Using Behavioural Insights to Argue for a Stronger Social Safety Net: Beyond Libertarian Paternalism

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Katherine Curchin
Keyword(s):  
Safety Net ◽  
Libertarian Paternalism ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Behavioural Insights

scholarly journals Using Behavioural Insights to Argue for a Stronger Social Safety Net: Beyond Libertarian Paternalism

2016 ◽  
Vol 46 (2) ◽  
pp. 231-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
KATHERINE CURCHIN
Keyword(s):  
Personal Responsibility ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Libertarian Paternalism ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
The Poor ◽  
Behavioural Insights ◽  
The Social ◽  
Behavioural Research ◽  
Behavioural Sciences ◽  
Poverty Point

AbstractInsights from experimental research in the behavioural sciences offer a powerful impetus to reject the new paternalist approach to social policy. The findings from psychology, behavioural economics and behavioural finance, concerning decision-making by people experiencing poverty, point to the importance of alleviating material hardship by improving the social safety net, rather than trying to remedy the character of individuals through welfare conditionality. Thus far, the behavioural sciences’ usefulness as an intellectual weapon against punitive welfare reform has been underappreciated. This is partly due to underappreciation of the considerable contrast between the libertarian paternalism advocated by some behavioural scientists, which provides a rationale for governments to nudge citizens, and Lawrence Mead's new paternalism, which emphasises the personal responsibility of the poor for their circumstances. More importantly the disproportionate attention given to nudge has inhibited recognition that the behavioural research on poverty can be used to argue for more ambitious policy approaches which seek to transform behaviour in more ethical ways.

Care Work on the Front Lines

2020 ◽  
Vol 119 (820) ◽  
pp. 326-328
Author(s):  
Mary F. E. Ebeling
Keyword(s):  
Nurse Practitioners ◽  
Outpatient Care ◽  
Care Facility ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Ethnographic Study ◽  
Care Work ◽  
Medical Professionals ◽  
Essential Work ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
The Us

An ethnographic study of the work of nurse practitioners at an outpatient care facility shows how these medical professionals must endlessly multitask to fill gaps in the US social safety net. In the context of the COVID-19 pandemic, a new focus on the essential work of nurses and the lack of resources with which they often contend is especially timely.

“Willing to Do Anything for My Kids”: Inventive Mothering, Diapers, and the Inequalities of Carework

2020 ◽  
pp. 000312242097748
Author(s):  
Jennifer Randles
Keyword(s):  
Emotional Labor ◽  
Public Support ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Point Of View ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Intensive Mothering ◽  
Child Centered ◽  
White Mothers ◽  
Mothers Of Color ◽  
Depth Interviews

Prior research highlights how mothers across social classes express similar beliefs that good parenting adheres to the tenets of intensive mothering by being child-centered, time-consuming, and self-sacrificing. Yet intensive mothering ideologies emphasize parenting tactics that assume children’s basic needs are met, while ignoring how mothers in poverty devise distinctive childrearing strategies and logics to perform carework demanded by deprivation, discrimination, and a meager social safety net. I theorize inventive mothering that instead highlights the complexity and agency of poor mothers’ innovative efforts to ensure children’s access to resources, protect children from the harms of poverty and racism, and present themselves as fit parents in the context of intersecting gender, class, and race stigma. Drawing on in-depth interviews with 70 mothers who experienced diaper need, I conceptualize diaper work as a case of inventive mothering that involves extensive physical, cognitive, and emotional labor. These findings show how focusing on childrearing practices experienced as “intense” from the point of view of more affluent, white mothers perpetuates inequalities by obscuring the complex labor poor mothers, especially poor mothers of color, perform when there is limited public support for fundamental aspects of childcare.

Caught in the Net: The Impact of Changes to Canadian Employment Insurance Legislation on Part-time Workers

2003 ◽  
Vol 2 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norene Pupo ◽  
Ann Duffy
Keyword(s):  
Labour Force ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Employment Insurance ◽  
The Social ◽  
Canadian Context ◽  
Insurance Programme ◽  
Part Time ◽  
Industrialised Countries ◽  
The Impact

Throughout Western highly industrialised countries, there has been a marked shift toward more conservative social policies signalling a dismantling of the welfare state as part of the process of globalisation. This paper examines the aetiology of the (un)employment insurance programme in the Canadian context. Recently, legislators have tightened eligibility rules, lowered earnings replacement rates and altered coverage requirements. While these changes signal a shredding of the social safety net, they differentially impact on certain segments of the population. Despite official pronouncements of fairness, employment insurance changes intensify the subordination women experience in the paid labour force.

Eliminating Extreme Poverty in Greece

2001 ◽  
Author(s):  
Manos Matsaganis ◽  
Fotis Papadopoulos ◽  
Panos Tskloglou
Keyword(s):  
Safety Net ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Extreme Poverty ◽  
Minimum Income ◽  
Complete Eradication ◽  
Eu Countries ◽  
Social Transfers ◽  
Alternative Scenarios ◽  
Moderate Cost

The poverty-reducing impact of social transfers is weaker in Greece than in other EU countries, primarily due to the absence of a minimum social safety net. The paper examines the extent and structure of extreme poverty in Greece and attempts to assess the likely effects of the introduction of a minimum income scheme, under alternative scenarios about the extent of non-take up by eligible households as well as leakages to ineligible ones. Our results indicate that such a scheme could lead to an almost complete eradication of extreme poverty and a considerable decline in aggregate inequality at a moderate cost.

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