Distinguishing welfare state reform and income redistribution. A two-dimensional approach to the Dutch voter space on economic issues.
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ABSTRACT:
SUBMITTER: Otjes S
PROVIDER: S-EPMC6107915 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:This study investigates effects of welfare reform in the United States on the next generation. Most previous studies of effects of welfare reform on adolescents focused on high-school dropout of girls or fertility; little is known about how welfare reform has affected other teenage behaviors or boys. We use a difference-in-difference-in-differences framework to identify gender-specific effects of welfare reform on skipping school, fighting, damaging property, stealing, hurting others, smoking, alcohol, marijuana, and other illicit drugs. Welfare reform led to increases in delinquent behaviors of boys as well as increases in substance use of boys and girls, with substantially larger effects for boys.
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Project description:Prioritization of animal welfare issues can help identify which areas most require research funding and raise awareness of best practices. A modified Delphi method was used to obtain expert opinion on the highest priority welfare issues for UK farmed livestock. Fifty-eight UK-based experts were recruited onto the study, with a minimum of 3 years experience of working with either cattle, pigs, poultry, or small ruminants (12-16 experts per group). Experts were chosen to represent a broad range of opinions. Two rounds of surveys were conducted online using Online Survey, and the final round was an in-person workshop with 21 experts. In the first survey, experts were provided with a comprehensive list of species-specific welfare issues derived from the literature. Participants were asked to score each welfare issue, for (i) severity, (ii) duration, and (iii) prevalence on a 6-point Likert scale. The results of the first survey were reviewed and the welfare issues which scored a neutral-to-high response (scores 3-6) were carried forward. In round 2, participants were asked whether they agreed or disagreed with the rankings that were made from the results of round 1. The final stage of the process was a workshop, which consisted of a combination of group exercises and discussions, to reach the final consensus. Welfare priority lists were divided into two categories: severity/duration, and prevalence, to identify the priority welfare issues affecting individual animals and the population, respectively. Across all farmed species common concerns were inadequate or inappropriate nutrition, inability of stockpeople to recognize or treat welfare issues (such as pain or behavioral problems), lameness, chronic or endemic health issues, euthanasia and mortality and morbidity of neonates. Specific concerns related to behavioral restriction and damaging or abnormal behavior in pigs, poultry and dairy animals, inadequate housing for pigs and poultry, consequences of breeding decisions in pigs and poultry, and lack of access to veterinary care in sheep and beef. This Delphi process resulted in consensus on the most significant welfare challenges faced by UK livestock species and can help to guide future research and education priority decisions.
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Project description:Farmers play an essential role in the management of animals and ensuring their health and welfare. However, relatively little is known about the health and welfare-related issues farmers themselves find important in the turkey sector. As part of a larger study, a cross-sectional survey of turkey farmers was conducted in Canada to identify the main perceived reasons for culling, mortality, and carcass condemnations in their flocks. Additionally, farmers were asked to rate the importance of different health and welfare-related issues (i.e., mortality, aggressive pecking, disease, leg injuries, leg deformities, breast injuries, and varying body size) during their summer and winter production, as well as for the sector as a whole. A total of 83 responses were analyzed (response rate 20%). The most frequently mentioned reasons for the culling of turkeys included leg-related issues (90.0%), sickness (60.5%), and small body size (58.0%). The perceived reasons for mortality were most often unknown (59.7%), or related to cannibalism (41.6%) or dehydration (42.9%). The main reasons for carcass condemnations at processing were related to skin (33.8%) or subcutaneous conditions (64.7%). Leg deformities and mortality were considered the biggest issues for the turkey production sector. In general, farmers rated items as more of an issue when the question pertained to the sector as a whole rather than to their farm. These results increase our understanding of the health and welfare-related problems in turkey production that farmers find important. This can ultimately help focus research efforts in addressing these issues through improved management adaptations or breeding approaches, thereby improving both the well-being of farmers and birds.
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Project description:ObjectiveTo measure the change in U.S. women and children's health insurance coverage as a result of welfare reform (i.e. the creation of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families or TANF) in 1996.Data source1992-1999 longitudinal data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) merged with data on the timing of state implementation of welfare reform after 1996. Two key advantages of the SIPP data are that they permit matching type of insurance coverage to the welfare policy environment in each state in each month, and permit controlling for individual-level fixed effects.Study designWe measure how much insurance coverage changed after welfare reform using a difference in differences method that eliminates the influence of time-invariant unobserved individual heterogeneity and of statewide trends in insurance coverage. Models also control for individual, state, and year fixed effects, individual-level characteristics such as education, age, and number of children, plus state-level variables such as real per capita income, real minimum wage, and Medicaid eligibility.Data collection/extraction methodsWe limit our analysis to the SIPP data specific to the month just completed prior to the interview; as a result, we have up to twelve observations for each individual in the SIPP. This paper uses pooled data from the 1992-1996 panels of the SIPP covering the period 1992-1999. Publicly available state identifiers permit the merger of state policies and macroeconomic variables with the SIPP.Principal findingsTANF implementation is associated with an 8.1 percent increase in the probability that a welfare-eligible woman was uninsured. Welfare reform had less of an impact on the health insurance coverage of children. For example, TANF implementation was associated with a 3.0 percent increase in the probability that a welfare-eligible child lacked health insurance.ConclusionsAn unintended consequence of welfare reform was to adversely impact the health insurance coverage of economically vulnerable women and children, and that this impact was several times larger than the previous literature implies.
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Project description:Previous literature demonstrates that beliefs about the determinants of income inequality play a major role in individual support for income redistribution. This study investigates how people form beliefs regarding the extent to which work versus luck determines income inequality. Specifically, I examine whether people form self-serving beliefs to justify supporting personally advantageous redistributive policies. I use a laboratory experiment where I directly measure beliefs and manipulate the incentives to engage in self-deception. I first replicate earlier results demonstrating that (1) people attribute income inequality to work when they receive a high income and to luck when they receive a low income and (2) their beliefs about the source of income inequality influence their preferences over redistributive policies. However, I do not find that people's beliefs about the causes of income inequality are further influenced by self-serving motivations based on a desire to justify favorable redistributive policies. I conclude that, in my experiment, self-serving beliefs about the causes of income inequality are driven primarily by overconfidence and self-image concerns and not to justify favorable redistributive policies.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10683-021-09733-8.
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Project description:Social scientists identify two core functions of modern welfare states as redistribution across (a) socio-economic status groups (Robin Hood) and (b) 'the lifecycle' (the piggy bank). But what is the relative importance of these functions? The answer has been elusive, as the piggy bank is metaphorical. The intra-personal time-travel of resources it implies is based on non-quid-pro-quo transfers. In practice, 'lifecycle redistribution' must operate through inter-age-group resource reallocation in cross-section. Since at any time different birth cohorts live together, 'resource-productive' working-aged people are taxed to finance consumption of 'resource-dependent' younger and older people. In a novel decomposition analysis, we study the joint distribution of socio-economic status, age, and respectively (a) all cash and in-kind transfers ('benefits'), (b) financing contributions ('taxes'), and (c) resulting 'net benefits,' on a sample of over 400,000 Europeans from 22 EU countries. European welfare states, often maligned as ineffective Robin Hood vehicles riddled with Matthew effects, are better characterized as inter-age redistribution machines performing a more important second task rather well: lifecycle consumption smoothing. Social policies serve multiple goals in Europe, but empirically they are neither primarily nor solely responsible for poverty relief and inequality reduction.
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Project description:Zoo animal welfare is a high priority for many institutions worldwide, with modern zoos now ensuring that animals are housed and cared for to the highest standards. However, in countries where this knowledge is not as available or understood, standards may be lower. The aim of this research was to investigate if there were common zoo welfare concerns across developing country zoos. Wild Welfare is a charity working globally to improve welfare for zoo animals and has an independent welfare audit that is carried out before any intervention occurs. The Wild Welfare Audit, consisting of 110 questions, covering nine topics, was completed at 11 zoos in seven developing countries (Brazil, Egypt, Libya, Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia and Vietnam) following a Likert scale score (1-3). A principal component analysis was also performed to evaluate the audit questions. The results suggest that common areas of concern were animal behaviour, positive animal mental states and human health and safety. These themes were likely due to the lack knowledge and understanding that may be linked to historical and cultural differences. This research has helped to revise the welfare audit as well as inform future intervention strategies for improving developing country zoo animal welfare.
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Project description:The early detection of health disorders is a central goal in livestock production. Thus, a great demand for technologies enabling the automated detection of such issues exists. However, despite decades of research, precision livestock farming (PLF) technologies with sufficient accuracy and ready for implementation on commercial farms are rare. A central factor impeding technological development is likely the use of non-specific indicators for various issues. On commercial farms, where animals are exposed to changing environmental conditions, where they undergo different internal states and, most importantly, where they can be challenged by more than one issue at a time, such an approach leads inevitably to errors. To improve the accuracy of PLF technologies, the presented framework proposes a categorization of the aim of detection of issues related to general welfare, disease and distress and defined disease. Each decision level provides a different degree of information and therefore requires indicators varying in specificity. Based on these considerations, it becomes apparent that while most technologies aim to detect a defined health issue, they facilitate only the identification of issues related to general welfare. To achieve detection of specific issues, new indicators such as rhythmicity patterns of behaviour or physiological processes should be examined.
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Project description:BACKGROUND:Universal Credit, a welfare benefit reform in the UK, began to replace six existing benefit schemes in April, 2013, starting with the income-based Job Seekers Allowance. We aimed to determine the effects on mental health of the introduction of Universal Credit. METHODS:In this longitudinal controlled study, we linked 197 111 observations from 52 187 individuals of working age (16-64 years) in England, Wales, and Scotland who participated in the Understanding Society UK Longitudinal Household Panel Study between 2009 and 2018 with administrative data on the month when Universal Credit was introduced into the area in which each respondent lived. We included participants who had data on employment status, local authority area of residence, psychological distress, and confounding variables. We excluded individuals from Northern Ireland and people out of work with a disability. We used difference-in-differences analysis of this nationally representative, longitudinal, household survey and separated respondents into two groups: unemployed people who were eligible for Universal Credit (intervention group) and people who were not unemployed and therefore would not have generally been eligible for Universal Credit (comparison group). Using the phased roll-out of Universal Credit, we compared the change in psychological distress (self-reported via General Health Questionnaire-12) between the intervention group and the comparison group over time as the reform was introduced in the area in which each respondent lived. We defined clinically significant psychological distress as a score of greater than 3 on the General Health Questionnaire-12. We tested whether there were differential effects across subgroups (age, sex, and education). FINDINGS:The prevalence of psychological distress increased in the intervention group by 6·57 percentage points (95% CI 1·69-11·42) after the introduction of Universal Credit relative to the comparison group, after accounting for potential confounders. We estimate that between April 29, 2013, and Dec 31, 2018, an additional 63 674 (95% CI 10 042-117 307) unemployed people will have experienced levels of psychological distress that are clinically significant due to the introduction of Universal Credit; 21 760 of these individuals might reach the diagnostic threshold for depression. INTERPRETATION:Our findings suggest that the introduction of Universal Credit led to an increase in psychological distress, a measure of mental health difficulties, among those affected by the policy. Future changes to government welfare systems should be evaluated not only on a fiscal basis but on their potential to affect health and wellbeing. FUNDING:Wellcome Trust, UK National Institute for Health Research, and Medical Research Council.
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Project description:We present in this work an economic analysis of ransomware, a relatively new form of cyber-enabled extortion. We look at how the illegal gains of the criminals will depend on the strategies they use, examining uniform pricing and price discrimination. We also explore the welfare costs to society of such strategies. In addition, we present the results of a pilot survey which demonstrate proof of concept in evaluating the costs of ransomware attacks. We discuss at each stage whether the different strategies we analyse have been encountered already in existing malware, and the likelihood of them being implemented in the future. We hope this work will provide some useful insights for predicting how ransomware may evolve in the future.
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