{"title":"Regulatory noncompliance among unlicensed care homes: Evidence from Poland","authors":"Paweł Łuczak, Maciej Ławrynowicz","doi":"10.1111/spol.12982","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12982","url":null,"abstract":"The development of markets for private for-profit care homes often raises concerns about the quality of services provided by these care homes. To address the fundamental needs of their residents, governments introduce quality regulations and, through mandatory licensing, allow private care homes to enter the market. However, in some countries, evidence reveals that many private care homes operate without a mandatory licence; information about the basic characteristics of these unlicensed care homes (UCHs) and their operations is often unavailable because they try to remain ‘invisible’; they have also received little research attention. This article fills this gap using the case of Poland. The study employs a unique dataset combining inspection reports produced during public monitoring of UCHs and in-depth interviews with owners of such care homes. This article explores how the regulation of markets for private care homes does not lead to the comprehensive licensing of such care homes. The findings show that the regulation enabled UCHs to remain ‘partially visible’ to many parties, including public sector entities. The findings contribute to a wider debate about the marketisation of long-term care, particularly regarding the noncompliance of private providers.","PeriodicalId":47858,"journal":{"name":"Social Policy & Administration","volume":"21 5","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138507416","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Welfare state regimes and social policy resistance to fiscal consolidations","authors":"Olivier Jacques","doi":"10.1111/spol.12986","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12986","url":null,"abstract":"We study how welfare states regimes influence the effect of episodes of fiscal consolidations on the four main components of the welfare state: social investment, pensions, healthcare and labour market insurance. Welfare state regimes are associated with distinct social policy legacies that feedback into political competition by shaping the size and influence of different coalitions of constituents. Using data from 1980 to 2014 in 16 OECD countries, we find that labour market insurance is more vulnerable to consolidations in Liberal regimes, while social investments are more resistant to consolidations in Nordic regimes. In the Continental regime, which overlaps with Social Health Insurance systems, healthcare is more resistant to consolidations. Finally, pensions are more resistant to consolidations in the Southern regime. These findings contribute to the study of the comparative political economy of welfare state retrenchment.","PeriodicalId":47858,"journal":{"name":"Social Policy & Administration","volume":"17 10","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138507433","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"What policy functions are reflected in the distribution of financial support for parents by child age and birth order? An analysis of 28 European countries","authors":"Kristijan Fidanovski","doi":"10.1111/spol.12978","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12978","url":null,"abstract":"Motivated by the growing prominence of fertility incentivisation and long-term child development in European family policymaking, this paper examines the distribution of financial support for parents over the course of childhood and between birth orders in Europe. We use the term ‘older-oriented age bias’ to refer to support that is more generous for older children and the term ‘younger-oriented age bias’ for more generous support for younger children. Similarly, we refer to distribution patterns tilted towards later birth orders as ‘later-oriented parity bias’ and to those that favour earlier birth orders as ‘earlier-oriented parity bias’. Based on a list of four classical policy functions of financial support for parents (child cost compensation, fertility incentivisation, child poverty reduction, and child development), we formulate six (sets of) hypotheses for the age and parity distribution of financial support for parents. To assess these distribution patterns, we examine monthly financial support (allowance- and tax-based) for the first four birth orders at child ages 2, 9, and 17 in low-income and middle-income households across 28 European countries as of January 2021. We find that European welfare states typically provide more generous support for younger children, while the support distribution in terms of birth orders depends on pre-support household income. We also find considerable cross-country heterogeneity, with fertility incentivisation and (especially) child development being reflected by more countries than child cost compensation and poverty reduction. Our analysis sheds light on previously underexplored trends and implications in the design of financial support for parents in Europe.","PeriodicalId":47858,"journal":{"name":"Social Policy & Administration","volume":"19 7","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138507426","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Ciara Smyth, Karen R. Fisher, Sally Robinson, Heikki Ikäheimo, Nicole Hrenchir, Jan Idle, Jung Yoon
{"title":"Policy representation of everyday harm experienced by people with disability","authors":"Ciara Smyth, Karen R. Fisher, Sally Robinson, Heikki Ikäheimo, Nicole Hrenchir, Jan Idle, Jung Yoon","doi":"10.1111/spol.12985","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12985","url":null,"abstract":"People with disability are at heightened risk of violence, abuse, neglect and exploitation (VANE) with policy geared towards responding to and eliminating VANE harm. Yet not all harm experienced by people with disability is captured within the VANE harm. Many people also experience harm in everyday interactions that leave them feeling uncomfortable, devalued, disrespected, threatened or silenced. Our multi-method study begins with the term ‘everyday harm’ to describe these subtle, difficult-to-define and easily overlooked experiences, with the proviso that a more appropriate vocabulary may emerge from subsequent fieldwork. This article presents the results of a policy review about the representation of everyday harm between people with disability and paid support workers in disability policies. Results show that everyday harm is acknowledged in some disability policies. However, this acknowledgement is neither consistent nor comprehensive and policies do not consider the cumulative impact of everyday harm nor the subjective experience of harm. This review suggests a gap in conceptualising this type of harm and having a vocabulary that people with disability, support workers and organisations can use to acknowledge, name and, ultimately, prevent this form of harm. Empirical research about their experience of everyday harm is needed to address this gap.","PeriodicalId":47858,"journal":{"name":"Social Policy & Administration","volume":"18 2","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-23","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138507432","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"All in, against all odds. Path shift in family policy via cross-party agreement: the case of the Single Universal Allowance reform in Italy","authors":"Ilaria Madama, Eugenia Mercuri","doi":"10.1111/spol.12981","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12981","url":null,"abstract":"The introduction of the Single Universal Child Allowance in 2021 marked a sharp turning point in Italian family policy. Presented as a major revolution aimed at combating the country's alarmingly low birth rates as well as child poverty, the reform was also meant to rationalise the benefits system while overcoming the historical fragmentation and uneven protection granted to families. Against this backdrop, the article contributes to the literature from two different angles. First, the study offers fresh empirical evidence of the path-shifting scope of the reform, marking a rupture with the longstanding weak model of income support. Second, the article engages from an interpretative standpoint with the puzzling emergence of a cross-party consensus around approval. Drawing from the comparative literature on institutional change and the modernisation of family policies, the article asks which factors made it possible—after decades of substantial inertia—to overcome path dependency through cross-party agreement in Italy, providing an in-depth, original examination of parties' positions throughout the legislative process and identifying key elements of agreement and conflict.","PeriodicalId":47858,"journal":{"name":"Social Policy & Administration","volume":"20 ","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138507425","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Katrin Gasior, Gemma Wright, Helen Barnes, Michael Noble
{"title":"Adaptive social protection in Indonesia: Stress-testing the effect of a natural disaster on poverty and vulnerability","authors":"Katrin Gasior, Gemma Wright, Helen Barnes, Michael Noble","doi":"10.1111/spol.12983","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12983","url":null,"abstract":"Indonesia is among the countries with the highest exposure to natural disasters, and risks are expected to increase due to climate change. Natural disasters and other shocks require well-developed social protection systems that can cushion the economic consequences for those most vulnerable to these events. International stakeholders advocate for ‘Adaptive Social Protection’ which links social policy with strategies on disaster risk reduction and climate change adaptation. This article uses the tax-benefit microsimulation model INDOMOD to analyse the adaptiveness of the Indonesian social protection system by simulating an income shock caused by a natural disaster and testing reforms to the existing social protection system. We find that the existing system generally performs well in lifting people out of poverty in normal times but does not sufficiently help them to prepare for and cope with shocks. This is especially the case for large households, households with more than two children, people in their 20s and 80s and individuals with a disability. The tested hypothetical reforms reduce the impact of the shock and better target those identified as needing more support but require a substantial increase in social spending.","PeriodicalId":47858,"journal":{"name":"Social Policy & Administration","volume":"22 11","pages":""},"PeriodicalIF":3.2,"publicationDate":"2023-11-20","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"138507441","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"The association between couples' education and gender gap in unpaid care work in India","authors":"Saumya Tripathi, Fuhua Zhai","doi":"10.1111/spol.12975","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12975","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This cross‐sectional study utilizes data from the 2019 India Time‐Use Survey to examine the relationship between education and the gender gap in unpaid care work among married couples in India. Results from the Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression demonstrate a paradox where more educated or equally educated wives tend to spend more time on unpaid care work compared to their husbands. Women from marginalized backgrounds face a heightened burden of unpaid uare work, while employment status emerges as an important factor that reduces the gender divide in unpaid care work. The Karlson, Holm, and Breen (KHB) decomposition analysis reveals that employment and other personal and household factors account for 22.86% and 43.15% of the total effect on time spent on unpaid care work for wives who have the same as or higher level of education than their husbands, respectively. These findings bring to light the continued issue of gender inequality in India and emphasize the need for reforms in care work and the labor market.","PeriodicalId":47858,"journal":{"name":"Social Policy & Administration","volume":"23 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-07","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135539920","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Joan Miró, Anna Kyriazi, Marcello Natili, Stefano Ronchi
{"title":"Buffering national welfare states in hard times: The politics of <scp>EU</scp> capacity‐building in the social policy domain","authors":"Joan Miró, Anna Kyriazi, Marcello Natili, Stefano Ronchi","doi":"10.1111/spol.12979","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12979","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract The EU has traditionally influenced the social and employment policies of Member States through regulation, leaving redistribution to national welfare states. The latter have, however, been gradually weakened by global socioeconomic change and by the expansion of EU market integration. A series of crises over the last 15 years made a bad situation worse: the longue durée erosion of the capacity of European welfare states has morphed into acute social aftershocks, especially in peripheral countries. After the austerity reflex in the early 2010s, the EU introduced new policy instruments with market‐correcting rationales that go beyond the regulatory approach. This article revisits the creation and functioning of four of these instruments that represent EU‐level capacity‐building in the social policy domain: the European Globalisation Adjustment Fund, the Youth Guarantee, the Just Transition Fund and SURE (the temporary Support to mitigate Unemployment Risks in an Emergency). We argue that the EU increasingly provides ‘buffer mechanisms’ to support stressed national welfare states in tasks they would otherwise be unable to accomplish, and we identify the political factors that drive the expansion of this ‘buffering’ logic in EU social policy.","PeriodicalId":47858,"journal":{"name":"Social Policy & Administration","volume":"100 4","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-11-05","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135724549","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
{"title":"Everyday sense making and the discursive delineation of social policy space in Zambia","authors":"Anna Wolkenhauer","doi":"10.1111/spol.12974","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12974","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract This article connects the notions of policy space and social contract in order to understand the importance of everyday discourse for the perceived legitimacy of social policy choices and emerging responsibilities in Zambia. Based on a Grounded Theory analysis of interview and document material, the article reconstructs common sense ideas about the limited resources of the state, from which modalities in the Social Cash Transfer programme, especially the requirements for targeting and graduation, are derived. It moreover explores how from these limited means also follows the sharing of responsibilities between the state and the recipients themselves, giving way to a self‐responsibility discourse. Thereby, the attempt by implementing officers and the wider community to rationalise distributional choices in light of wide‐spread poverty, shape the social contract between the state and citizens in Zambia and ultimately also delineate the space of what becomes possible to imagine within social policy. The article concludes with an argument for broadening social policy visions away from the individual level towards tackling the underlying structural causes of poverty by connecting social with economic interventions.","PeriodicalId":47858,"journal":{"name":"Social Policy & Administration","volume":"18 1","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-25","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135112663","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Vanessa van den Boogaard, Fabrizio Santoro, Michael Walker
{"title":"Social protection, community participation and state‐citizen relations: Evidence from a cash transfer program in south‐central Somalia","authors":"Vanessa van den Boogaard, Fabrizio Santoro, Michael Walker","doi":"10.1111/spol.12973","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1111/spol.12973","url":null,"abstract":"Abstract We investigate whether social protection programs can increase participation in community‐driven development programs and examine how this affects state‐citizen relations. Using a randomized controlled trial in south‐central Somalia, we study the impacts of one‐time unconditional cash transfers to vulnerable households that were specifically designed to encourage participation in community development. While the cash transfer is relatively small as a share of annual household expenditure, it is more than sufficient to cover households' anticipated community development contributions. The transfers were funded by an NGO but delivered through state institutions. We collect survey data before and after the intervention with almost 600 individuals eligible to receive cash transfers. We find no substantial differences in participation in community development projects for cash transfer recipient households relative to non‐recipient households. However, we do find positive impacts of the cash transfers on citizen perceptions of clan elders and the local government. Our findings suggest that relatively small social protection interventions may face challenges in increasing vulnerable households' participation in community development and decision‐making, while also highlighting potential positive spillover effects for state‐citizen relations and beliefs about the capacity of local institutions where states institutions are involved in program delivery, even if they do not finance the program.","PeriodicalId":47858,"journal":{"name":"Social Policy & Administration","volume":"11 3","pages":"0"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2023-10-24","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"135267971","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":2,"RegionCategory":"社会学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}