Christmas Allowance as a Non-System Tool for Sustainability of Quality of Life of Slovak Seniors

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Interesting analysis of possible solution of social problem.The paper shows that there are alternatives to the current way od solving the social situation. A standard article dealing with the current topic. 

Author Response

without reviewer's comments

Reviewer 2 Report

The authors have significantly improved the clarity and focus of the article. However, I would recommend further revisions before publication, to improve the clarity and flow of the article:

Introduction – has been improved but still lacks clear statement of goals of the article – now it is a good summary of quality of life but the focus of the article, research questions should be presented in the introduction – now it can be found in theoretical section and I suggest that it is  transferred in introduction.

In the third section (socioeconomic situation) the transition from the description of welfare state to issues of poverty is too abrupt and the reader has no clear idea why and to what purpose it has been made. I suggest that authors add a few sentences, that would make a clearer link between welfare state and poverty. Also, the theoretical section on quality of life should more clearly in the end paragraph lay grounds for the use of concept of poverty and social exclusion (that follow in the third section).

As authors now explained in letter to reviewer I understand better why child poverty data has been included in the article, but this explanation is not as clear from the article itself, so I suggest to add a sentence or two additionally explaining it in the article.

I suggest renaming the section on discussion into more accurate title of description of changes adopted in Christmas allowance.

I would set as discussion section only the part from page 11, line 384. In this section the main message of the authors lies, but should additionally be strengthened, stating more clearly the discrepancies among the political rhetoric and supposed goals, and the end results, as well as the discrepancies between priorities of those most in need (children vs. older people). Also reference to political statements should be supported by citations . I would suggest to refrain from the word ‘prove’, but perhaps use instead ‘shown in the analysis’…

Further remarks – language editing needed.

Author Response

Please see the attachment.

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

Report for article entitled “Christmas allowance as a non-system tool for 2 sustainability of quality of life of Slovak seniors”

Summary:

The paper evaluates the role of Christmas allowance as an instrument for change in the quality of life for retirees in Slovakia. The authors present an overall detailed perspective on the implementation of the allowance scheme followed by a discussion of the impact on seniors in particular. They point out that while retirees are ‘not-at-risk’ of poverty, while identifying several other groups that are, in fact, at-risk. Their main results are presented in Figure 7 which highlights the benefits of the Christmas contribution does not evidently uplift the contribution towards retirees. They conclude that the scheme has a negative impact on the budget without any significant impacting on retiree welfare.

 

Broad comments:

The paper introduces an interesting idea, that is, to evaluate how a non-systemic fiscal tool impact the welfare of seniors or retirees in Slovakia. The setting provides a novel basis for understanding the role of fiscal instruments with data available for over a decade. However, the paper primarily uses summative measures for presenting evidence and lacks methodical rigour. While it is okay to use figures/graphs to summarise the data, summary measures are only provide preliminary evidence and cannot be interpreted as means to identify robust or rigorous evaluation of the question.

The paper is also lacking in a few other major aspects:

• The authors devote a substantial part of the paper towards motivating why quality of life is relevant in assessing the welfare of individuals, but fail to connect how their primary instrument – the Christmas allowance measures as a welfare-improving mechanism over the years.
• Further the detailed discussion on quality of life fails to highlight the state of welfare as it relates to retirees in particular given that group is the focus of the paper.
• On line 156, authors present a key evidence on the impact of social transfers on reducing poverty risk for seniors, but there is no citation. Are these the author's calculations?
• The term CPI of pensioner household is not commonly used in the literature. It needs to be clearly explained, particularly why is it different and higher than the overall CPI? This is important to understand the paper’s main findings and also to validate their claim made earlier on the inadequacy of old-age pensions.
• Figures 3 and 4 are confusing to the aim of the paper. Figure 3 shows that seniors aged over 65 are consistently at a lower risk of poverty based on several measures of social exclusion indicator. In contrast figure 4 shows old-age pensions have declined slightly relative to average wage. The discussion of figure 4 is inadequate and creates more confusion than information. Do they imply that old age pensions are increasing inadequately? But is it misplaced as a socio-economic policy since the seniors were identified to be at lower risk than other groups (e.g., children) who may thus need more resources? This point is pivotal for the contribution of the paper and in understanding the value of its conclusions.
• Figure 5 seems critical for the paper but strangely, there is no discussion of that figure. Moreover, the x-axis is not labelled so it is not clear what 1 to 7 denote. Either there needs to be a discussion of the figure to indicate its relevance or the figure needs to be removed. I feel that given there are only 3 figures that provide evidence for their hypothesis, the table needs to be clearly discussed.
• Similarly for figure 6, the figure needs to be discussed clearly. There seems to be a disconnect between the explanations provided in the text and results as evidence in the figures.
• Figure 7 does not have a legend, so the evidence that validates the primary result for the paper remains unclear. What do the two bars represent? My best guess if that the bars within each year represent the Contributions (overall and to retirement) showing that while the overall Christmas contribution has been stable over the years the contribution to retirement has been declining? In that case, the title is misleading as it says "Ratio". It is difficult to guess with very little discussion of the figures. What else does the contribution support other than retirees to create such a large difference?
• There is mention of Christmas “gifts” in the concluding sentence which makes one wonder if the Christmas contribution requires mandatory purchase of gifts? Or is it an assumption that the allowance is mainly used to buy gifts. In either case, this put the policy in somewhat different light and needs to be highlighted beyond one sentence.

 

Specific comments:

• Line 90 needs to be rephrased: “Retirement families are savings,…”
• Line 158: What does "pensions from an economically active period" imply?
• Line 167: “by%”???
• Is there a typo in equation 1? Should D<=ZM be (D-ZM)?
• The expression in line 239 needs some punctuation? It is unclear what this notation implies: 10 € [2 * ZM <D ≤ 0.65 * M].
• The terms D, ZM, VP need to be introduced at the beginning when they are used for the first time for the reader to follow easily.

 

Author Response

Please see the attachment

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 3 Report

Many commas that were there in the previous version have somehow been removed, perhaps due to a software issue, making those sentences harder to read. Authors need to carefully incorporate these back.

The addition to the introduction now includes a sentence on the aim of the paper whcih is appropriate. However some sentences are not clear. E.g., "Research into the quality of life in Europe began from the second 34 half of the last century and the aim of the research was to examine the state of society as well as the 35 life of individuals using subjective and objective indicators."

This sentence is too vague and can be better qualified: "Seniors are among those groups most affected by 39 socio-economic problems."

Some of the explanations provided to reviewer comments were not actioned upon in the article. I suggest they should be included in the article in a few sentences in the relevant sections.

Author Response

Response to Reviewer 3 Comments

Point 1: Many commas that were there in the previous version have somehow been removed, perhaps due to a software issue, making those sentences harder to read. Authors need to carefully incorporate these back.

Response 1: Prior we sent paper last time for review, we ask English native speaker to do it for us internally – he removed commas to make it according English grammar.

Point 2: The addition to the introduction now includes a sentence on the aim of the paper which is appropriate. However some sentences are not clear. E. g., "Research into the quality of life in Europe began from the second 34 half of the last century and the aim of the research was to examine the state of society as well as the 35 life of individuals using subjective and objective indicators."

Response 2:  We have modified the text/typo in accordance with the reviewer's comments.

Deleted: Research into the quality of life in Europe began from the second half of the last century and the aim of the research was to examine the state of society as well as the life of individuals using subjective and objective indicators. [6,7].

Point 3: This sentence is too vague and can be better qualified: "Seniors are among those groups most affected by 39 socio-economic problems." Some of the explanations provided to reviewer comments were not actioned upon in the article. I suggest they should be included in the article in a few sentences in the relevant sections.

Response 3: We have modified the text in accordance with the reviewer's comments. Deleted: Seniors are among those groups most affected by socio-economic problems.

We incorporated all relevant reviewer‘s comments which were aligned with aim and context of paper.

 

This manuscript is a resubmission of an earlier submission. The following is a list of the peer review reports and author responses from that submission.

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

The paper in the practical part is focused on research in the Slovak Republic. Do you know about other

countries of the European Union that have paid or paid a benefit similar to the "Christmas allowance"

in the Slovak Republic?

Reviewer 2 Report

The article addresses a relevant topic of transfers of the welfare state to pensioners. The theme of the articles is relevant from the perspective of welfare state development and changes in European states. However, the article has some serious shortcomings:

The introduction of the article is too broad and does not introduce the subject matter of the article and present well its relevance for study, it starts with too general descriptions of role of households in economic life The title of the article uses the concept quality of life, and this concept is presented in the theoretical background, however this description lacks a focus, as the authors do not present how this will be relevant for their further study and how they will employ this framework. In the continuation of the study they actually do not seem to use this framework in any way, as they rely on poverty and social exclusion concepts, which are not discussed in relation to quality of life concept In the part presenting households quality of life, more systematic approach into what dimensions of quality of life will be discussed and what indicators will be used to discuss them would be needed. Also, since pensioners quality of life is framed by the welfare state programmes, the authors would be recommended to describe these programmes in more detail and not just broadly referring to general characteristic of the welfare state – for the reader more information on general welfare pensions system and its recent reforms, as well as some other relevant system would be needed (e.g. social assistance systems and similar) The authors also introduce in part 3 issues of child poverty, which does not seem to be relevant for the topic of the article (pensioner’s quality of life) Methods are not clearly presented and should be improved as to what authors want to analyse and how The discussion at the moment seems a very detailed description of the changes and it is not clear what is the analytical approach and what is the message of the authors to the reader. As mentioned, one would expect according to title and framework, that more clearly quality of life concept would be used in this part of the article