Abstract
Scholars have examined how administrative burden creates barriers to accessing public benefits but have primarily focused on the challenges of claiming benefits. Less is known about the ...difficulties beneficiaries face when using public benefits, especially voucher-based public assistance programs. I argue that the costs of learning how to redeem benefits can discourage program use and undermine policy goals. To enrich the administrative burden framework, this study draws from a qualitative analysis of 43 participants in the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and Children (WIC) to develop a new subset of learning costs—redemption costs. I argue that two conditions: limited portability and reliance on third-party agents create redemption costs for beneficiaries. I apply these two conditions to two other voucher-based programs: the Housing Choice Voucher Program and the Child Care Subsidy. Examining redemption costs can help clarify when and where beneficiaries experience burdens, reasons behind discontinuity in program participation, and why public programs fail to meet objectives.
On weekday afternoons, dismissal bells signal not just the end of the school day but also the beginning of another important activity: the federally funded after-school programs that offer tutoring, ...homework help, and basic supervision to millions of American children. Nearly one in four low-income families enroll a child in an after-school program. Beyond sharpening students’ math and reading skills, these programs also have a profound impact on parents. In a surprising turn—especially given the long history of social policies that leave recipients feeling policed, distrusted, and alienated—government-funded after-school programs have quietly become powerful forces for political and civic engagement by shifting power away from bureaucrats and putting it back into the hands of parents. In State of Empowerment Carolyn Barnes uses ethnographic accounts of three organizations to reveal how interacting with government-funded after-school programs can enhance the civic and political lives of low-income citizens.
They Are Underpaid and Understaffed Barnes, Carolyn Y.; Henly, Julia R.
Journal of public administration research and theory,
04/2018, Letnik:
28, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Scholars have explored the nature and consequences of administrative burden but less is known about how citizens interpret costly encounters with the state. This qualitative study of 85 child care ...subsidy recipients applies attribution theory from psychology to illustrate how clients develop causal explanations for administrative burden. The findings show that clients either blamed negative experiences on bureaucrats — viewing workers as in control of their behavior, or the bureaucracy — blaming factors related to the subsidy system. In rare instances, clients viewed the bureaucracy as intentionally discouraging claims. We observed some variation by race/ethnicity and study sites. Examining clients’ causal explanations of administrative burden helps clarify how clients’ interpretation of costly bureaucratic encounters influences future claims, their perceptions of the state, and their political participation.
Predator–prey body size relationships influence food chain length, trophic structure, transfer efficiency, interaction strength, and the bioaccumulation of contaminants. Improved quantification of ...these relationships and their response to the environment is needed to parameterize food web models and describe food web structure and function. A compiled data set comprising 29 582 records of individual prey eaten at 21 locations by individual predators that spanned 10 orders of magnitude in mass and lived in marine environments ranging from the poles to the tropics was used to investigate the influence of predator size and environment on predator and prey size relationships. Linear mixed effects models demonstrated that predator–prey mass ratios (PPMR) increased with predator mass. The amount of the increase varied among locations and predator species and individuals but was not significantly influenced by temperature, latitude, depth, or primary production. Increases in PPMR with predator mass implied nonlinear relationships between log body mass and trophic level and reductions in transfer efficiency with increasing body size. The results suggest that very general rules determine dominant trends in PPMR in diverse marine ecosystems, leading to the ubiquity of size‐based trophic structuring and the consistency of observed relationships between the relative abundance of individuals and their body size.
In recent years, scholars have pointed to the politically demobilizing effects of means-tested assistance programs on recipients. In this study, we bridge the insights from policy feedback literature ...and adolescent political socialization research to examine how receiving means-tested programs shapes parent influence on adolescent political participation. We argue that there are differences in pathways to political participation through parent political socialization and youth internal efficacy beliefs for adolescents from households that do or do not receive means-tested assistance. Using data from a nationally representative sample of 536 Black, Latino, and White adolescents (50.8% female), we find that adolescents from means-tested assistance households report less parent political socialization and political participation. For all youth, parent political socialization predicts adolescent political participation. Internal political efficacy is a stronger predictor of political participation for youth from a non-means-tested assistance household than it is for youth from a household receiving means-tested assistance. These findings provide some evidence of differential paths to youth political participation via exposure to means-tested programs.
I Used to Get WIC … But Then I Stopped BARNES, CAROLYN; HALPERN-MEEKIN, SARAH; HOITING, JILL
RSF : Russell Sage Foundation journal of the social sciences,
09/2023, Letnik:
9, Številka:
5
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
This study examines how individuals assess administrative burdens and how these views change over time within the context of the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, ...and Children (WIC), which provides food to pregnant and breastfeeding women and children under age five. Using interview data from the Baby’s First Years: Mothers’Voices study (n = 80), we demonstrate how the circumstances of family life, shifting food needs and preferences, and the receipt of other resources shape how mothers perceive the costs and benefits of program participation. We find that mothers’perceptions of WIC’s costs and benefits vary over time and contribute to program participation trajectories, so many eligible people do not participate; need alone does not drive participation decisions.
Using data from 113 in-depth interviews with beneficiaries of social welfare programs, I examine the ease of access to the Special Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program for Women, Infants, and ...Children (WIC); the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP); and Medicaid during the COVID-19 pandemic. Policy changes that were enacted in response to COVID-19 were explicitly designed to reduce the administrative burden of program participation. I find that while WIC and Medicaid participants reported easier access to benefits, SNAP saw high demand and bureaucratic constraints that undermined access. SNAP participants encountered difficulties that they attributed to burdensome experiences to administrative exclusion. I show how applicants perceived organizational practices as excluding eligible populations from participation in government programs and undermining policies that were designed to reduce administrative burdens.
North Carolina—as a state in the racially segregated Southeast—offers a unique context to understand access to social services for Hispanic families and children. Theories of administrative burden ...posit that Hispanic families likely face high learning, compliance, and psychological costs. Hispanic families face challenges that compound these costs: limited English language and literacy proficiency, complex household composition, and citizenship status of family members and other household members. With new survey results and qualitative data on social service administrators and front-line workers, we examine how these costs may affect access to programs for Hispanic families who reside in a state with a history of racial divisions that have shaped local policy implementation. Some workers noted transportation barriers and complex application processes as limiting access. While we expected to find that Hispanic families may be disadvantaged by decentralized service delivery in a manner that is similar to the experiences of African American families, workers instead note significant resources that help facilitate Hispanic families’ access to programs. Workers view national anti-immigrant policies and rhetoric, rather than state and local policy rules or resource constraints, as limiting their capacity to serve Hispanic families.
Although drosophilids have been extensively studied in laboratories worldwide, their ecology is still relatively poorly understood. This is unfortunate because some species are currently expanding ...their geographic distribution and infesting fruit crops. Here, we investigated the relationship between drosophilids and potential plant hosts in a commercial fruit and vegetable distribution center in the Neotropical region. We collected discarded fruits and vegetables from this commercial center during two time periods (2007-2008 and 2017-2018). Resources were weighted and individually monitored in the laboratory. The drosophilids that emerged were identified, and the relationship between them and their resources was explored. From the 99,478 kg of potential hosts collected, we identified 48 plant taxa, from which 48,894 drosophilids of 16 species emerged. On both collecting occasions, drosophilid assemblages were strongly dominated by basically the same exotic species, which explore a broader range of resources, especially those of exotic origin, when compared to neotropical drosophilids. These results are concerning because the studied site, Along with other urban markets around the world, might be acting as sources of generalist widespread species that disperse to surrounding natural vegetation and contribute to biotic homogenization.
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