Regional Equity and Influencing Factor of Social Assistance in China

Social assistance is the last safety net in the social security system and plays a vital role in poverty alleviation in countries around the world. Promoting the equal financial assistance is meaningful to achieve equalization of social assistance. Based on the provincial panel data from 2002 to 2017, this paper analyzes the dynamic characteristics and main influencing factors of the equity of social assistance in China, using the Theil index and geographically weighted regression(GWR) model. The results suggest that the level of per capita social assistance expenditure(PSAE) in China keeps increasing year by year, but the changes in different regions and provinces are quite different. These changes not only significantly changed the spatial pattern of PSAE in China, but also greatly improved its spatial coupling with the deeply impoverished areas. Further analysis shows that the regional inequality of PSAE between provinces is obvious during the study period, and the inter-regional inequality is significantly higher than the intra-regional inequality.This makes inter-regional inequality become the main source of the regional inequality of PSAE in China for a long time. According to GWR results, there is obvious spatiotemporal heterogeneity in the influence intensity and direction of the per capita financial revenue,urbanization rate, urban unemployment rate, natural disaster-affected area, and transfer payment intensity on the PSAE. The urbanization rate and per capita financial revenue are the main driving factors of PSAE, and the impact intensity of per capita financial revenue tends to strengthen. The remaining three factors have a positive effect on PSAE, but the effect intensity is not high.

Design Strategies for the Sustainable Improvement of Urban Social Assistance Buildings

Transformation and innovation of assistance model promote the transition of urban social assistance building to multi-functional building. This paper, on the basis of analyzing complexity and peculiarity of urban social assistance building, as well as researches and practices of sustainable improvement of domestic architecture, proposed environmental, social and economic objectives of the sustainable improvement of urban social assistance building, and elaborated design strategies from the perspectives of site selection and its impact on environment, application, evaluation and utilization of ecological technologies, reform of old buildings, flexible internal layout of building and combination of routine use and disaster use design, so as to improve social benefits and social assessment of assistance buildings sustainably, and to balance humanistic concerns and social resource input.

Study on migrant workers of intergenerational transmission of poverty and social assistance problems

With the accelerated pace of urbanization, the construction of the city needs a large number of labor force, more and more farmers come out of the countryside to work in the city, forming a special group of migrant workers. With the emergence of migrant workers groups, there has been a new generation of migrant workers. This article from the perspective ofintergenerational transfer of migrant workers poverty, social assistance as the breakthrough point, through the transfer phenomenon and social relief situation of migrant workers in poverty from generation to generation, according to international advanced experience put forward the blocking of migrant workers in the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Research on The Social Assistance of Left-behind Children in Rural Areas under The Policy of Precise Poverty Alleviation

With the development of economy, a large number of surplus labor force in rural areas has been transferred to cities, resulting in the increasing number of left-behind children in rural areas. Left-behind children are in a critical period of ideological enlightenment, accepting obligation education, outlook on life and world outlook, and the absence of parental care and education has a negative impact on their growth. It is an important problem to solve this problem in every aspect of society.

Designing Social Programs in Circumstances of Informational Asymmetry

The social programs represent the redistribution of revenues collected from taxpayers toward persons considered to be in need according to the public policies. Therefore, the govemment-financed welfare program is often looked as a type of a safety net of the state itself by groups of persons having certain features which are detected according to a selection process. The state should grant the ultimate successive safety net to persons in whose cases the previous safety nets would have failed. The beneficiaries are persons selected by different decision-makers who are aware of the actual status of that person. The individual who actually grants the access to the social program does not have all the necessary data. In this context, is the redistribution system effective？ The study aims to determine an equilibrium in social assistance and effective methods for providing social benefits. The study has proposed to build a model using the concept of labelling. The quantitative model hereby proposed represents a possibility to design social programs in circumstances of asymmetric information. Therefore, it reveals the sensitivity of the social programs toward social controls or penalties, and it has a stabilizing effect on the economic crisis. The study proposes the use of an expert system （SE） in redistributing incomes in social assistance and concrete ways of state intervention.

Pool Civil Wisdom to Assist Social Development——Sidelights of Civil Society 20 China

Civil Society 20 China 2016(C20)was successfully convened in Qingdao on July 5th and 6th.Chinese President Xi Jinping sent a message of congratulations to the Conference.State Councilor Yang Jiechi attended the opening ceremony and delivered a speech.Sun Jiazheng,Vice-Chairman of the 11th National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and President of China

A decomposition analysis to examine the change in the number of recipients in the comprehensive social security assistance(CSSA)system

Social security is an important social and public policy measure to help address poverty in any contemporary society.The Comprehensive Social Security Assistance(CSSA)system in Hong Kong provides a safety net for those aged children and adults below 65 years old who cannot support themselves financially.It is designed to bring their income up to a prescribed level to meet their basic needs.The rapid increase in social welfare expenditure in the last decade has become a concern to the Hong Kong SAR Government.The overall social welfare expenditure has accounted for nearly 15.6%of government expenditure in 2018,with the total amount increasing from$58 billion to$90 billion(an increase of 72.4%)for the period 2014-2018.However,the amount spent on CSSA only increased from$20.7 billion to$22.3 billion with an increase of 7.7%only for the same period.The much slower magnitude of increase is related to the reduction in the number of CSSA recipients,which decreased from 237,501 to 185,528 over the period.A decomposition method was used to assess the changes in the number of people in the CSSA system.It showed that the rate of arriving into the system has been decreasing due to a robust economy with a very low unemployment rate;whereas moving out of the system has also been decreasing in the past 5 years.This phenomenon can be partly attributed to the widening of the income gap in the community in the period.Despite the increase in population size,as long as employment conditions remain strong and the momentum of leaving the system can be maintained,the number of CSSA recipients will continue to decrease.However,the results also suggested that a certain proportion of CSSA recipients will not be able to move out of the system and have been trapped.Some innovative methods to help them out of CSSA are discussed.In view of the poor economic outlook arising from the COVID-19 pandemic,it is important for the Government to have effective measures to keep people in their jobs.If the unemployment rate will does not substantially increase and then increase of in CSSA recipients can be contained.

From Eliza to XiaoIce：challenges and opportunities with social chatbots

Conversational systems have come a long way since their inception in the 1960 s.After decades of research and development,we have seen progress from Eliza and Parry in the 1960 s and 1970 s,to task-completion systems as in the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency(DARPA) communicator program in the 2000 s,to intelligent personal assistants such as Siri,in the 2010 s,to today's social chatbots like Xiao Ice.Social chatbots' appeal lies not only in their ability to respond to users' diverse requests,but also in being able to establish an emotional connection with users.The latter is done by satisfying users' need for communication,affection,as well as social belonging.To further the advancement and adoption of social chatbots,their design must focus on user engagement and take both intellectual quotient(IQ) and emotional quotient(EQ) into account.Users should want to engage with a social chatbot;as such,we define the success metric for social chatbots as conversation-turns per session(CPS).Using Xiao Ice as an illustrative example,we discuss key technologies in building social chatbots from core chat to visual awareness to skills.We also show how Xiao Ice can dynamically recognize emotion and engage the user throughout long conversations with appropriate interpersonal responses.As we become the first generation of humans ever living with artificial intelligenc(AI),we have a responsibility to design social chatbots to be both useful and empathetic,so they will become ubiquitous and help society as a whole.