The Welfare Cliff In Zhangjiagang City’s Social Assistance And Its Control

Social security is an important part of state governance,and social assistance is an important part of social security.With the accomplishments in poverty alleviation,social assistance has entered a new stage of development.Looking at the current social assistance system and its methods,we can find an important change: the needs of the groups in difficulty are no longer the survival needs to solve food and clothing,but the developmental needs to improve the quality of life and enhance the sense of happiness.Changes in demand lead to new contradictions.The traditional social assistance policy has the problem of excessive superposition among the subsistence allowances.The subsistence allowances can obtain considerable social assistance resources,while the marginal and near-poor groups have a higher probability of poverty causation.Compared with the subsistence allowance group,the marginalized group has a lower quality of life and a lower sense of happiness,resulting in the "cliff effect" in social assistance.The welfare cliff phenomenon of social assistance reflects the shortcomings of existing assistance and is a manifestation of unfairness,which is not conducive to social progress and national governance.Based on Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs Theory,Goal Orientation Theory and Positive Welfare Theory,this paper takes the social assistance system and its practice in Zhangjiagang City,Jiangsu Province as the main research object,and describes the phenomenon,analyzes the impact,explores the reasons,and proposes countermeasures as the context.The research was carried out by means of questionnaires,interviews,and data analysis.The research believes that the formation of the social assistance welfare cliff is mainly caused by the government,the society and the individual.At the institutional dimension,the special assistance has never gotten rid of the shadow of "subsistence allowances",whether it is in the setting of the conditions of the assistance objects or the determination of the contents of assistance.Most of them still use the traditional form of assistance based on income and capital,which lacks precise positioning;at the social dimension,social support is insufficient,especially charitable assistance has not played a role,and has not formed an effective supplement to government policies;At the individual dimension,the groups in difficulty lack self-reliance,the concept of "waiting,relying,and wanting" prevails,and they lack initiative.In the process of realizing common prosperity,it is necessary to vigorously promote the systematic construction of the social assistance system,improve the assistance legal system,and optimize the assistance framework;improve the scientific nature of social assistance policies,improve the identification accuracy of assistance personnel,and enhance the matching degree of supply and demand;guide and encourage social participation,Mobilize the enthusiasm of the public to participate in assistance,give play to the complementary role of charitable resources,and form a diversified assistance pattern;promote the construction of "Internet +" social assistance,realize information-based collaborative governance,and better build a new pattern of co-construction,co-governance and shared social governance.