Refine
H-BRS Bibliography
- yes (68)
Departments, institutes and facilities
- Fachbereich Sozialpolitik und Soziale Sicherung (68) (remove)
Document Type
- Article (26)
- Part of a Book (18)
- Working Paper (14)
- Conference Object (4)
- Book review (2)
- Book (monograph, edited volume) (1)
- Doctoral Thesis (1)
- Preprint (1)
- Report (1)
Year of publication
Language
- English (68) (remove)
Keywords
- Social Protection (6)
- Kenya (5)
- social protection (5)
- Africa (4)
- cash transfers (3)
- Gender-based violence (2)
- Ghana (2)
- Risk factors (2)
- Rural women (2)
- Sexual violence (2)
This paper presents the preliminary results of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam country case study conducted as part of the research project Sustainable Labour Migration implemented by the University of Applied Science Bonn-Rhein-Sieg. The project focuses on stakeholder perspectives on countries of origin benefits and the sustainability of different transnational skill partnership schemes. Existing and ongoing small-scale initiatives indicate that opportunities exist for all three types of labour mobility pathways, from recruiting youth for apprenticeships and subsequent skilled work to recruitment and recognition of skilled 'professionals' certificates for direct work contracts to initial vocational education and training programs in a dual-track approach. While the latter has the highest potential to be more beneficial than other approaches, pursuing and supporting the scaling up of all three pathways in parallel will have additional, mutually reinforcing and supporting effects. The potential for benefits over and above those already realised by existing skill partnerships appears high, especially considering the favourable framework conditions specific to the long-standing German-Vietnamese relationship. If the potential of well-managed skill partnerships was realised, such sustainable models of skilled labour migration could serve as a unique selling point in the international competition for skilled labour.
Farming communities confronted with climate change adopt formal and informal adaptation strategies to mitigate the effects of climate change. While the environmental and social effects of climate change are well documented, there is still a dearth of literature on girl-child marriage (formal marriage or informal union between a child under the age of 18 and an adult or another child) as a response to the effects of climate change. In this research, we ask if girl-child marriage is promoted as a social protection mechanism first, rather than as simply a response to climate-induced poverty. We use qualitative semi-structured interviews and focus group discussions to explore this question in a rural farming community in Northern Ghana. Our findings reveal that climate change shocks result in poverty and compel farmers to marry off their young daughters. The unmarried girl-child is perceived as an ‘extra mouth to feed’, a liability whose marriage becomes a strategy for protecting the family, the family’s reputation, and the girl child. The emphasis in girl-child marriage is not on the girl-child as an individual but on the family as a group. Hence, what is good for the family is assumed to be in the best interest of the girl-child. We place our analysis at the intersection of climate change, social protection, and the incidence of girl-child marriages. We argue that understanding this link is crucial and can contribute significantly to our knowledge of girl-child marriage as well as our ability to address this in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Political economic analyses of recent social protection reforms in Asian, African or Latin American countries have increased throughout the last few years. Yet, most contributions focus on one social protection mechanism only and do not provide a comparative approach across policy areas. In addition, most studies are empirical studies, with no or very limited theoretical linkages. The paper aims to explain multiple trajectories of social protection reform processes looking at cash transfers and social health protection policies in Kenya. It develops a taxonomy and suggest a conceptual framework to assess and explain reform dynamics across different social protection pillars. In order to allow for a more differentiated typology and enable us to understand different reform dynamics, the article uses the approach on gradual institutional change. While existing approaches to institutional change mostly focus on institutional change prompted by exogenous shocks or environmental shifts, this approach takes account of both, exogenous and endogenous sources of change.
The Participation Act, introduced in the Netherlands in 2015, puts into practice the idea that every individual has to make a contribution in a participatory society. The Act includes aspects of income support, compulsory activities in return for benefits, and labour market reintegration. Drawing on 45 interviews, we provide insights into interactions between the individual financial and social situation, an individual’s position in society, and reintegration activities. The narratives show the fundamental need for individual freedom and societal meaning, recognition, and appreciation, as well as the complex circumstances in which social assistance recipients make decisions. Conflicts between those needs and the Act lead to the question of how personal and societal objectives can be reconciled.
This paper seeks to explore the framework within which the International Labour Office should promote a principled, practical approach to social security policy in the new millennium. Integration has to be built around a joint coherent policy vision and building such a policy vision requires debate. This paper is a product of a joint effort of members of the ILO Social Security Department and social security specialists working in the ILO field offices.
This policy brief is part of a wider research project entitled ‘Building the Economic Case for Investments in Social Protection’. The research aims at demonstrating the potential impacts of social protection on inclusive growth. The project is a collaborative effort between the Maastricht Graduate School of Governance at the University of Maastricht and United Nations University-MERIT, NL; the Global Development Institute at the University of Manchester, UK; the School of Social Science at the University of Makerere, Uganda; and the Expanding Social Protection Programme of the Ugandan Ministry of Gender, Labour and Social Development. This project is part of the research agenda of the Knowledge Platform Inclusive Development Policies and funded by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Netherlands through the NWO-WOTRO programme.
Persons with disabilities have much lower employment rates than the population as a whole and are at a significantly higher risk of living in poverty (OECD, 2011, pp. 50-56 and WHO, 2011, pp. 237-239). However, many of the barriers people with disabilities face, with regards to labor market reintegration, are in fact avoidable. There has for quite some time been evidence that differences in employment and wages, between disabled and non-disabled workers, can only to a limited extent be explained by differences in human capital endowments and productivity (Kidd, Sloane, & Ferko, 2000). Instead, factors such as the absence of access to education and training, and the lack of financial assistance provided are actually significant drivers of labor market exclusion (OECD, 2009, p.15; WHO, 2011, p.239).
Estimating the impact of successful completion of vocational education on employment outcomes
(2019)
In this thesis, unique administrative data, a relevant time of follow-up and advanced statistical measures to handle confounding have been utilized in order to provide new and informative evidence on the effects of vocational rehabilitation programs on work participation outcomes in Germany. While re-affirming the important role of micro-level determinants, the present study provides an extensive example of the individual and fiscal effects that are possible through meaningful vocational rehabilitation measures. The analysis showed that the principal objective, namely, to improve participation in employment, was generally achieved. Contrary to the common misconception that “off-the-job training” is relatively ineffective, this thesis has provided an empirical example of the positive impact of the programs.
Purpose To investigate how completing vocational re-training influenced income and employment days of working-age people with disabilities in the first 8 years after program admission. The investigation also included the influence of vocational re-training on the likelihood of receiving an earnings incapacity pension and on social security benefit receipt. Methods This retrospective cohort study with 8 years follow up was based on data from 2399 individuals who had completed either a 1-year vocational re-training program (n = 278), or a 2-year vocational re-training program (n = 1754) or who were admitted into re-training but never completed the program (n = 367). A propensity score-based method was used to account for observed differences and establish comparability between program graduates and program dropouts. Changes in outcomes were examined using the inverse probability-weighted regression adjustment method. Results After controlling for other factors, over the 8 years after program admission, graduates of 1-year re-training, on average, were employed for an additional 405 days, 95% CI [249 days, 561 days], and had earned €24,260 more than without completed re-training, 95% CI [€12,805, €35,715]. Two-year program completers, on average, were employed for 441 additional days, 95% CI [349 days, 534 days], and had earned €35,972 more than without completed re-training, 95% CI [€27,743, €44,202]. The programs also significantly reduced the number of days on social-security and unemployment benefits and lowered the likelihood of an earnings incapacity pension. Conclusion Policies to promote the labor market re-integration of persons with disabilities should consider that vocational re-training may be an effective tool for sustainably improving work participation outcomes.
Policy analysis is the cornerstone of evidence-based policy making.1 It identifies the problems, informs programme design, supports the monitoring of policy implementation and is needed to evaluate programme impacts (Scott 2005). Rigorous and credible policy evidence is necessary to ensure the transparency and accountability of policy decisions, to secure political and public support and, hence, the allocation of financial resources. Sound policy analysis helps design effective and efficient programmes, thereby maximizing programme impact.
The future of work
(2021)
Driven by the exponential increase in the computational power of machines, data digitalization and scientific advancement in robotics and automation, the current wave of technological change is seemingly unprecedented in speed and scale. It transforms manufacturing and businesses making them more flexible, decentralized and efficient (Lasi et al. 2014). Even though technological change is nothing new, some argue that it is different this time. The new technologies have not only the potential to substitute labor (Nomaler and Verspagen 2018), they also change the way people work. The trend towards new forms of employment is no longer a marginal phenomenon.
This policy brief investigates the costs of child poverty in the Balkans, including deprivation in terms of education, health, and social mobility. It then lays out the potential of social protection, most notably in terms of building resilence and fostering development. Set against recent case studies from around the world, including Cambodia and Uganda, the brief gives policy recommendations on various critical issues including transfer schemes, transformative measures, and (alternative) care for children with disabilities.
Discarded news
(2022)
When important news fail to reach their recipients, namely, the politically interested, socially open-minded public, we sometimes refer to this process as agenda cutting. This article presents the key theoretical positions on this under-researched phenomenon, presenting important study results as well as our own empirical findings on internal editorial decision-making processes whereby topics are removed from the agenda. Last, we will critically examine the role of the audience as an actor in agenda cutting, which could be described as »news ignorance«.[1]
The top story showcased by Initiative Nachrichtenaufklärung (INA) e.V. in 2022 was the creeping abolition of free textbooks in German schools. In a public radio broadcast, the head of TV news magazine Tagesthemen and deputy editor-in-chief of ARD-Aktuell, Helge Fuhst, conceded that he considered this topic highly relevant, yet it had indeed not been covered in his TV news program. »Leaving out topics is, in fact, the most difficult challenge,« Fuhst said. »Having to drop topics hurts every day. There are only a few days a year when we have absolutely no idea what to put on the air.« (WDR 2022)
The process of news selection is editorial routine, which includes omitting, discarding, or abandoning topics. When this negative process is intentional, it can also be referred to as agenda cutting. This term from the field of communications science describes a distinct form of editorial routine that has been little studied to date and whose mechanisms, with their considerable influence on the formation of public opinion, are in urgent need of media research scrutiny.
The changing world poses many challenges to public policies, including social policies – among them social protection policies, which are the main focus of this handbook. Here, in this part of the handbook, we take on a number of these challenges: demographic changes and their interaction with social protection policies; roles of social protection in coping with the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic (both topics discussed in Chapter 39 and 43 by Woodall); the challenges of globalisation (discussed in Chapter 40 by Betz) and the limitations it imposes on state sovereignty and its ability to decide on the size of publicly funded programmes, in particular social protection; challenges to labour markets and social effective protection coverage posed by automation and digitalisation of businesses (discussed in Chapter 41 by Gassmann) and, last but not least, potential roles of social protection in facilitating population’s adjustments to climate change (discussed in Chapter 42 by Malerba).
What does the right to social security mean if the majority of the world’s population still lives in overwhelming insecurity? What is the significance and role of international social security standards, developed by the International Labour Organization (ILO2) over decades? What are the economic, labour market and political factors determining differences between countries with respect to population coverage by social security schemes and systems? How can past and recent experiences of countries in the Global North and in the Global South be used to expand social security coverage, and what role can be played by the new standard in this area – the ILO Social Protection Floors Recommendation 202, adopted in 2012?
Social protection measures require sustainable financing – creating and maintaining adequate fiscal space at the national level. Good governance of social protection at all stages – planning policies, policy reforms, and implementation – requires continuous monitoring of its performance and finances, including long-term projections and simulations of cost and benefits of different social protection programs and overall social protection systems. These projections and simulations should take into account demographic trends, including demographic ageing.
Introduction: The paper analyses – basing itself on reports and other documents created by different parts of the International Labour Organisation (ILO) – the process which led to the adoption of Social Protection Floor Recommendation No. 202 and the shift in focus of social policy advice towards basic protection and to the Global South countries. We look at the actions of different actors which shape the standard setting and policy stand of the organisation. Objective: To provide a comprehensive analysis of the historical trajectory of ILO social security standards, examining the evolution of principles, conventions, and the global dynamics that have shaped the organization's approach to social protection over time. Materials and methods: The methods include examining ILO documents, relevant subject literature, and the author's participant observations from over twenty-years of service in the ILO's Social Security Department, aiming to provide insights into the decision-making processes within the organization. Conclusion: We conclude that change was brought by: 1) shift in the membership of the ILO and of its decision-making bodies towards the increased presence and powers of representatives from countries of the Global South, 2) the shift in the global development community policy priorities towards poverty reduction, 3) emergence of experimental social assistance schemes in Global South countries, with designs often ignoring principles embedded in the ILO standards. The Social Protection Floor Recommendation complements previous standards in response to the challenges of widespread poverty and informality and spreading atypical forms of employment. It provides two directions of policy responses: 1) formalizing informal employment relationships and 2) expanding universal or targeted rights-based social assistance schemes. Assistance provided by ILO to member states focuses now more on building the non-contributory schemes and on identifying the fiscal space necessary to close the coverage gaps. Nowadays, the ILO must collaborate more than before with other development partners and the main challenge is to build among them awareness and acceptance of the principles of the ILO social security standards.