Government of Nepal has been providing social security allowance to its target group since 1994/95 in the form of cash and kind. Huge amount of money has been distributed by local government employees on manual basis. The needy and targeted poor people have been missed and high chance of double benefits by clever and ghost beneficiaries. The demand of social security allowance grant has been in...

This study examines struggles to bring people back into protected forests to enhance sustainable forest management and livelihoods using insights emerging from a co-management project in Malawi. It uses mixed social science methods and a process-based conceptualization of co-management to analyze experiences, and theory of reciprocal altruism to explain major findings of continuing local forest...

BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVES Janani Suraksha Yojana (JSY), a conditional cash transfer scheme introduced to improve the institutional delivery rates and thereby reduce the maternal and infant mortality was implemented in all States and Union Territories of India from 2007. The present study was carried out to identify the beneficiary level factors of utilization of JSY scheme in urban slums and rese...

On March 11, 2011, Governor Scott Walker of Wisconsin signed into law a bill that eliminated most collective bargaining rights for the state's public-sector workers. Many other cash-strapped states followed Wisconsin's lead and introduced or enacted similar restraints on the rights of their workers. Thousands of public workers, whose only means of protecting their rights rested in their ability...

This study provides the first set of empirical evidence on the determinants of social benefits received by urban families in China and the impact on income inequality using the China Household Income Project (CHIP) 1988 and 2002 data. It finds that the total urban social benefits strongly targeted the bottom pre-tax pre-transfer income decile. Cash transfers were negatively associated with inco...

The paper discusses the methodology and preliminary results of an investigation of the redistributive effects of social security contributions (SSC), personal income tax (PIT), public pensions as well as means-tested and non-means-tested cash benefits in Croatia. The transition from a preto a post-tax-and-benefit income is analyzed in order to reveal which instruments contribute most to the red...

The deficiencies of the Medicare program are rooted in its defined-benefit structure and in its use of price controls. Medicare should be transformed into a defined cash contribution made to beneficiaries' private plans or to the traditional Medicare program. The Federal Employees Health Benefits Program (FEHBP) is essentially such a system and is a good model for Medicare reform. The FEHBP has...