Non-standard employment and COVID-19 testing in South Korean workers.

OBJECTIVES: SARS-CoV-2 testing has been critical in monitoring and containing the COVID-19 pandemic, but there is a dearth of studies on how individuals' adherence to testing varies according to their working conditions. This study aimed to investigate the association between the type of employment contract and COVID-19 testing among wage workers in South Korea. STUDY DESIGN: We used a nationally representative sample of employees aged 20-65 years collected from March 24 to 31, 2022. To focus on individual responses when the test was recommended, our sample consisted of 1266 participants who had experienced symptoms of COVID-19 or had been exposed to a confirmed case in the household. METHODS: We used multivariate logistic regression to estimate the association between the odds of receiving a PCR test and the type of employment contract while controlling for other potential covariates. RESULTS: The percentage of participants who had a SARS-CoV-2 PCR test was 77.8%. After adjusting for all potential covariates, daily workers (OR = 0.35, 95% CI 0.18 to 0.70, P = 0.003) and part-time workers (OR = 0.58, 95% CI 0.39 to 0.86, P = 0.007) had significantly lower odds of being tested relative to standard workers. Other temporary or atypical workers showed no significant differences from standard workers. CONCLUSION: Our findings suggested that individuals in the most vulnerable job positions, with less job security and working hours, exhibited a decreased inclination to undergo COVID-19 testing. More effective job retention and income support policies are required to improve compliance.

Policy responses to the COVID-19 pandemic in the Manitoba grocery sector: a qualitative analysis of media, organizational communications, and key informant interviews.

OBJECTIVES: The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted all aspects of the food system, including the retail grocery sector. We sought to (objective 1) document and (objective 2) analyze the policies implemented in the grocery sector during the first wave of the pandemic in Manitoba, Canada. METHODS: Our qualitative policy analysis draws from organizational communications (websites and social media) (n = 79), news media articles (n = 95), and key informant interviews with individuals (n = 8) working within the grocery sector in urban and rural, Manitoba. Media and communications were extracted between March 9-May 8, 2020 and interviews were conducted in July-August, 2020. RESULTS: Newly implemented policies due to the pandemic fell under four inter-related themes: Employee health and wellbeing, Safety measures, Operational measures, and Community support. Employee health and wellbeing included sub-themes of financial and social support, health recommendations and protocols, and new employee guidelines. Safety measures encompassed numerous policies pertaining to sanitation, personal protection, transmission prevention, physical distancing, and limiting access. Overall, new policies were discussed as effective in making grocery shopping as safe as possible given the situation. Compliance and enforcement, employee teamwork, and support for employees were key themes related to perceptions of policy success in a challenging and inequitable context. Nevertheless, government support and communication was needed as well to ensure safety within the grocery sector. CONCLUSIONS: The grocery sector reacted to the pandemic with the swift implementation of policies to address food supply issues, prevent transmission of the virus, support their employees as essential workers, and better serve high-risk populations.

Earned Income Tax Credit and Youth Violence: Findings from the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System.

Family- and neighborhood-level poverty are associated with youth violence. Economic policies may address this risk factor by reducing parental stress and increasing opportunities. The federal Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC) is the largest cash transfer program in the US providing support to low-income working families. Many states have additional EITCs that vary in structure and generosity. To estimate the association between state EITC and youth violence, we conducted a repeated cross-sectional analysis using the variation in state EITC generosity over time by state and self-reported data in the Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) from 2005 to 2019. We estimated the association for all youth and then stratified by sex and race and ethnicity. A 10-percentage point greater state EITC was significantly associated with 3.8% lower prevalence of physical fighting among youth, overall (PR: 0.96; 95% CI 0.94-0.99), and for male students, 149 fewer (95% CI: -243, -55) students per 10,000 experiencing physical fighting. A 10-percentage point greater state EITC was significantly associated with 118 fewer (95% CI: -184, -52) White students per 10,000 experiencing physical fighting in the past 12 months while reductions among Black students (75 fewer; 95% CI: -176, 26) and Hispanic/Latino students (14 fewer; 95% CI: -93, 65) were not statistically significant. State EITC generosity was not significantly associated with measures of violence at school. Economic policies that increase financial security and provide financial resources may reduce the burden of youth violence; further attention to their differential benefits among specific population subgroups is warranted.

Income assistance, marriage, and child poverty: An assessment of the Family Security Act.

The COVID-19 pandemic has brought about changes in key income support programs, reigniting a debate about the design of financial aid to low-income households with children. This study assesses the Family Security Act-a proposal presented by Senator Mitt Romney (R-UT) on February 4, 2021 to reform the tax/transfer system-in terms of its efficacy to achieve the stated objectives of increasing marriage rates and cutting child poverty at no cost to the government. The assessment is carried out through a structural microsimulation approach, using a dynamic model of savings, labor supply, household formation, and marital status. We find that while the plan would be highly effective at increasing marriage rates, it would reduce child poverty at the expense of increasing poverty among single-mother families and deep child poverty. Furthermore, the plan would entail a substantial cost to taxpayers. (JEL E21, H24, H31, J12).

State earned income tax credits and suicidal behavior: A repeated cross-sectional study.

Suicide is an increasingly common cause of death in the United States and recent increases in suicide rates disproportionately impact low income individuals. We sought to assess the impact of income support in the form of state earned income tax credit policies on suicide-related behaviors. This state-level study used repeated cross-sectional data from vital records and the National Survey of Drug Use and Health data representative at the state-level. The population included adults who either died by suicide or were selected for in-person NSDUH interviews between 2008 and 2018. Exposure was measured as the generosity of a refundable state earned income tax credit policy measured as a percentage of the federal policy. Outcomes assessed were suicidal ideation, suicidal planning, non-fatal suicide attempt, suicide deaths, and combined fatal and non-fatal suicide attempts. Analyses were performed between April and June 2020. A 10 percentage-point increase in the generosity of state earned income tax credit was associated with lower frequency of non-fatal suicide attempts (prevalence ratio [PR] = 0.96; 95% CI: 0.93-0.99), combined fatal and non-fatal suicide attempts (PR = 0.96; 95% CI: 0.93-0.99), and suicide deaths (PR = 0.99; 95% CI: 0.99-1.00). This translates to 4 fewer suicide attempts per 10,000 population each year. Generous state earned income tax credit policies are associated with reductions in the frequency of most severe suicidal behavior. Income support policies may be one way to reduce suicide attempts and death, especially among low-income adults.

Physicians' attitudes to disability pension - impact of diagnosis: an experimental study.

BACKGROUND: The purpose of this study is to increase understanding of physicians' attitudes towards disability pension applicants, and the impact of diagnosis. We hypothesize that physicians are more likely to think that patients with physical illnesses should get a disability pension than those with mental illness or alcohol dependence. Disability pension is an important source of income for those unable to work because of a disability and type of diagnosis should not impact accessing these benefits. METHODS: We conducted an experiment with a 2 by 3 factorial structure in Sweden. Each physician was randomly assigned one of six patient vignettes, with the same background description but with a different diagnosis. Each vignette had a diagnosis of either depression, alcohol dependence or low back pain, and was about a man or a woman. Logistic regression was used to examine the odds of a physician reporting that a patient should get a disability pension. Effects are reported in terms of odds ratios (ORs). RESULTS: 1414 Swedish registered physicians in psychiatry or general practice (24% response rate) completed the survey. Physicians assigned the alcohol dependent vignette had OR 0.45 (95% CI: 0.34 to 0.60) for perceiving that a patient should get a disability pension compared to physicians assigned the low back pain vignette. Physicians assigned the depression vignette had OR 1.89 (95% CI: 1.42 to 2.50) for perceiving that a patient should get a disability pension compared to physicians assigned the low back pain vignette. CONCLUSION: The patient diagnosis was associated with the physicians' response regarding if the patient should get a disability pension. A physician's perception is likely to impact a patient's access to disability pension.

Health service use of Australian unemployment and disability benefit recipients: a national, cross-sectional study.

BACKGROUND: Healthcare is funded and delivered separately from income support programs such as unemployment and disability benefits. Greater understanding of the health service use (HSU) of benefit recipients would support more effective design and delivery of health and income support programs. This study aimed to characterise the HSU of disability and unemployment benefit recipients relative to people earning wages, while controlling for personal, household and health-related factors associated with HSU in benefit recipients. METHODS: A cross-sectional national survey of 9110 working age Australian adults in three groups: (1) 566 receiving the disability support pension (DSP); (2) 410 receiving unemployment benefits; and (3) 8134 earning wages. Outcomes included prevalence and frequency of health professional consultations, hospital attendance and admission in the past 12 months, as well as medication and supplement use in the past 2 weeks. Analyses compared DSP and unemployment benefit recipients to wage earners using prevalence ratios and incident rate ratios, adjusted for predisposing, enabling and need factors that may affect HSU. RESULTS: In adjusted regression models, both DSP and unemployment benefit recipients were significantly more likely than wage earners to have consulted psychologists and social workers. DSP recipients also reported a significantly higher prevalence of consultations with General Practitioners (GPs), specialist physicians and podiatrists.. Both groups reported significantly more frequent consultations with GPs and DSP recipients with specialists. No differences were observed between groups for hospital attendance or admission, or supplement use in fully adjusted models, though the DSP group reported more prevalent medication use than wage earners. Inclusion of confounders including self-assessed health, disability severity, health insurance status, and financial resources attenuated the relationship between benefit receipt and HSU, however significant associations were still observed. CONCLUSIONS: People receiving unemployment and disability insurance benefits use significantly more health services than wage earners. A range of personal and clinical characteristics explained much, but not all, of the association between greater HSU and benefit receipt. Greater coordination between health and income support systems may improve health, reduce HSU and improve work ability in unemployed and working age people.

Income support, employment transitions and well-being.

Using specific panel data of German welfare benefit recipients, we investigate the non-pecuniary life satisfaction effects of in-work benefits. Our empirical strategy combines difference-in-difference designs with synthetic control groups to analyse transitions of workers between unemployment, regular employment and employment accompanied by welfare receipt. Working makes people generally better off than being unemployed but employed welfare recipients do not reach the life satisfaction level of regular employees. This implies that welfare receipt entails non-compliance with the norm to make one's own living. Our findings allow us to draw cautious conclusions on employment subsidies paid as welfare benefits.

Early Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Household Finances in Quebec.

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic surged in early March 2020, with unemployment reaching historic levels in April 2020. This study paints an early portrait of the pandemic's impact on the finances of households in Quebec, one of the hardest-hit provinces in terms of COVID-19 cases as well as unemployment levels. The article also provides an understanding of how government emergency benefit programs may have helped households get by during the early period of the pandemic. Finally, we draw on expectations data collected in a survey of 3,009 respondents living in Quebec to illustrate what households can expect for the rest of 2020.

La pandémie de maladie à coronavirus 2019 (COVID­19) a fait son apparition au début de mars 2020, le chômage ayant atteint des niveaux sans précédent en avril 2020. Les auteurs tracent un premier portrait des répercussions de la pandémie sur la situation financière des ménages du Québec, l'une des provinces les plus durement touchées par la COVID­19 quant au nombre de cas et au taux de chômage. Ils tentent également d'expliquer en quoi les programmes gouvernementaux de prestations d'urgence ont pu aider les ménages à surmonter leurs difficultés au cours de la phase initiale de la pandémie. Enfin, les auteurs s'appuient sur les données relatives aux attentes qu'ils tirent de leur sondage pour illustrer ce à quoi les ménages peuvent s'attendre pour le reste de 2020.

Late-life depression in Rural China: do village infrastructure and availability of community resources matter?

OBJECTIVES: This study aimed to examine whether physical infrastructure and availability of three types of community resources (old-age income support, healthcare facilities, and elder activity centers) in rural villages are associated with depressive symptoms among older adults in rural China. METHOD: Data were from the 2011 baseline survey of the Chinese Health and Retirement Longitudinal Study (CHARLS). The sample included 3824 older adults aged 60 years or older residing in 301 rural villages across China. A score of 12 on the 10-item Center for Epidemiologic Studies Depression Scale was used as the cutoff for depressed versus not depressed. Village infrastructure was indicated by an index summing deficiency in six areas: drinking water, fuel, road, sewage, waste management, and toilet facilities. Three dichotomous variables indicated whether income support, healthcare facility, and elder activity center were available in the village. Respondents' demographic characteristics (age, gender, marital status, and living arrangements), health status (chronic conditions and physical disability), and socioeconomic status (education, support from children, health insurance, household luxury items, and housing quality) were covariates. Multilevel logistic regression was conducted. RESULTS: Controlling for individuals' socioeconomic status, health status, and demographic characteristics, village infrastructure deficiency was positively associated with the odds of being depressed among rural older Chinese, whereas the provision of income support and healthcare facilities in rural villages was associated with lower odds. CONCLUSION: Village infrastructure and availability of community resources matter for depressive symptoms in rural older adults. Improving infrastructure, providing old-age income support, and establishing healthcare facilities in villages could be effective strategies to prevent late-life depression in rural China.

Receipt of parenting, disability, unemployment, and other income support payments in persons aged 16 to 33 years - the associations with child maltreatment.

BACKGROUND: Child maltreatment (CM) is a major public health concern with life-long effects. Its impact on income support has rarely been studied. OBJECTIVE: To examine the association between CM and receipt of income support payments and the budgetary impact for persons 16 to 33 years. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: A South Australian birth cohort, born 1986 to 2004 (n = 339,411). METHODS: We linked child protection (CP) administrative records with national welfare payment records, ending March 2020. Receipt of income support payments and mean payment amounts were described by CP contact (adjusted for child and family attributes). Budget impact was modelled at the national level. RESULTS: Adjusted odds ratio (AOR) for receipt of any income support payment was 3.01 (2.95-3.07) for individuals with any CP contact versus no CP contact. Among those receiving any payment, adjusted annualised mean benefit payment was $3754 (US$1446) among individuals with no CP contact, $6262 (US$4,307) in persons with any CP contact, and $9,747 in persons who'd been in OOHC. Cumulative payments modelled from age 16 to 33 years totalled $38,570 (US$26,652) for individuals with no CP contact, and $181,743 (US$125,003) for individuals who'd been in OOHC. Modelled for the Australian population to age 33, the extra cost associated with CP contact added 39 % to the government income support budget. CONCLUSION: CM is strongly associated with receipt of income support payments. Investment in effective preventive and protective strategies for CP involved children could address this core social determinant of health, while providing budget savings.

No change in substance use disorders or overdose after implementation of state Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC).

BACKGROUND: Inadequate income is associated with higher likelihood of experiencing a substance use disorder (SUD). This study tests whether the earned income tax credit (EITC), which issues supplemental income for workers with children in the U.S., is associated with lower rates of SUD and fatal overdose. METHODS: We examined the effects of state-level refundable EITC presence and generosity (i.e., state EITC rate as a % of federal rate) on SUD-related outcomes (SUD prevalence and intentional and unintentional fatal overdose) using a difference-in-difference methodology, with both two-way fixed-effects models and event study plots. Several sensitivity analyses were conducted to assess the robustness of findings. Five data sources were used to create a combined state-level longitudinal dataset. RESULTS: We did not find significant effects of refundable EITC presence or generosity on unintentional or intentional fatal overdose or SUD prevalence in two-way models. Event study models detected a very slight upward shift in SUD prevalence following refundable EITC implementation (not seen in sensitivity analyses) and no significant effects of EITC implementation on any of the fatal overdose outcomes. CONCLUSIONS: Evidence regarding income support programs is being highly sought by policy makers as income support programs have become increasingly popular policy levers since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. Our study indicates EITC policies likely have no impact on SUD or overdose, however, other income support programs without family restrictions are important to investigate further.

Effects of guaranteed basic income interventions on poverty-related outcomes in high-income countries: A systematic review and meta-analysis.

Background: High-income countries offer social assistance (welfare) programs to help alleviate poverty for people with little or no income. These programs have become increasingly conditional and stringent in recent decades based on the premise that transitioning people from government support to paid work will improve their circumstances. However, many people end up with low-paying and precarious jobs that may cause more poverty because they lose benefits such as housing subsidies and health and dental insurance, while incurring job-related expenses. Conditional assistance programs are also expensive to administer and cause stigma. A guaranteed basic income (GBI) has been proposed as a more effective approach for alleviating poverty, and several experiments have been conducted in high-income countries to investigate whether GBI leads to improved outcomes compared to existing social programs. Objectives: The aim of this review was to conduct a synthesis of quantitative evidence on GBI interventions in high-income countries, to compare the effectiveness of various types of GBI versus "usual care" (including existing social assistance programs) in improving poverty-related outcomes. Search Methods: Searches of 16 academic databases were conducted in May 2022, using both keywords and database-specific controlled vocabulary, without limits or restrictions on language or date. Sources of gray literature (conference, governmental, and institutional websites) were searched in September 2022. We also searched reference lists of review articles, citations of included articles, and tables of contents of relevant journals in September 2022. Hand searching for recent publications was conducted until December 2022. Selection Criteria: We included all quantitative study designs except cross-sectional (at one timepoint), with or without control groups. We included studies in high income countries with any population and with interventions meeting our criteria for GBI: unconditional, with regular payments in cash (not in-kind) that were fixed or predictable in amount. Although two primary outcomes of interest were selected a priori (food insecurity, and poverty level assessed using official, national, or international measures), we did not screen studies on the basis of reported outcomes because it was not possible to define all potentially relevant poverty-related outcomes in advance. Data Collection and Analysis: We followed the Campbell Collaboration conduct and reporting guidelines to ensure a rigorous methodology. The risk of bias was assessed across seven domains: confounding, selection, attrition, motivation, implementation, measurement, and analysis/reporting. We conducted meta-analyses where results could be combined; otherwise, we presented the results in tables. We reported effect estimates as standard mean differences (SMDs) if the included studies reported them or provided sufficient data for us to calculate them. To compare the effects of different types of interventions, we developed a GBI typology based on the characteristics of experimental interventions as well as theoretical conceptualizations of GBI. Eligible poverty-related outcomes were classified into categories and sub-categories, to facilitate the synthesis of the individual findings. Because most of the included studies analyzed experiments conducted by other researchers, it was necessary to divide our analysis according to the "experiment" stage (i.e., design, recruitment, intervention, data collection) and the "study" stage (data analysis and reporting of results). Main Results: Our searches yielded 24,476 records from databases and 80 from other sources. After screening by title and abstract, the full texts of 294 potentially eligible articles were retrieved and screened, resulting in 27 included studies on 10 experiments. Eight of the experiments were RCTs, one included both an RCT site and a "saturation" site, and one used a repeated cross-sectional design. The duration ranged from one to 5 years. The control groups in all 10 experiments received "usual care" (i.e., no GBI intervention). The total number of participants was unknown because some of the studies did not report exact sample sizes. Of the studies that did, the smallest had 138 participants and the largest had 8019. The risk of bias assessments found "some concerns" for at least one domain in all 27 studies and "high risk" for at least one domain in 25 studies. The risk of bias was assessed as high in 21 studies due to attrition and in 22 studies due to analysis and reporting bias. To compare the interventions, we developed a classification framework of five GBI types, four of which were implemented in the experiments, and one that is used in new experiments now underway. The included studies reported 176 poverty-related outcomes, including one pre-defined primary outcome: food insecurity. The second primary outcome (poverty level assessed using official, national, or international measures) was not reported in any of the included studies. We classified the reported outcomes into seven categories: food insecurity (as a category), economic/material, physical health, psychological/mental health, social, educational, and individual choice/agency. Food insecurity was reported in two studies, both showing improvements (SMD = -0.57, 95% CI: -0.65 to -0.49, and SMD = -0.41, 95% CI: -0.57 to -0.26) which were not pooled because of different study designs. We conducted meta-analyses on four secondary outcomes that were reported in more than one study: subjective financial well-being, self-rated overall physical health, self-rated life satisfaction, and self-rated mental distress. Improvements were reported, except for overall physical health or if the intervention was similar to existing social assistance. The results for the remaining 170 outcomes, each reported in only one study, were summarized in tables by category and subcategory. Adverse effects were reported in some studies, but only for specific subgroups of participants, and not consistently, so these results may have been due to chance. Authors' Conclusions: The results of the included studies were difficult to synthesize because of the heterogeneity in the reported outcomes. This was due in part to poverty being multidimensional, so outcomes covered various aspects of life (economic, social, psychological, educational, agency, mental and physical health). Evidence from future studies would be easier to assess if outcomes were measured using more common, validated instruments. Based on our analysis of the included studies, a supplemental type of GBI (provided along with existing programs) may be effective in alleviating poverty-related outcomes. This approach may also be safer than a wholesale reform of existing social assistance approaches, which could have unintended consequences.

Social disadvantage and individual vulnerability: a longitudinal investigation of welfare receipt and mental health in Australia.

OBJECTIVE: To examine longitudinal associations between mental health and welfare receipt among working-age Australians. METHOD: We analysed 9 years of data from 11,701 respondents (49% men) from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) Survey. Mental health was assessed by the mental health subscale from the Short Form 36 questionnaire. Linear mixed models were used to examine the longitudinal associations between mental health and income support adjusting for the effects of demographic and socio-economic factors, physical health, lifestyle behaviours and financial stress. Within-person variation in welfare receipt over time was differentiated from between-person propensity to receive welfare payments. Random effect models tested the effects of income support transitions. RESULTS: Socio-demographic and financial variables explained the association between mental health and income support for those receiving student and parenting payments. Overall, recipients of disability, unemployment and mature age payments had poorer mental health regardless of their personal, social and financial circumstances. In addition, those receiving unemployment and disability payments had even poorer mental health at the times that they were receiving income support relative to the times when they were not. The greatest reductions in mental health were associated with transitions to disability payments and parenting payments for single parents. CONCLUSIONS: The poor mental health of welfare recipients may limit their opportunities to gain work and participate in community life. In part, this seems to reflect their adverse social and personal circumstances. However, there remains evidence of a direct link between welfare receipt and poor mental health that could be due to factors such as welfare stigma or other adverse life events coinciding with welfare receipt for those receiving unemployment or disability payments. Understanding these factors is critical to inform the next stage of welfare reform.

The heterogeneous associations of universal cash-payouts with breastfeeding initiation and continuation.

Existing health literature documents the benefits of breastfeeding for the first six months of life. Prior research on barriers to breastfeeding has focused on the role of hospital initiatives, return to work, and individual mothers' characteristics. This study uses data from Alaska's Pregnancy Risk Assessment Monitoring System and the Alaska Permanent Fund Dividend, to investigate whether universal income support shapes mothers' breastfeeding behaviors. We find that payouts are associated with increases in breastfeeding initiation and short-term continuation (three months) among a sample of urban Alaskan mothers. These associations differ across mothers' socioeconomic and demographic characteristics (i.e., education, economic status, race, marital status). We contend that this type of income intervention may complement existing efforts to promote breastfeeding by removing financial barriers to breastfeeding.

Longitudinal Associations Between Food Insecurity and Suicidal Ideation Among Adults Aged ≥65 in the Korean Welfare Panel Study.

Objectives : This study aimed to explore longitudinal associations between food insecurity and suicidal ideation, and the moderating roles of intervention programs. Methods: Data were derived from the 2012-2019 waves of the Korean Welfare Panel Study. Participants aged ≥65 at baseline (n = 4,425) and their annual follow-up measurements for a mean of 6.58 years were included. Conditional fixed effects logistic regressions were used to test 1) associations between food insecurity and the onset of suicidal ideation; 2); whether associations were attenuated by food assistance and income support programs. Results: Food insecurity was associated with higher odds of suicidal ideation in the full sample (OR, 1.77; 95% CI, 1.37-2.29), among women (OR, 1.67; 95% CI, 1.24-2.26) and men (OR, 2.06; 95% CI, 1.25-3.40). The association between food insecurity and suicidal ideation was attenuated by participation in home-delivered meal services (OR, 0.43; 95% CI, 0.21-0.88). Conclusion: Food insecure older adults were more likely to consider committing suicide than their food secure counterparts. Food assistance through home-delivered meal services, but not other intervention programs, could weaken this link.

Governments' economic support for households during the COVID-19 pandemic and consumer confidence.

To combat the adverse consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic, governments have implemented various economic policies. This study examines how different types of government economic support for households are associated with consumer confidence. Utilizing data from 35 countries in the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development for January 2020-October 2021 and applying panel fixed effect and system generalized methods of moments regressions, we show that higher levels of government economic support lead to higher levels of consumer confidence. The results also suggest that government income support for households has a stronger impact than debt/contract relief on consumer confidence during the pandemic in the full sample. Moreover, we find that debt/contract relief is a more effective policy to boost confidence in emerging economies. Finally, COVID-19 fatalities have a significant negative effect on consumer confidence.

The transition to adult income supports for youth that received special education in British Columbia, Canada: A cohort study.

Youth in special education have complex needs that are supported across multiple systems. Our research investigates the use of adult income assistance, as one structure that supports youth as they transition to adulthood. We created a cohort of youth (5-22 years old) using linked administrative data from British Columbia government ministries from 1996 to 2018. Youth were grouped by their special education funding (most to least; Level 1, Level 2, Level 3, Unfunded, and no special education). We investigated (1) youth characteristics and service use patterns, (2) which youth used income supports after the child-to-adult transition (19-22 years old), and what youth characteristics and service use patterns were associated with use, and (3) how much income support they used (CAD$). Of 174,527 youth, 254 (0.1%) were Level 1, 6020 (3.4%) were Level 2, 4409 (2.5%) were Level 3, 21,232 (12.2%) were Unfunded, and 142,612 (81.7%) were not in special education. Youth assigned higher funding levels, compared to lower levels, generally had increased service use, and in the transition to adult services were more likely to use income supports, and received more income support. An important exception was youth with serious behavioural/mental health special education funding (Level 3), who had increased service use for their level of funding, but received less income support due to a reliance on Temporary versus Disability Assistance. Youth that received an accredited diploma were less likely to use income supports. Factors related to the use of income supports are further described. This study highlights differences in access to income support when youth transition to adult services and considerations around equitable access to support.

Protecting mental health during periods of financial stress: Evidence from the Australian Coronavirus Supplement income support payment.

This paper investigates whether the Australian government's Coronavirus Supplement, a temporary income support payment for unemployed jobseekers during the height of the COVID-19 pandemic, protected mental health (frequency of feeling anxious or depressed during the past week) by lowering financial stress (how comfortable people are in paying for essential services). We use unique nationally representative repeated cross-sectional data on 3843 unemployed Australian adults over the period April 6, 2020 to May 10, 2021. We find that the Coronavirus Supplement payment significantly reduced reported financial stress, and lower financial stress was associated with lower mental distress. Though the Coronavirus Supplement was designed to reduce financial stress, we find the Supplement was also successful in protecting community mental health indirectly via its ability to reduce financial stress. The findings provide support for income support packages to protect mental health during economic shocks. However, transitory support measures also tend have short-lived positive effects on mental health, suggesting that more permanent income support reform may have longer-term mental health benefits.

"Sehat Sahulat Program": A Leap into the Universal Health Coverage in Pakistan.

Universal Health Coverage (UHC), initiative from the World Health Organization (WHO), is a means to provide the human right to health by providing essential health services to everyone, enabling disease prevention, treatment, rehabilitation, and palliative care. In line with the WHO recommendations, the UHC was first introduced in Pakistan in Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (KP) province under the name 'Sehat Sahulat Programme' (SSP), literally 'Health Facility Program' in 2015. The provincial Government in Punjab approved a similar initiative in Punjab, the largest province (by population) of the country, and the program was later rolled out in Islamabad Capital Territory (ICT), Azad and Jammu Kashmir (AJK), Gilgit Baltistan (GB), Sindh, and Baluchistan provinces leaping into the nation-wide coverage. This article provides a current overview of the UHC initiative in Pakistan, analyses its progress in appraising key milestones, and makes recommendations to achieve a robust universal health coverage across Pakistan.