chore(script): Refactor synthesis toward interventions
Refactor to start breakdown from interventions and then move towards individual categories and inequality breakdowns within the sections. It should follow intervention -> inequality/region logic.
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@ -532,9 +532,7 @@ This points to, first, no decrease in academic interest in the topic over this p
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second, no linearly developing concentration or centralization of knowledge output and dissemination,
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and third potentially no clear-cut increase of *relevant* output over time either.
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Lastly, several years such as 2001, 2002, 2005 and 2008 are clear outliers in their large amount of average citations which can point to one of several things:
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It can point to clusters of relevant literature feeding wider dissemination or cross-disciplinary interest, a possible sign of still somewhat unfocused research production which does not approach from a single coherent perspective yet.
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Positive outlier years in citation amount can point to clusters of relevant literature feeding wider dissemination or cross-disciplinary interest, a possible sign of still somewhat unfocused research production which does not approach from a single coherent perspective yet.
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It can also point to a centralization of knowledge production, with studies feeding more intensely off each other during the review process, a possible sign of more focused knowledge production and thus valuable to more closely review during the screening process.
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Or it may mean that clearly influential studies have been produced during those years, a possibility which may be more relevant during the early years (2000-2008).
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@ -622,25 +620,10 @@ Since policies employed in the pursuit of increased equality can take a wide for
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the following synthesis will first categorize between the main thematic area and its associated interventions,
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which are then distinguished between for their primary outcome inequalities.
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## Income inequality through a vertical lens
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## Labour protection
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One of the primary lenses through which policy interventions to reduce inequalities in the world of work are viewed is that of income inequality, often measured for all people throughout a country or subsets thereof.
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At the same time, the primacy of income should not be overstated as disregarding the intersectional nature of inequalities may lead to adverse targeting or intervention outcomes, as can be seen in the following studies on policies to increase overall income equality.
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### minimum wage
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@Adams2015 study the effects of labour, business and credit regulations, FDI and school enrolment looks at their long-term correlations to income inequality in developing countries from 1970 to 2012.
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They find that in MENA, SSA, LAC and to some extend AP increased labour and business regulations are actually negatively related to equitable income distribution, with market regulation not having significant effects.
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Similarly, FDI is negatively related and the authors suggest it is unlikely to generate general welfare effects in developing countries as it often has the wrong targeting incentive structure.
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The authors identify developing countries lacking in institutional capability to accomplish regulatory policies optimized for benefits and see the need for policies requiring more specific targeting of inequality reduction as their agenda.
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On the other, they find school enrolment and thus education-oriented policies to be positively related with an equitable income distribution,
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suggesting it increases the capacity of public administration practitioners and in turn lead to more adapted policies specific to developing countries' institutional contexts.
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Overall, the authors suggest that regulatory policy in developing countries needs to be built for their specific contexts and not exported from developed countries due to their different institutional capabilities and structural makeup.
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The study is limited in its design focus that lying purely on the macro-level regional analyses and can thus, when finding correlations towards income inequality, also only identify far-reaching structural and institutional possible root causes.
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While the literature on policy efforts towards income redistribution is large,
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studies which focus on the direct effects of individual policy interventions on income inequality and its possible linkages with other inequalities tends to focus on policies such as minimum wage impositions, direct transfers from the state or subsidies for individual life aspects.
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{{++ insert regional breakdown++}}
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<!-- minimum wage -->
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@Alinaghi2020 conduct a study using a microsimulation to estimate the effects of a minimum wage increase in New Zealand on overall income inequality and further disaggregation along gender and poverty lines.
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It finds limited redistributional effects for the policy, with negligible impact on overall income inequality and the possibility of actually increasing inequalities among lower percentile income households.
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Additionally, while it finds a significant reduction in some poverty measures for sole parents that are in employment, when looking at sole parents overall the effects become insignificant again.
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@ -656,65 +639,31 @@ For hours worked there is a significant negative impact on women's hours worked,
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Limitations of the study include some sort-dependency in their panel data and only being able to account for effects during a period of economic growth.
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Thus, while overall income inequality seems well targeted in the intervention, it may exacerbate the gender gap that already existed at the same time.
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<!-- cash transfer -->
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@Emigh2018 study the effects of direct state transfers to people in poverty in the post-socialist market transition countries of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
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It first lookst at the correlations of socio-demographic characteristics with poverty to find that in each country there was an increased probability for poverty of low-education, larger and predominantly Roma households.
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It also found that poverty itself was most feminized Hungary, the country with the most advanced market transition in the study period, and least feminized in Bulgaria, the country with the least advanced market transition, and suggests that poverty may have feminized as the market transitions progressed.
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For the state transfers it found that while the level of payments may have been too small to eliminate longer-term adverse effects of the market transitions,
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in each country's case the transfers to individuals reduced their poverty and were beneficial at least in the short term.
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The authors thus suggest that their findings may be compatible both with an institutionalist perspective seeing poverty-eliminating benefits in the short term and with an underclass perspective which contends that nonetheless the transfers do not eliminate the deprivations members of disadvantaged groups face, while providing little evidence for generating welfare dependency proposed in a more neoclassical perspective.
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However, due to no long-term panel data available to fully analyse the underclass and neoclassical arguments, these findings should not be understood too generalizable.
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<!-- non-spatial policy but spatial effects -->
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@Gilbert2001 undertake a study looking at the distributional effects of introducing a minimum wage in Britain, with a specific spatial component.
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Overall it finds little effect on income inequality in the country.
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It finds that the effects on rural areas differ depending on their proximity to urban areas.
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While overall income inequality only decreases a small amount, the intervention results in effective targeting with remote rural households having around twice the reduction in inequality compared to others.
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Rural areas that are accessible to urban markets are less affected, with insignificant impacts to overall income inequality reduction.
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One limit of the study is that it has to assume no effects on employment after the enaction of the minimum wage for its results to hold.
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{{++ insert intervention/outcome breakdown ++}}
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In a study on the impacts of minimum wage and direct cash transfers in Brazil on the country's income inequality,
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@SilveiraNeto2011 especially analyse the way the policies interact with spatial inequalities.
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It finds that incomes between regions have converged during the time frame and overall the cash transfers under the 'Bolsa Familia' programme and minimum wage were accounting for 26.2% of the effect.
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Minimum wage contributed 16.6% of the effect to overall Gini reduction between the regions while cash transfers accounted for 9.6% of the effect.
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The authors argue that this highlights the way even non-spatial policies can have a positive (or, with worse targeting or selection, negative) influence on spatial inequalities,
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as transfers occurring predominantly to poorer regions and minimum wages having larger impacts in those regions created quasi-regional effects without being explicitly addressed in the policies.
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Some limitations include limited underlying data only making it possible to estimate the cash transfer impacts for the analysis end-line,
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and minimum wage effects having to be constructed from the effects wages equal to minimum-wage.
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## Gender inequality
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@Cieplinski2021 undertake a simulation study on the income inequality effects of both a policy targeting a reduction in working time and the introduction of a UBI in Italy.
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It finds that while both decrease overall income inequality, measured through Gini coefficient, they do so through different channels.
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While provision of a UBI sustains aggregate demand, thereby spreading income in a more equitable manner,
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working time reductions significantly decrease aggregate demand through lower individual income but significantly increases labour force participation and thus employment.
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It also finds that through these channels of changing aggregate demand, the environmental outcomes are oppositional, with work time reduction decreasing and UBI increasing the overall ecological footprint.
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One limitation of the study is the modeling assumption that workers will have to accept both lower income and lower consumption levels under a policy of work time reduction through stable labour market entry for the results to hold.
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Gender inequality is the second most reviewed dimension of workplace inequality in the study sample,
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with a variety of studies looking at predominantly it through the lens of female economic empowerment or through closing gender pay gaps.
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{{++ insert regional breakdown++}}
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<!-- economic empowerment and wage gap -->
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Looking at the returns of the Tanzanian 'Universal Primary Education' programme on consumption and on rural labour market outcomes, @Delesalle2021, finds outcomes that additionally differ along spatial and gender lines.
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The programme both attempted to increase access to schools but also changed curricula to contain more technical classes, judged relevant to increase equity in rural areas.
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Even though the programme aims to increase universal equality of access to education, the study finds that gender, geographical and income inequalities persist throughout, with individuals that complete primary education more likely to be male urban wage workers.
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The study measures returns purely on consumption of households to show the estimated effect on their productivity ---
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here, it finds generally positive returns but greatest for non-agricultural work, self-employed or as wage work.
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Importantly, the introduction of more technical classes, however, also changes employment sector choices, with men working less in agricultural work and more in non-farm wage sectors and an increased probability for rural women to both work in agriculture and to work formally.
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Limitations of the study include the inability to directly identify intervention compliers and having to construct returns for each household head only and a possibly unobserved 'villagization' effect by bringing people together in community villages for their education leading to other unobserved variable impacting the returns.
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@Al-Mamun2014 conduct a study on the impacts of an urban micro-finance programme in Malaysia on the economic empowerment of women.
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The programme introduced the ability for low-income urban individuals to receive collateral-free credit.
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The study finds that the programme, though not specifically aimed at women, indeed increased women's economic empowerment with an increase in household decision-making, as well as increased personal economic security.
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Primarily this is due to the increased access to finance, though it also functions thorugh an increase of collective agency established for the women in organised meetings and trainings.
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It also finds, however, that the empowerment outcomes are constrained by the inability for individuals to obtain loans, with the programme only disbursing group loans which are harder to achieve through obstacles to collective organisation by different racial and socio-demographic backgrounds in each dwelling.
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The study is somewhat limited in its explanatory power since even through its random sampling design it can not establish control for all factors required in experimental design.
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In an observational study looking at the inclusive or exclusionary effects of infrastructure development, @Stock2021 analyses the 'gender inclusive' development of a solar park in India which specifically aims to work towards micro-scale equality through regional uplifting.
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The project included a training and temporary employment to local unskilled/semi-skilled labour.
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It finds that the development instead impacted equality negatively, creating socio-economic exclusion and disproportionately negatively affected women of lower castes.
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While acquiring basic additional skills, none of the women participating in training remained connected to the operators of the solar park and none were hired.
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An insignificant amount of women from local villages were working at the solar park, of which most belonged to the dominant caste, and the redistributive potential was stymied through capture by village female elites.
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The author suggests this is an example of institutional design neglecting individual agency and structural power relations, especially intersectional inequalities between gender and caste.
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The study is limited in explanatory power through its observational design, not being able to make causal inferences.
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In turn, @Field2019 undertake an experimental study looking at the effects of granting women increased access to their own financial accounts and training on their employment and hours worked, as well as more long-term economic empowerment.
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The background of the experiment was the rural Indian MGNREGS[^1] programme which, despite ostensibly mandated gender wage parity, runs the risk of discouraging female workers and restrictring their agency by depositing earned wages into a single household account --- predominantly owned by the male head of household.
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To grant increased financial access, the treatment changed the deposits into newly opened individual accounts for the women workers, as well as providing additional training to some women.
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It found that, short-term, the deposits into women's individual accounts in combination with provided training increased their labour supply, while longer-term there was an increased acceptance of female work in affected households and a significant increase in women's hours worked.
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The impacts on increased hours worked were concentrated on those households where previously women worked relatively lower amounts and there were stronger norms against female work while less constrained households' impacts dissipated over time.
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The authors suggest the primary channel is the newly increased bargaining power through having a greater control of one's income, and that it in turn also reflects onto gender norms themselves.
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[^1]: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, one of the largest redistribution programmes on the household level in the world, entitling each household to up to 100 days of work per year.
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<!-- maternal intersection, children -->
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A variety of studies also look at female economic empowerment outcomes through a more generational lens,
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focusing on the effects of interventions aimed at maternity support ---
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childcare programmes, paid leave and maternity benefits.
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### Maternity and child-care benefits
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@Broadway2020 study the introduction of universal paid maternal leave in Australia, looking at its impacts on mothers returning to work and the conditions they return under.
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It finds that, while there is a short-term decrease of mothers returning to work since they make use of the introduced leave period, over the long-term (after six to nine months) there is a significant positive impact on return to work.
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@ -748,29 +697,104 @@ It also finds significantly positive impacts on the human capital of the childre
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This suggests childcare costs being removed through a quasi-subsidy reducing the required childcare time burden on mothers, increasing parental agency and employment choices.
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Some limitations to the study include a relatively small overall sample size, as well as employment effects becoming insignificant when the effect is measured on randomization alone (without an additional instrumental variable).
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{{++ insert intervention/outcome breakdown ++}}
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### Health care
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## Spatial inequality
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@Carstens2018 conduct an analysis of the potential factors influencing mentally ill individuals in the United States to participate in the labour force, using correlation between different programmes of Medicaid and labour force status.
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In trying to find labour force participation predictors it finds employment motivating factors in reduced depression and anxiety, increased responsibility and problem-solving and stress management being positive predictors.
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In turn barriers of increased stress, discrimination based on their mental, loss of free time, loss of government benefits and tests for illegal drugs were listed as barriers negatively associated with labour force participation.
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For the government benefits, it finds significant variations for the different varieties of Medicaid programmes, with the strongest netagive labour force participation correlated to Medicaid ABD, a programme for which it has to be demonstrated that an individual cannot work due to their disability.
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The authors suggest this shows the primary channel of the programme becoming a benefit trap, with disability being determined by not working and benefits disappearing when participants enter the labour force, creating dependency to the programme as a primary barrier.
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Two limitations of the study are its small sample size due to a low response rate, and an over-representation of racial minorities, women and older persons in the sample mentioned as introducing possible downward bias for measured labour force participation rates.
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### Training & Accomodation
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{{++ insert regional breakdown++}}
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Similarly, @Shepherd-Banigan2021 undertake a qualitative study on the significance of vocational and educational training provided for disabled veterans in the United States.
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It finds that both the vocational and educational services help strengthen individual agency, autonomy and motivation but impacts can be dampened if the potential for disability payment loss due to the potential for job acquisition impedes skill development efforts.
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The primary barriers of return to work efforts identified are an individual's health problems as well as various programmes not acommodating the needs of disabled veteran students,
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while the primary Facilitators identified are financial assistance provided for education as well as strengthened individual agency through motivation.
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Some limitations include a possible bias of accommodations required through the sample being restricted to veterans with a caregiver, which often signals more substantial impairments than for a larger training-participatory sample, as well as the data not being able to identify the impact of supported employment.
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<!-- non-spatial policy but spatial effects -->
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@Gilbert2001 undertake a study looking at the distributional effects of introducing a minimum wage in Britain, with a specific spatial component.
|
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Overall it finds little effect on income inequality in the country.
|
||||
It finds that the effects on rural areas differ depending on their proximity to urban areas.
|
||||
While overall income inequality only decreases a small amount, the intervention results in effective targeting with remote rural households having around twice the reduction in inequality compared to others.
|
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Rural areas that are accessible to urban markets are less affected, with insignificant impacts to overall income inequality reduction.
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One limit of the study is that it has to assume no effects on employment after the enaction of the minimum wage for its results to hold.
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An experimental study on the impacts of benefits and vocational training counseling for disabled veterans in the United States by @Rosen2014 measures the effects on return to work through average hours worked.
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It identifies time worked through a timeline follow-back calendar, measuring the change in days worked in the 28 days preceding the final study measurement.
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Here, it finds the sessions having a significant increase on more waged days worked, with an additional three days for the 28 preceding days on average.
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One limitation is the inability of the study to locate an active ingredient:
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Though the intervention clearly aims at strengthening some aspect of individual agency, the exact mediators are not clear, with neither beliefs about work, beliefs about benefits, nor provided service use for mental health or substance abuse impacted significantly.
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In a study on the impacts of minimum wage and direct cash transfers in Brazil on the country's income inequality,
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@SilveiraNeto2011 especially analyse the way the policies interact with spatial inequalities.
|
||||
It finds that incomes between regions have converged during the time frame and overall the cash transfers under the 'Bolsa Familia' programme and minimum wage were accounting for 26.2% of the effect.
|
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Minimum wage contributed 16.6% of the effect to overall Gini reduction between the regions while cash transfers accounted for 9.6% of the effect.
|
||||
The authors argue that this highlights the way even non-spatial policies can have a positive (or, with worse targeting or selection, negative) influence on spatial inequalities,
|
||||
as transfers occurring predominantly to poorer regions and minimum wages having larger impacts in those regions created quasi-regional effects without being explicitly addressed in the policies.
|
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Some limitations include limited underlying data only making it possible to estimate the cash transfer impacts for the analysis end-line,
|
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and minimum wage effects having to be constructed from the effects wages equal to minimum-wage.
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The studies thus not only reinforce recommendations for strength-based approaches, emphasizing the benefits of work, but also highlight the targeting importance of subsidy programmes in general on the one hand,
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in the worst case reducing equity through bad targeting mechanisms,
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and their negative reinforcement effects widening existing inequalities of gender, age and racial discrimination through such targeting on the other.
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With a similar focus on agency, @Gates2000 conducts a qualitative study on the mechanisms of workplace accomodation for people with mental health conditions to allow their successful return-to-work.
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The intervention is based on an accommodation which disaggregates the effects of social and technical components of the process and included a disclosure and psychoeducational plan.
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It finds that successfull return-to-work through accommodation requires consideration of the social component ('who is involved'), with unsuccessful accommodation often only relying on the functional aspect ('what is involved').
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The primary barrier identified for successful return-to-work are actually relationship issues not functional ones, with supervisors playing a key role for the success of the accommodation process.
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Additionally, it highlighted the necessity of strengthening the individual agency of the returnee, accomplished in the intervention through a concrete training plan with the worker but also with other key workplace players such as the supervisors.
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Additionally, providers must be willing to develop a disclosure plan with the employee and enter the workplace itself to adequately assist in the accommodation process.
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Limitations to the study include the limited generalizability of its findings with a small non-randomized sample size and restriction to mental health disability.
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### Direct Transfer
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@Emigh2018 study the effects of direct state transfers to people in poverty in the post-socialist market transition countries of Hungary, Romania and Bulgaria.
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It first lookst at the correlations of socio-demographic characteristics with poverty to find that in each country there was an increased probability for poverty of low-education, larger and predominantly Roma households.
|
||||
It also found that poverty itself was most feminized Hungary, the country with the most advanced market transition in the study period, and least feminized in Bulgaria, the country with the least advanced market transition, and suggests that poverty may have feminized as the market transitions progressed.
|
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For the state transfers it found that while the level of payments may have been too small to eliminate longer-term adverse effects of the market transitions,
|
||||
in each country's case the transfers to individuals reduced their poverty and were beneficial at least in the short term.
|
||||
The authors thus suggest that their findings may be compatible both with an institutionalist perspective seeing poverty-eliminating benefits in the short term and with an underclass perspective which contends that nonetheless the transfers do not eliminate the deprivations members of disadvantaged groups face, while providing little evidence for generating welfare dependency proposed in a more neoclassical perspective.
|
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However, due to no long-term panel data available to fully analyse the underclass and neoclassical arguments, these findings should not be understood too generalizable.
|
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### Financial agency
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@Al-Mamun2014 conduct a study on the impacts of an urban micro-finance programme in Malaysia on the economic empowerment of women.
|
||||
The programme introduced the ability for low-income urban individuals to receive collateral-free credit.
|
||||
The study finds that the programme, though not specifically aimed at women, indeed increased women's economic empowerment with an increase in household decision-making, as well as increased personal economic security.
|
||||
Primarily this is due to the increased access to finance, though it also functions thorugh an increase of collective agency established for the women in organised meetings and trainings.
|
||||
It also finds, however, that the empowerment outcomes are constrained by the inability for individuals to obtain loans, with the programme only disbursing group loans which are harder to achieve through obstacles to collective organisation by different racial and socio-demographic backgrounds in each dwelling.
|
||||
The study is somewhat limited in its explanatory power since even through its random sampling design it can not establish control for all factors required in experimental design.
|
||||
|
||||
In turn, @Field2019 undertake an experimental study looking at the effects of granting women increased access to their own financial accounts and training on their employment and hours worked, as well as more long-term economic empowerment.
|
||||
The background of the experiment was the rural Indian MGNREGS[^1] programme which, despite ostensibly mandated gender wage parity, runs the risk of discouraging female workers and restrictring their agency by depositing earned wages into a single household account --- predominantly owned by the male head of household.
|
||||
To grant increased financial access, the treatment changed the deposits into newly opened individual accounts for the women workers, as well as providing additional training to some women.
|
||||
It found that, short-term, the deposits into women's individual accounts in combination with provided training increased their labour supply, while longer-term there was an increased acceptance of female work in affected households and a significant increase in women's hours worked.
|
||||
The impacts on increased hours worked were concentrated on those households where previously women worked relatively lower amounts and there were stronger norms against female work while less constrained households' impacts dissipated over time.
|
||||
The authors suggest the primary channel is the newly increased bargaining power through having a greater control of one's income, and that it in turn also reflects onto gender norms themselves.
|
||||
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[^1]: The Mahatma Gandhi National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme, one of the largest redistribution programmes on the household level in the world, entitling each household to up to 100 days of work per year.
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## ALMP
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Similarly, @Whitworth2021 analyse the spatial consequences of a UK work programme on spatial factors of job deprivation or opportunity increases.
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The programme follows a quasi-marketized approach of rewarding employment-favourable results of transitions into employment and further sustained months in employment.
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The author argues, however, that the non-spatial implementation of the policy leads to spatial outcomes.
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Founded on the approach of social 'creaming' and 'parking' and applied to the spatial dimension,
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the study shows that already job-deprived areas indeed experience further deprivations under the programme,
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while non-deprived areas are correlated with positive impacts, thereby further deteriorating spatial inequality outcomes.
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This occurs because of providers in the programme de-prioritizing the already deprived areas ('parking') in favour prioritizing wealthier areas for improved within-programme results.
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## Trade liberalization
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@Adams2015 study the effects of labour, business and credit regulations, FDI and school enrolment looks at their long-term correlations to income inequality in developing countries from 1970 to 2012.
|
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They find that in MENA, SSA, LAC and to some extend AP increased labour and business regulations are actually negatively related to equitable income distribution, with market regulation not having significant effects.
|
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Similarly, FDI is negatively related and the authors suggest it is unlikely to generate general welfare effects in developing countries as it often has the wrong targeting incentive structure and can only generate more equity when correctly targeting connections from the local to surrounding economies.
|
||||
The authors identify developing countries lacking in institutional capability to accomplish regulatory policies optimized for benefits and see the need for policies requiring more specific targeting of inequality reduction as their agenda.
|
||||
On the other, they find school enrolment and thus education-oriented policies to be positively related with an equitable income distribution,
|
||||
suggesting it increases the capacity of public administration practitioners and in turn lead to more adapted policies specific to developing countries' institutional contexts.
|
||||
Overall, the authors suggest that regulatory policy in developing countries needs to be built for their specific contexts and not exported from developed countries due to their different institutional capabilities and structural makeup.
|
||||
The study is limited in its design focus that lying purely on the macro-level regional analyses and can thus, when finding correlations towards income inequality, also only identify far-reaching structural and institutional possible root causes.
|
||||
While the literature on policy efforts towards income redistribution is large,
|
||||
studies which focus on the direct effects of individual policy interventions on income inequality and its possible linkages with other inequalities tends to focus on policies such as minimum wage impositions, direct transfers from the state or subsidies for individual life aspects.
|
||||
|
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@Xu2021 study the effects of trade liberalization and FDI on income inequality in 38 countries in the Sub-Saharan region.
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It finds that increased FDI is negatively correlated with income inequality measured through the Gini coefficient, while trade liberalization is positively correlated with income inequality ---
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as are corruption, political stability, rule of law and education, which contradicts a variety of previous studies.
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The authors suggest this may be due to the difference in sample and variables used, and the periods under study.
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They suggest that FDI may primarily go to the agricultural sector which can employ low-skilled labour and thereby reduce inequalities,
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while trade openness in fact creates jobs in other countries through higher import than export rates.
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They do not provide clear channels through which education positively correlates with inequality, though some possibilities are an unequal access to education (through excluding factors such as those based on spatial, gender or financial inequalities), as well as a differentiated quality of education.
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Limitations of the study are the region-wide level of analysis which may obscure context-dependent mechanisms within the different institutional-structural contexts of the countries and potential hidden unobservables which may bias the results.
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## Diversity
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## Infrastructure/Climate Change
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@Kuriyama2021 look at the effects of Japan's move to decarbonise its energy sector on employment, especially rural employment.
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It finds that, while employment in general is positively affected, especially rural sectors benefit from additional employment probability.
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||||
|
|
@ -779,20 +803,15 @@ The study also suggests some possible inequality being created in between the di
|
|||
Limitations include its design as a projection model with multiple having to make strong assumptions about initial employment numbers and their extrapolation into the future,
|
||||
as well as having to assume the amount of generated power to increase as a stable square function.
|
||||
|
||||
Similarly, @Whitworth2021 analysis of the spatial consequences of a UK work programme on spatial factors of job deprivation or opportunity increases.
|
||||
The programme follows a quasi-marketized approach of rewarding employment-favourable results of transitions into employment and further sustained months in employment.
|
||||
The author argues, however, that the non-spatial implementation of the policy leads to spatial outcomes.
|
||||
Founded on the approach of social 'creaming' and 'parking' and applied to the spatial dimension,
|
||||
the study shows that already job-deprived areas indeed experience further deprivations under the programme,
|
||||
while non-deprived areas are correlated with positive impacts, thereby further deteriorating spatial inequality outcomes.
|
||||
This occurs because of providers in the programme de-prioritizing the already deprived areas ('parking') in favour prioritizing wealthier areas for improved within-programme results.
|
||||
In an observational study looking at the inclusive or exclusionary effects of infrastructure development, @Stock2021 analyses the 'gender inclusive' development of a solar park in India which specifically aims to work towards micro-scale equality through regional uplifting.
|
||||
The project included a training and temporary employment to local unskilled/semi-skilled labour.
|
||||
It finds that the development instead impacted equality negatively, creating socio-economic exclusion and disproportionately negatively affected women of lower castes.
|
||||
While acquiring basic additional skills, none of the women participating in training remained connected to the operators of the solar park and none were hired.
|
||||
An insignificant amount of women from local villages were working at the solar park, of which most belonged to the dominant caste, and the redistributive potential was stymied through capture by village female elites.
|
||||
The author suggests this is an example of institutional design neglecting individual agency and structural power relations, especially intersectional inequalities between gender and caste.
|
||||
The study is limited in explanatory power through its observational design, not being able to make causal inferences.
|
||||
|
||||
Highlighted by these studies, one issue of spatial inequality especially is that in many cases policies are crafted that are targeted without any spatial component, intended to function nationally.
|
||||
These non-spatial policies will, however, carry effects on inequalities that are created or exacerbated by spatial inequalities themselves.
|
||||
Ideally, policies can make use of spatial effects without having to include explicit spatial components,
|
||||
as was the case with Brazilian social programmes [@SilveiraNeto2011].
|
||||
Often however, spatial targeting considerations have to be explicitly invoked to not lose effectiveness or, worse, create adverse outcomes for specific spatial variations,
|
||||
as may be the case for some regions in Japan infrastructure efforts [@Kuriyama2021].
|
||||
## Infrastructure/Transport
|
||||
|
||||
<!-- explicitly spatial policies -->
|
||||
@Blumenberg2014 look at the effects of a housing mobility intervention in the United States on employment for disadvantaged households,
|
||||
|
|
@ -820,6 +839,44 @@ and that much of the increases in welfare are based on movement of rural workers
|
|||
The study creates causal inferences but is limited in its modelling approach representing a limited subset of empirical possibility spaces,
|
||||
as well as having to make the assumption of no population growth for measures to hold.
|
||||
|
||||
## Education
|
||||
|
||||
<!-- education -> gender economic empowerment -->
|
||||
Looking at the returns of the Tanzanian 'Universal Primary Education' programme on consumption and on rural labour market outcomes, @Delesalle2021, finds outcomes that additionally differ along spatial and gender lines.
|
||||
The programme both attempted to increase access to schools but also changed curricula to contain more technical classes, judged relevant to increase equity in rural areas.
|
||||
Even though the programme aims to increase universal equality of access to education, the study finds that gender, geographical and income inequalities persist throughout, with individuals that complete primary education more likely to be male urban wage workers.
|
||||
The study measures returns purely on consumption of households to show the estimated effect on their productivity ---
|
||||
here, it finds generally positive returns but greatest for non-agricultural work, self-employed or as wage work.
|
||||
Importantly, the introduction of more technical classes, however, also changes employment sector choices, with men working less in agricultural work and more in non-farm wage sectors and an increased probability for rural women to both work in agriculture and to work formally.
|
||||
Limitations of the study include the inability to directly identify intervention compliers and having to construct returns for each household head only and a possibly unobserved 'villagization' effect by bringing people together in community villages for their education leading to other unobserved variable impacting the returns.
|
||||
|
||||
## Income inequality through a vertical lens
|
||||
|
||||
One of the primary lenses through which policy interventions to reduce inequalities in the world of work are viewed is that of income inequality, often measured for all people throughout a country or subsets thereof.
|
||||
At the same time, the primacy of income should not be overstated as disregarding the intersectional nature of inequalities may lead to adverse targeting or intervention outcomes, as can be seen in the following studies on policies to increase overall income equality.
|
||||
|
||||
{{++ insert regional breakdown++}}
|
||||
|
||||
{{++ insert intervention/outcome breakdown ++}}
|
||||
|
||||
## Gender inequality
|
||||
|
||||
Gender inequality is the second most reviewed dimension of workplace inequality in the study sample,
|
||||
with a variety of studies looking at predominantly it through the lens of female economic empowerment or through closing gender pay gaps.
|
||||
|
||||
{{++ insert regional breakdown++}}
|
||||
|
||||
<!-- maternal intersection, children -->
|
||||
A variety of studies also look at female economic empowerment outcomes through a more generational lens,
|
||||
focusing on the effects of interventions aimed at maternity support ---
|
||||
childcare programmes, paid leave and maternity benefits.
|
||||
|
||||
{{++ insert intervention/outcome breakdown ++}}
|
||||
|
||||
## Spatial inequality
|
||||
|
||||
{{++ insert regional breakdown++}}
|
||||
|
||||
{{++ insert intervention/outcome breakdown ++}}
|
||||
|
||||
## Disability
|
||||
|
|
@ -830,37 +887,6 @@ as well as having to make the assumption of no population growth for measures to
|
|||
There is a clear bias in studies on disability interventions towards studies undertaken in developed countries and, more specifically,
|
||||
based on the Veteran Disability system in the United States which has been the object of analysis for a wide variety of studies.
|
||||
|
||||
@Carstens2018 conduct an analysis of the potential factors influencing mentally ill individuals in the United States to participate in the labour force, using correlation between different programmes of Medicaid and labour force status.
|
||||
In trying to find labour force participation predictors it finds employment motivating factors in reduced depression and anxiety, increased responsibility and problem-solving and stress management being positive predictors.
|
||||
In turn barriers of increased stress, discrimination based on their mental, loss of free time, loss of government benefits and tests for illegal drugs were listed as barriers negatively associated with labour force participation.
|
||||
For the government benefits, it finds significant variations for the different varieties of Medicaid programmes, with the strongest netagive labour force participation correlated to Medicaid ABD, a programme for which it has to be demonstrated that an individual cannot work due to their disability.
|
||||
The authors suggest this shows the primary channel of the programme becoming a benefit trap, with disability being determined by not working and benefits disappearing when participants enter the labour force, creating dependency to the programme as a primary barrier.
|
||||
Two limitations of the study are its small sample size due to a low response rate, and an over-representation of racial minorities, women and older persons in the sample mentioned as introducing possible downward bias for measured labour force participation rates.
|
||||
|
||||
Similarly, @Shepherd-Banigan2021 undertake a qualitative study on the significance of vocational and educational training provided for disabled veterans in the United States.
|
||||
It finds that both the vocational and educational services help strengthen individual agency, autonomy and motivation but impacts can be dampened if the potential for disability payment loss due to the potential for job acquisition impedes skill development efforts.
|
||||
The primary barriers of return to work efforts identified are an individual's health problems as well as various programmes not acommodating the needs of disabled veteran students,
|
||||
while the primary Facilitators identified are financial assistance provided for education as well as strengthened individual agency through motivation.
|
||||
Some limitations include a possible bias of accommodations required through the sample being restricted to veterans with a caregiver, which often signals more substantial impairments than for a larger training-participatory sample, as well as the data not being able to identify the impact of supported employment.
|
||||
|
||||
An experimental study on the impacts of benefits and vocational training counseling for disabled veterans in the United States by @Rosen2014 measures the effects on return to work through average hours worked.
|
||||
It identifies time worked through a timeline follow-back calendar, measuring the change in days worked in the 28 days preceding the final study measurement.
|
||||
Here, it finds the sessions having a significant increase on more waged days worked, with an additional three days for the 28 preceding days on average.
|
||||
One limitation is the inability of the study to locate an active ingredient:
|
||||
Though the intervention clearly aims at strengthening some aspect of individual agency, the exact mediators are not clear, with neither beliefs about work, beliefs about benefits, nor provided service use for mental health or substance abuse impacted significantly.
|
||||
|
||||
The studies thus not only reinforce recommendations for strength-based approaches, emphasizing the benefits of work, but also highlight the targeting importance of subsidy programmes in general on the one hand,
|
||||
in the worst case reducing equity through bad targeting mechanisms,
|
||||
and their negative reinforcement effects widening existing inequalities of gender, age and racial discrimination through such targeting on the other.
|
||||
|
||||
With a similar focus on agency, @Gates2000 conducts a qualitative study on the mechanisms of workplace accomodation for people with mental health conditions to allow their successful return-to-work.
|
||||
The intervention is based on an accommodation which disaggregates the effects of social and technical components of the process and included a disclosure and psychoeducational plan.
|
||||
It finds that successfull return-to-work through accommodation requires consideration of the social component ('who is involved'), with unsuccessful accommodation often only relying on the functional aspect ('what is involved').
|
||||
The primary barrier identified for successful return-to-work are actually relationship issues not functional ones, with supervisors playing a key role for the success of the accommodation process.
|
||||
Additionally, it highlighted the necessity of strengthening the individual agency of the returnee, accomplished in the intervention through a concrete training plan with the worker but also with other key workplace players such as the supervisors.
|
||||
Additionally, providers must be willing to develop a disclosure plan with the employee and enter the workplace itself to adequately assist in the accommodation process.
|
||||
Limitations to the study include the limited generalizability of its findings with a small non-randomized sample size and restriction to mental health disability.
|
||||
|
||||
{{++ insert intervention/outcome breakdown ++}}
|
||||
|
||||
# Conclusion
|
||||
|
|
|
|||
Loading…
Reference in a new issue