The Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (MLG) system in urban China is functioned as the last resort safety net for poor people and plays a substantial role in poverty reduction. This paper provides new... Show moreThe Minimum Livelihood Guarantee (MLG) system in urban China is functioned as the last resort safety net for poor people and plays a substantial role in poverty reduction. This paper provides new empirical insights into the MLG development across 31 regions in urban China between 2003 and 2013. In addition to widely used indicators like benefit levels and number of benefit recipients, we construct two indicators of MLG replacement rates to measure the generosity of the benefits relative to income from work. The results show that the development of the urban MLG system in China has followed different tracks before and after 2008. Since 2008, the governments have made great efforts to increase the generosity of the MLG system while put more stringent conditions on MLG beneficiaries. Moreover, since 2008, the generosity levels of the MLG programmes began to converge across regions. Show less
Wu, H.Y.; Thijssen, P.E.; Klerk, E. de; Vonk, K.K.D.; Wang, J.; Hamer, B. den; ... ; Daxinger, L. 2016
This thesis collects six empirical studies regarding the developments of social assistance benefits, their determinants and the impact of the benefit changes on income polarization. The... Show more This thesis collects six empirical studies regarding the developments of social assistance benefits, their determinants and the impact of the benefit changes on income polarization. The first study suggests that the real minimum income benefit levels increased in many OECD countries whilst minimum income replacement rates declined on average. The increased benefit levels reflect policy changes while the declined replacement rates do not reflect benefit cuts but larger wage increases. The second study shows that globalization, soaring levels of unemployment and trade unions have triggered social assistance and minimum income benefit reforms. The third study indicates that the Lisbon Strategy has been positively associated with minimum income benefit developments since 2005. The findings in the fourth study suggest that in China, minimum income benefit programs vary considerably across regions and the benefit generosity has been increasing over the decade although still at low levels in an international perspective. The fifth and sixth studies focus on the indicator of income polarization to analyze income distribution. The fifth study shows that income polarization is stable in European countries and Europe as a whole. The sixth study further indicates that tax-benefit systems are essential in reducing initial market income polarization. Show less
This paper studies the relationship between egocentric collaboration networks and knowledge creation at the individual level. For egocentric networks we focus on the characteristics of tie strength... Show moreThis paper studies the relationship between egocentric collaboration networks and knowledge creation at the individual level. For egocentric networks we focus on the characteristics of tie strength and tie configuration, and knowledge creation is assessed by the number of citations. Using a panel of 1042 American scientists in five disciplines and fixed effects models, we found an inverted U-shaped relationship between network average tie strength and citation impact, because an increase in tie strength on the one hand facilitates the collaborative knowledge creation process and on the other hand decreases cognitive diversity. In addition, when the network average tie strength is high, a more skewed network performs better because it still has a “healthy” mixture of weak and strong ties and a balance between exploration and exploitation. Furthermore, the tie strength skewness moderates the effect of network average tie strength: both the initial positive effect and the later negative effect of an increase in tie strength are smaller in a more skewed network than in a less skewed one. Show less
