An Analysis Of Welfare Dependency Among Inimum Livelihood Guarantee Recipients In Shanghai

Since its establishment over ten years ago, the urban Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (MLG, or Dibao) program has not only benefited the lives of the urban poor, but also played significant roles in maintaining social stability and constructing a harmonious socialist society. However, in the process of its implementation, welfare dependency has emerged as a new phenomenon, hindering the implementation of broad social welfare policies and challenging the goal of"building a well-off society"established by the Chinese Communist Party at the Sixteenth National Congress.Theoretical analysis about welfare dependency originated from western advanced industrialized welfare states and has become a hot topic in current debates about welfare reforms in the western countries. In China, the issue of welfare dependency has also drawn increasing attention among government officials and scholars in recent years. As one of the most developed cities and the first to enact MLG, Shanghai provides solid economic and social basis for analyzing and obtaining solutions for welfare dependency in MLG.Through a case study of a community (jiedao) of Pudong New District in Shanghai, this thesis analyzes the phenomenon of welfare dependency among MLG recipients and its possible causes. The thesis concludes that welfare dependency does exist in the policy and implementation of MLG in Shanghai. The existence of welfare dependency has led to the waste of public finance, had adverse effects on the equity orientation of social welfare policies, yielded the reliance of welfare recipients on MLG assistance, and created some social anger among societal members. The main factors leading to welfare dependency in MLG include pitfalls in policy design, limitations in policy implementation, and personal reasons of MLG recipients. Based on these analyses and according to the actual situations of the study community, the thesis suggests several possible solutions to the reduction and elimination of welfare dependency, such as improving MLG policy design, strengthening policy implementation, and building MLG recipients'work capacities.