questions. First, are ALMPs associated with higher well-being, health and social capital compared to the alternative of 'open unemployment'? Second, if there is an association, how robust is this and is there any evidence of a causal function? Third, does the context of an ALMP - such as the specific type of scheme and the kind of participant - matter for understanding outcomes? And fourthly, how and why do people's experiences of unemployment and ALMPs shape their health and well-being? The findings presented in this thesis offer five original contributions to the study of the health and social effects of ALMPs. First, there is a dichotomy in the effects of ALMPs: participants have higher well-being than the openly unemployed but similar health and social capital levels. Second, ALMPs are most effective in changing how participants feel about and evaluate their lives but are largely unsuccessful in mitigating negative emotions like anxiety. These two findings are evident in both cross-sectional and longitudinal data, suggesting the possibility of a causal function of ALMPs. Together, the findings suggest that the positive well-being effects of ALMPs are not necessarily linked to improved health or social capital but because participants begin to think about their lives in a different, more positive way. Third, well-being gains are experienced by both short-term and long-term unemployed people but disappear upon re-employment. This finding has an important implication for policy, with ALMPs seemingly effective as a short-term protective well-being measure. Fourth, this is the first UK study to explore whether ALMPs work more effectively for different types of unemployed people. The findings presented in Chapter Seven show that work-oriented ALMPs are more successful than employment-assistance programmes, whilst men, younger people, those with fewer qualifications, lower occupational status and lower pre-programme well-being experience the largest benefits of participation. Fifth, the qualitative analysis presented in Chapter Eight argues that ALMPs worked best when schemes reversed the perceived ‘losses’ associated with unemployment. Three processes of loss were identified - agency loss, functional loss and status loss – which, it is contended, help explain both the observed effects of ALMPs and the broader experience of unemployment. The thesis concludes with policy suggestions for improving the capacity of ALMPs to mediate the experience of unemployment.

This research project was an assessment of the client satisfaction with a newly developed multi-service unit (MSU) for "hard-to-serve" welfare recipients in San Bernardino, California.