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The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of the household registration and of employment contract on employee job insecurity in the Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs). The relationships between job satisfaction and the two components of job insecurity are also analysed.

The research uses original data collected through a questionnaire survey in six Chinese SOEs. In all, 309 samples are analysed mainly using hierarchical regression analysis.

The research finds household registration is a predictor of job insecurity while employment contract is not. Job satisfaction is found to be positively related to one of the components of job insecurity: the perceived severity of job loss.

To improve job security of the employees who are in vulnerable positions, improving the equality of social safety net is significant. In China, household registration causes unequal access to social welfare and employment opportunities; improving the equality may be more significant than seeking for permanent employment.

The research suggests two levels of factors influencing job insecurity: the macro-level factors that include the institutional configurations of social safety net; and the micro-level factors that include employment contract. The macro-level factors have fundamental influence while the micro-level factors are more apparent. The micro-level factors may manifest their influence only when the macro-level factors equally cover all the employees. The macro-level factors may also intermediate the relationship between job insecurity and satisfaction.

The purpose of this paper is to find the determinants of participation and targeting efficiency of the following safety net programs in West Bengal: Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Act (MNREGA), self-targeted program; National Rural Livelihood Mission (NRLM), subsidy based livelihood program; Indira Awaas Yojona (IAY), targeted cash transfer program and Public Distribution System (PDS), targeted in kind transfer program.

The study is based on a household survey comprising 900 households across three Districts: Murshidabad, Nadia and Burdwan.

Benefits from MNREGA and PDS are not substantial, whereas financial benefits are substantial from NRLM and IAY. This paper shows that poor people have higher likelihood of participation in MNREGA and PDS. But, non poor get disproportionate benefits from IAY and NRLM both have been designed for the poor. Therefore, targeting cannot remove elite capture altogether. Socially down trodden section have higher participation in MNREGA and PDS, whereas people who are at upper tier of social hierarchy enjoy the benefits of IAY and NRLM. However, it cannot be said that these programs miss their target completely.

The study suffers from the usual limitations of sampling.

Programs targeted for the poor are being appropriated by the non poor. If there is better targeting money will be channelized to the desired beneficiaries and welfare will be enhanced.

The study has unearthed the underlying reasons behind why some safety net programs have better targeting and some safety net programs have poor targeting.

The COVID-19 pandemic has caused many households to experience income shocks because of the unprecedented job loss, resulting in the demand for public and private food assistance programs and a surge in unemployment insurance filing in the USA. This study aims to investigate the association between social safety programs (e.g. supplementary nutritional assistance programs (SNAP), unemployment insurance and charitable food assistance) and household food sufficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic in the country.

The authors used the Household Pulse Surveys (HPS) conducted by the US Census Bureau from August 2020 to March 2021. And, the authors used an ordered probit model for the empirical analysis because the indicator of food sufficiency constructed from the HPS is an ordinal variable with four categories. The indicator identifies four groups of households: severe food insufficiency, moderate food insufficiency, mild food sufficiency and food sufficiency.

The results show that food sufficiency is significantly higher among the SNAP, unemployment insurance and charitable food assistance recipients than non-recipients. Furthermore, the results indicate that food sufficiency is significantly lower among black, Asian, Hispanic and other races than white households. Concerning the intersectional effect of social safety net programs and race/ethnicity on household food sufficiency, the authors find that the household food sufficiency is significantly higher among white, black and Asian households who benefited from SNAP, compared with non-beneficiary households. On the other hand, the authors find no evidence that participation in SNAP increases food sufficiency significantly among Hispanics and other races. In addition, the likelihood of food sufficiency increases significantly among white, black, Asian, Hispanic and other races that received unemployment insurance and charitable food assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic compared with those who did not benefit from the programs.

These results underscore the critical role collective America’s social safety net programs played in increasing food sufficiency among Americans during the COVID-19 pandemic. Specifically, the results suggest that families' basic needs (food sufficiency) would have been at risk if these safety net programs were not available to households during the pandemic. This, therefore, highlights the important role that government- and non-government-supported food emergency assistance programs can play in preventing people from facing food insufficiency problems in a tough time or during a crisis in the USA.

This study highlights the dynamic relationship between Americans’ social safety net programs and household food sufficiency during the COVID-19 pandemic.

The origins of corporate social responsibility (CSR) have been widely attributed to the work of scholars, and business managers as well, in North America and Western Europe. Inevitably, however, as the economic interaction of individual firms and entire nations has grown over the past several decades — call it globalization — so too has the concept and the practice of CSR spread throughout the world. It is certainly time to explore how CSR is being incorporated into the practice of business management in other regions and other countries. Therefore, in this chapter we will focus on Asia: specifically on Japan, South Korea, India, and China. It is interesting for academicians to understand how CSR is being absorbed and adapted into the business cultures of these four countries. Perhaps of even greater importance, it is vital that business managers know what to expect about the interaction between business and society as well as the government as their commercial activities grow in this burgeoning part of the world.

For each of these four countries, we will provide an overview of the extent to which CSR has become a part of the academic community and also how it is being practiced and incorporated in everyday management affairs. We will see that there are very significant differences among these countries which lead to the natural question: why? To answer this question, we will use an eight-part analytical framework developed specifically for this purpose. We will look at the history, the dominant religious beliefs, the relevant social customs, the geography, the political structures, the level of economic development, civil society institutions, and the “safety net” of each country. As a result of this analysis, we believe, academicians can learn how CSR is absorbed and spread into commercial affairs, and managers can profit from learning more about what to expect when doing business in this increasingly important region.

It has been over a decade since the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) was passed in 1996 with the intention of “ending welfare as we know it.” The main cash assistance entitlement program that had been in place since the 1930s, Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), was eliminated in favor of the non-entitlement Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program. This drastic change occurred at a time of economic growth, where employment and wages rose across the United States. Initially, caseloads fell dramatically.

Increased economic insecurity helps to spur individuals to work harder and be more efficient according to the theory of work incentive. However, in a civilised society, the society has a moral obligation to provide basic needs and social safety nets for its poor and unfortunate members who, due to factors beyond their own control, have not been able to earn a living. This paper analyses the trade‐off between economic reforms and economic and social security in India and China. The findings show that both countries’ attempts to minimise the social costs of economic reforms have not been successful. The policy implications are also discussed.

The extent to which means-tested transfers, social insurance, and tax credits fill the gap between a family's private resources and the poverty threshold is a periodic barometer of the social safety net. Using data on families from the Current Population Survey I examine how the level and composition of before- and after-tax and after-transfer poverty gaps changed in response to changes in the policy and economic landscapes over the past two decades. The estimates presented here indicate not only dramatic changes in the level and sources of income maintenance programs filling the poverty gap, but also dramatic changes in which demographic groups successfully fill the gap. From the peak-to-peak business-cycle years of 1979 to 1999, the fraction of the gap left unfilled among non-elderly families in poverty has expanded by 25 percent, while the unfilled gap has increased by 50 percent among single female-headed families, families headed by non-whites, and families residing in the Northeast. In a given year the poor in the South fill considerably less of the poverty gap with cash welfare, but make up for much of the shortfall with higher payments of food stamps, SSI, and SSDI. Over time the poor in all regions of the country have substituted SSI, SSDI, and the EITC for cash welfare. Indeed, by 1999 the unfilled gap for families with related children present would be one-fifth larger without the EITC. With the exception of married-couple families, this apparent rate of replacement of disability payments and tax credits for cash welfare is less than one for one, leaving most poor families, especially non-white families and single female-headed families, financially more vulnerable today than in previous decades.

This study aims to explore how social support has reshaped the care of older adults living alone in northeast Thailand during the COVID-19 pandemic.

This study used a qualitative method using a narrative gerontological perspective with a descriptive design. Purposive sampling was conducted from 20 in-depth narrative interviews between November 2021 and February 2022 in Maha Sarakham province, northeast Thailand. Data transcriptions were performed using a narrative analytical process.

The in-depth narrative interviews indicated that older adults living alone during the coronavirus pandemic valued a comfortable life, a sense of place, favourable living arrangements, self-reliance, life goals and meaningful life. The gerontological analysis showed that social support for older adults living alone included a social safety net, networking, supporting needs, physical care and mental health responses to the COVID-19 pandemic.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first qualitative narrative gerontological study to explore how social support reshaped the care of older adults living alone during the COVID-19 pandemic in northeast Thailand.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship between social capital and subjective ranking of household economic well-being in transition countries. The current study tests whether the performance of formal institutions moderates this link.

The analyses are based on the data from the second wave of the Life in Transition Survey. The measures “generosity of welfare policy (social safety nets)” and “ability of formal institutions to control inflation” were provided by the Bertelsmann Transformation Index Project. The study uses four measures of social capital: trust in family, trust in friends and acquaintances, trust in most people and the number of support sources. To test the hypotheses, the study employs mixed-effects regression models.

The study indicates a significant positive effect of social capital on subjective household well-being. Formal institutions do not have a significant effect on subjective ranking of household well-being. The evidence on institutions as moderators rejects the substitution effect between formal institutions and social capital. Higher generosity of welfare policy institutions and higher ability of formal institutions to control inflation strengthen the positive effect of particular trust (trust in family and trust in friends and acquaintances) on subjective ranking on the ladder of social standing (subjective ranking of household well-being), which is in line with the “crowding in” theory.

The paper adds on the limited research on transition countries. The paper contributes to the discussion on “crowding in” and “crowding out” effects of formal institutions on social capital.