“渔”与“鱼”何以兼得?——工作福利的政策实践、理念内涵及其启示

How to Balance Teaching People How to Fish and Giving Them Fish:Policy Practice, Concept Connotation and Inspiration of Workfare

寻求就业参与(“授人以渔”)与福利给付(“授人以鱼”)的兼得之道一直以来是中国社会救助政策关注的热点、重点以及难点。按照立足本土、放眼世界的逻辑,文章系统梳理了西方福利治理中旨在实现兼得之道的工作福利实践。文章认为,工作福利正在成为一项社会政策设计的重要理念,具有丰富的内涵,包括穷人的分类与识别“不应得”穷人的前提假设、工作伦理的价值导向、从“福利”到“工作”的政策路径以及责任分担与权力下放的治理逻辑。基于中国社会救助政策现状与发展瓶颈,文章提出了“渔”与“鱼”兼得的四条政策建议:一是在家计调查的基础上引入类别定位法,识别出应就业的贫困者;二是发挥失业保险的积极作用,为应就业的贫困者提供过渡性的求职者津贴;三是强化工作伦理,实施更加积极的劳动力市场政策;四是重塑治理结构,促进治理主体的多元协同。

Seeking the balance between employment participation(teaching people how to fish) and welfare benefits(giving people fish) has always been a hot issue, a focus and a difficulty of China’s social assistance policies. According to the logic of standing on our own land and taking a global view, this study systematically reviews the workfare practice aimed to achieve both benefits in Western welfare governance. It argues that workfare is becoming an important concept in social policy design, with rich connotations. These connotations include the premises of the classification of the poor and the identification of the undeserving poor, the value orientation of work ethics, the policy path of welfare to work, and the governance logic of responsibility sharing and decentralization. Based on the current situation and development bottleneck of China’s social assistance, this study puts forward four policy suggestions on how to teaching people how to fish and giving them fish. First, introduce the category positioning method on the basis of family budget investigation to identify the poor who need to be employed. Second, give full play to the positive role of unemployment insurance to provide transitional job-seeker subsidies for the poor who need to be employed. Third, strengthen work ethics and implement more active labor market policies. Last but not least, reshape the governance structure to promote the multiple synergy of governance bodies.