社会福利社会化:国际比较与启示

社会福利是衡量一个国家社会保障水平的重要标志,是一种高层次的社会保障。世界各国都有着自己特色的社会福利制度,本文对美英等6个有代表性的国家社会福利的内容、资金来源和管理服务进行比较分析,发现社会福利社会化、多元化已经成为社会福利制度发展的必然趋势。中国社会福利社会化的完善,需要明确小政府—大社会的福利理念,积极引导非营利组织的参与,加强立法,建立适度普惠型的社会福利制度。     

基于森的功能和能力福利理论的失地农民福利水平评价

研究目的:测算农民失地前后的福利水平。研究方法:模糊综合评价法。研究结果:失去土地后,农民的福利水平略有提高,模糊评价值从0.342上升到0.373,居住条件和发展空间的改善是失地农民福利水平提高的主要原因,而失地农民的经济状况、心理状况和居住环境则呈现出恶化趋势。研究结论:应该通过提升失地农民的人力资本、完善失地农民的社会保障制度、建立失地农民的心理调适机制,从而提高失地农民的福利水平。     

后危机时代扩大居民消费的路径

后危机时代,中国扩大内需的重点在于增加消费,而增加消费的重点在于增加城乡中低收入群体的消费。为此,必须增加居民的收入尤其是城乡中低收入群体的收入,并优化其收入结构。     

我国农民旅游市场问题分析及开发策略

开发农民旅游市场不仅是旅游企业谋求发展的机遇,也是拉动我国旅游经济发展的重要举措。目前我国农民旅游还处于旅游的初级阶段,本文针对我国农民旅游市场存在的问题做深入研究,从政府和旅游企业两方面着手,提出了一些开发策略。     

Understanding resident subjectivities toward tourism using Q method: Orchid Island,Taiwan

The pursuit of sustainable destination tourism should begin with an understanding of resident subjectivities. Residents are concerned with good governance and cultural integrity, and they are aware of their role as stakeholders in tourism in their communities. In this study, residents of Orchid Island, Taiwan, were interviewed using Q method in order to evaluate their subjectivities toward tourism. Forty-two statements regarding a theoretically and historically defined discourse of tourism were sorted by 34 respondents. This forced-choice method revealed four types of subjectivities, which are distinguished as Culture Broker, Cultural Conservative, Cultural Purist and Pragmatic Governance. The results show how the respondents perceived tourism in their destination. They agreed upon certain core issues regarding destination tourism, while contesting other issues. Respondents held strong views concerning how government policy affects their community and how tourism and culture shape each other. It is concluded that many issues in tourism research are highly relevant to residents of small tourism destination communities. This implies that tourism research should focus on understanding and coordinating resident subjectivities so as to inform government planning and decision-making, especially in indigenous communities or small islands.     

Lone Mothers: What is to be done?

This Dialogue presents the views of four authors, from the US, the UK, and Norway, on the best policies to help lone mothers. Lone mothers face an inevitable dilemma in allocating their time between earning income and caring for their children. The low-earning capacity of women in an unequal labor market exacerbates the problem, causing material hardship for many lone mothers and their families. The policy solutions proposed lie along a spectrum, ranging from those that seek to enable all lone mothers to take employment to those that aim to let mothers choose whether to take employment or care for their children themselves. Other policies discussed concern ways to value and support caregiving, improve the low-wage labor market for women, and provide a set of income supports that would both boost income and provide time to care for children.     

Profit reducing international outsourcing

Recent empirical evidence shows a negative relationship between international outsourcing and profitability. This paper provides a theoretical explanation for this phenomenon. We show that, in an oligopolistic market, firms earn lower profits in the outsourcing equilibrium compared to the situation where neither firm does outsourcing, and this holds irrespective of the intensity of competition. We show that whether international outsourcing is likely to reduce profit under more intense competition (measured by the degree of product differentiation, number of firms and the type of product market competition, namely, Cournot and Bertrand competition) is ambiguous. We further show that international outsourcing may be socially ‘excessive’ for the sourced country and for the world.     

Local impacts of a global crisis: Food price transmission,consumer welfare and poverty in Ghana

This paper takes a local perspective on global food price shocks by analyzing food price transmission between regional markets in Ghana. It also assesses the impacts of food price increases on various household groups. Taking the 2007–2008 global food crisis as an example, we show that prices for domestic grain products are highly correlated with world market prices. This is true both for products for which Ghana is highly import-dependent (e.g., rice) and the products for which Ghana is self-sufficient (e.g., maize). The econometric results also show that price transmission is high between regional producer markets and markets located in the country’s largest cities, and the distance between producer and consumer markets and the size of consumer markets matter in explaining the price transmission. The welfare analysis for households as consumers shows that the effect of world food prices appears relatively modest for the country as a whole due to relatively diverse consumption patterns within country. However, the national average hides important regional differences, both between regions and within different income groups. We find that the poorest of the poor—particularly those living in the urban areas—are hardest hit by high food prices. The negative effect of the food crisis is particularly strong in northern Ghana. The main explanations for this regional variation in the price effect is the different consumption patterns and much lower per capita income levels in the North of Ghana compared to other regions in the country.     

Rising Food Prices and Household Welfare: Evidence from Brazil in 2008

Food price inflation in Brazil in the 12 months to June 2008 was 18%, whereas overall inflation was 7%. Using spatially disaggregated monthly data on consumer prices and two different household surveys, we estimate the welfare consequences of these food price increases, and their distribution across households. Because Brazil is a large food producer, with a predominantly wage‐earning agricultural labour force, our estimates include general equilibrium effects on market and transfer incomes, as well as the standard estimates of changes in consumer surplus. Although the expenditure (or consumer surplus) effects were large, negative and markedly regressive everywhere, estimates of the market‐income effect were positive and progressive, particularly in rural areas. Because of this effect on the rural poor, and of the partial protection afforded by increases in two large social assistance benefits, the overall impact of higher food prices in Brazil was U‐shaped, with middle‐income groups suffering larger proportional losses than the very poor. Nevertheless, as Brazil is 80% urban, higher food prices still led to a greater incidence and depth of poverty at the national level.