The American social welfare system is a mixed system consisting of loosely coupled government programs, private nonprofit and for-profit organizations, grassroots and religious entities. Although religious entities historically played a key role in the development of the social welfare system, the faith-based initiative of President George W. Bush targeted religious service providers to receive government funding and take on a larger role in service delivery to at-risk populations based on the belief that these providers were substantially different from traditional providers. Using a cross-sectional research design and a survey instrument created for the study, data was collected from 121 nonprofit service providers in the Richmond Metropolitan Statistical Area of Virginia. Nonprofit organizations were selected from three online databases using identified criteria and sent paper surveys and/or emails inviting them to complete a web-based survey. The study identified similarities and differences between characteristics of faith-based service providers and traditional providers and used a conceptual model composed of Resource Dependence Theory and Neo-Institutional Theory to suggest dynamics impacting similarities and differences between providers. Data analysis included univariate and multivariate analysis of organization characteristics. Univariate findings identified that faith-based organizations in the study were older, served more people in 2006, generally provided services via volunteers, received more funding from congregations and other religious entities and did not favor membership in professional organizations. Other than these notable differences, faith-based providers were fairly similar to their traditional counterparts. A multivariate analysis used a two-group discriminant function (DFA) procedure to determine which variables best discriminated between provider groups. Two variables, funding from congregations/other religious entities and funding from government grants/contracts, were found to be the most important discriminating variables. Study findings were consistent with prior research comparing the provider groups. Although some differences do exist, overall similarities tended to outweigh differences suggesting that the claim of substantially differences between providers did not fit the geographic area studied. For those concerned with community service delivery, the implication is that recent economic developments suggest that attention should be placed on collaboration and service delivery capacity-building rather than on the differences between service providers.

This dissertation consists of three articles on social assistance benefit receipt dynamics in European countries. The first article presents an analysis of state dependence in benefit receipt in Germany based on annual survey data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. The observation period extends from 1995 to 2011, thus covering the 2005 'Hartz reforms'. I estimate a series of dynamic random-effects probit models to control for observed and unobserved heterogeneity and the endogeneity of initial conditions. The high observed state dependence has a substantial structural component, with benefit receipt one year ago being associated with an increase in the likelihood of receipt today by 13 percentage points. There is only little evidence for time-variation in state dependence. The second article presents evidence on spell durations and the frequency of repeat spells using monthly administrative data from Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden. In the two Nordic countries, short-term benefit receipt is the norm, with only around 6% and 11% of spells in Norway and Sweden lasting longer than 12 months. Most recipients however have multiple spells. In Luxembourg and the Netherlands, long-term benefit receipt is frequent, with median spell durations of 14 and 9 months, respectively, and one-third and one-quarter of all spells lasting 24 months or longer. The total duration of benefit receipt across spells is much higher in the Netherlands and Luxembourg than in Norway and Sweden. The third article tests the validity of one of the central assumptions of dynamic discrete-choice models of benefit dynamics, the conditional Markov property. Using monthly administrative data from Norway, the article shows that the Markov property is violated as estimated state dependence is affected by the chosen time unit of analysis. The standard model can be improved by permitting for different entry and persistence equations and duration and occurrence dependence in benefit receipt.

WORKING POOR IN THE CZECH REPUBLIC Abstract Even though poverty is not the death or life question in developed countries it is necessary to pay attention to it. The topic of poverty, social cohesion and social exclusion plays now an increasing role in the EU agenda; working poor started to be explored in 1990s there. Working poor are people poor despite working. Work should serve as a protection of poverty, it should guarantee better living standard to employed people in comparison to those dependent on social protection. Therefore, it is necessary to pay attention to the issue of working poor, to identify them, to find out the reasons why they are poor and to develop measures to help them not to be poor. This thesis brings a comprehensive view on the working poor in the Czech Republic. The focus is on the poverty rate as well as characteristics of working poor. Methods for measuring this phenomenon have not been fully developed yet, there is still not a consensus on the most suitable methods. Different methods are introduced, compared and critically evaluated in the first - theoretically oriented - part of the thesis. Combination and modification of existing methods creates a base for methodology used in this thesis. The core part of the thesis is dedicated to the detailed analysis of working poor in the...

Graduation theses deal with social security system in the Czech republic. Theoretical part describes social policy and their functions, provide supplementary benefits, personality of social workers, their personality, professional and educational requirements. In next thesis deal with clients characteristic and possibility of social consulting. The questionarries of staff engaged in public services are analysed in the empirical part of the thesis. Individual questions are orientation on provided supplementary benefits, their motivation, fairness and provided social consulting and educational influencing.

This diploma thesis explores the emergence of the welfare state in developing countries, in particular shown on the example of Botswana, Ghana and India. The inquiry is focused on the period beginning in 1990, when the neoliberal paradigm was dominating, untill 2010. The recent years are in token of the shift from the neoliberalism to the post-neoliberalism characterized by a number of concepts, which are taking into account. The common feature of these concepts is the diversion from the narrow focus on GDP, as the only indicator of the growth, to the social dimension of the development. This shift is also being distinguished as a transition from the basic-needs concept to the rights-based approach. Therefore, the thesis explores, if these shifts are remarkable in the analyzed countries, eventually, if there are any divergences as compared to the theoretical concepts. To achieve this goal, a broader analysis of the welfare state was used, which involves social, health and education policy. Based on this analysis, the diploma thesis tries to classify the analyzed countries into the welfare state typology; eventually, in case such classification is impossible, it describes the weaknesses of this welfare state the typology. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

This master thesis analyses development of social policy within the European Union. Furthermore, it focuses on the European social models. The biggest part is devoted to social policies in Denmark, Finland, Norway and Sweden and the way how the policies are financed. Additionally, the thesis concentrates on the globalization and the global crisis. In this context, possible solutions and perspectives for future development are suggested.

Dissertation: Abstract Jakub Rákosník: Changes of Czechoslovak Social Law in Years 1945 - 1956 The postwar popular democratic regime in Czechoslovakia was based on a strong social consensus which provided opportunity for leading political parties to realize extensive economic and social reforms. It was not only the nationalization of the economy (this task, in the case of large enterprises controlling two thirds of the Czechoslovak labor force, had already been finished before the communist coup d'état in February 1948), but also generous reform of social insurance towards the universal welfare state protecting all citizens and not only those insured. This program was inspired on the one hand by the long domestic tradition of social policy and also by the new postwar British reform made by the program of William Beveridge on the other hand. The dissertation is concerned especially with the analysis of continuity of social law. The structure of the welfare state in particular countries is a considerably lasting matter of fact. Even though the governments of various ideological orientation permanently carry out partial reforms of individual fields of welfare policy, the general range of expenses and the system of relations in between particular branches of the welfare policy embody a great extent of...

Poverty of Czech seniors Abstract Poverty is a relevant topic even in developed countries, which it needs to be deal with. In the following diploma thesis I will introduce some definitions and concepts of poverty and material deprivation. I will also deal with process of demographic ageing and a development of senior's population in the Czech Republic. The intention of the analytical part of this diploma thesis is to capture a level of poverty and material deprivation of Czech seniors in year 2014, using at-risk- of-poverty rate and material deprivation rate. I will focus on the following question: "Which group of seniors based on gender, marital status, age and education is threatened the most by poverty or material deprivation". I will describe the level of poverty and material deprivation in different regions of the Czech Republic. I also will compare differences between seniors and the whole population in the sense of the level of poverty and material deprivation. This thesis uses data from the Czech Statistical Office, particularly the data from the Population Cenzus in years 2001 and 2011 and also the data from the household survey called Living condition in year 2014. Selected data are used in binary logistic regression for describing the determinants of poverty and material deprivation of seniors in...

[pt] O presente trabalho visa a examinar, por meio de uma abordagem analítica, a trajetória da cidadania e sua materialização em termos de políticas sociais, no contexto da América Latina e de sua conjuntura política e social contemporânea, como contraponto aos modelos clássicos desses conceitos. Desta maneira, será problematizada a efetivação da cidadania social, enquanto elemento da noção de cidadania ampliada. Para tanto, será necessário identificar as ligações entre o pano de fundo histórico, político e social da cidadania moderna e seu desenvolvimento teórico. Isso servirá de marco para a análise da incorporação desse conceito na prática política da América Latina, e a compreensão dos significados dos déficits de efetivação da cidadania social em termos democráticos. Tal demonstra a relevância da escolha do tema ante as acentuadas desigualdades verificadas atualmente na região. Nas conclusões, serão agrupadas as problematizações extraídas das análises feitas ao longo da pesquisa e apresentadas novas questões que permanecem em aberto e demandam futuras reflexões. / [en] This research intends to examine, through an analitical approach, the path of citizenship and its implementation in terms of social policies, in the context of Latin America and its contemporary political and social conjuncture, as a counterpoint to the classical models of these concepts. Therefore, in order to present questions about social citizenship efetivation, considered as an element of the enlarged citizenship notion. For this, it will be necessary to identify the conections between the historical, social and political background of the modern citizenship and its theoretical development. Thus, it will be applied as a landmark to analyse the insertion of this concept in Latin American political practice and in the comprehension of the deficit´s of execution meanings of the social citizenship, in a democratic sense. So, the afore mentioned shows the subject´s choice relevance in view of the extremed inequalities identified nowadays in the region. Moreover, during the conclusion, it will be gathered the problems extracted from the analysis made throughout the research and news questions will be launched to demand future reflection.

This study examines the impact of Christian religiosity on attitudes toward social safety-net policies over the past three decades in the US. The study used data from the General Social Survey on social safety-net policy preferences and levels of Christian religiosity. Simple cross tabulations, correlations and multiple regression analysis were used to assess the data. Contrary to previous related research, the results of this study indicate that Christian religiosity has a very weak association with opposition to social safety-net policies. At the national level, the relationship between Christian religiosity and attitudes toward social protection policies was largely mediated by other factors such as race, gender, education, family income, and political ideology. These results indicate that Christian religiosity per se does not independently influence social spending preferences. Instead, these results suggest that social divisions in socioeconomic standing and in political ideology, which in turn are closely related to differences in support for social protection policies, permeate American Christianity. The study also examined the relationship between Christian religiosity and social protection policy preferences among Hispanic and Black Americans separately. Although Hispanics and Blacks are generally more supportive of social spending in comparison to White Americans, Christian religiosity was not found to have a strong independent effect on support for social safety-net policies among these two groups. The study did find, however, a markedly different level of support for social safety-net policies among identifiable Christian groups at the national level and in the Hispanic-American population. / Those who self-identified as "evangelical" or "fundamentalist" Christians were much less supportive of social safety-net policies in comparison to "mainline" or "liberal" Christians. Among Hispanics, Catholics were more supp in comparison to Evangelical Protestants. Moreover, the results of this study indicate that religious American Christians have had a tendency to give precedence to moral issues over concerns about social safety-net policies thus facilitating an issue-bundling effect in recent electoral competition. Lastly, the present work proposes a broad framework through which to interpret the aforementioned findings grounded on the existence and interaction of two counterpoised cultural narratives on social protection found within American Christianity. / by Emmanuel Alvarado. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2010. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2010. Mode of access: World Wide Web.