The Atypical Welfare Dependency Study In Urban Minimum Subsistence Guarantee System

In the early 1980's,G Gilder,C.Murray and L.Mead has found the phenomenon of welfare dependency in American social assistance system.In order to solve this problem,United States launched welfare reforms over the last decades,especially in the social assistance systems.In China,social assistance system has been developed to adapt to economic reform and social transformation since 1978.Now an integral institutional assistance system has been formed which is playing a key role to improve public well-being and maintain social stability.However,the public is doubt that the recipients of the Minimum Subsistence Guarantee System tend to be lazy and totally depend on this system,which is similar to the welfare dependency phenomenon in western countries.This paper begins by redefining undeserving recipients in the Minimum Subsistence Guarantee System and then makes working age recipients with ability to work to be our study object.Compared with the western recipients having typical welfare dependency behavior,Chinese recipients were proved to be different from the former in aspects of initial motivation,welfare dynamic and work logic,which are different form typical welfare dependency.Therefore,our paper defines Chinese working age recipients with working ability receive social assistance for a long time as the atypical welfare dependency.With the deepening of China's economic transformation and social change,the life course of the urban poor has changed.To the working age recipients with working ability,important events,family connection and macro-social change has influenced their personal life path and made their family fall into poverty,which changed the recipients' social assistance appeal.However,traditional social assistance,without caring about the life course of recipients,hasn't provided institutional support in time,which leads the recipients to unprotected,inactive life and labor market condition and the long-term welfare receipt.Therefore,the mismatch of institutional support and changing life course of recipients have affected the social assistance function and made recipients with working ability dependence the system for a long time.Focused on the theme of atypical welfare dependency,this paper answers the following questions:how the interaction of institutional support and changing life course influences the social assistance function?How the mismatch of these two factors results in the atypical welfare dependency?And how to re-match institutional support and changing life course in order to make social assistance work well and eliminate the atypical welfare dependency?By using survey and document analysis,this paper analyzes the long-term assistance receipt of able-bodied recipients and compares them with the recipients with typical welfare dependency behavior based on existed database,and follows by primary data of the able-bodied recipients in Nanjing and Changzhou by questionnaire survey and in-depth interview to figure out the current situation and the cause of atypical welfare dependency.This paper is in four main sections.The first presents the current situation of the able-bodied recipients and compares them with the recipients with typical welfare dependency behavior to define the atypical welfare dependency.The second section presents the typology of this kind of dependency and the behavior of the recipients,and how the important events,family connection and macro-social change make life course change.The third part presents the change of social assistance demands following the life course change.In the mean while,this paper also presents supports of these recipients received from social assistance system.Then this paper focus on the mismatch of social assistance support and life course,tries to find out conceptual and institutional reasons why able-bodied recipient in China formed the atypical welfare dependency.The final section proposes a combined social assistance system which i5 emergent and active.This system will re-match the changing life course of working age recipients with ability to work and make social assistance work well and eliminate the atypical welfare dependency.This article argues that the long-term dependence phenomenon of the able-bodied recipients is atypical welfare dependency,which caused by the mismatch of changing life course and institutional support.In order to eliminate the atypical welfare dependency,the social assistance needs to re-orient and focus more on life course of recipients,and follows the positive assistance concept.Then,an emergent and active social assistance system requires to protect daily life and to promote labor participation.Finally,the new parallelled assistance system structure,the smotivatied cash transfer model,the personalized assistance scheme are being combined to eliminate the causing factors,and finally encourage the atypical recipients jump out of social assistance system.