Well-being is the general well-being of people in a community. Well-being in general speaks of good health, happiness and security of people. The state or government is the main provider of the welfare program and these include hospitals, schools, good roads, communication facilities, safety of life and property, access to livable housing at affordable prices, etc. The Measure of Economic Well-Being (MEW) is a measure to assess the standard of living. It is proposed by two economists named William Nordhaus and James Tobin in 1972.
People’s standard of living and well-being are greatly increased through the combined efforts of heads of households, domestic workers, Red Cross volunteers, members of civic and religious clubs, etc.
Welfare State: This is a system whereby the government provides a range of free services to people who need them. For example, free education, free health care, free health care, money for people without work (in developed countries, the United States and Great Britain), care for the elderly, etc. Well-being can be broadly measured in two perspectives:
1. QUALITATIVE: This is in the form of salary (high or low), running water, hospital, electricity, security of life and property, food, self-sufficiency, access to banking and financial services, control and manageable inflation rate, stable economy ( i.e. effective resource management), paid employment, access to property accumulation, etc.
2. QUANTITATIVE: This is in the form of Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Gross National Product (GNP), Income per capita, etc. All of these are low in developing countries eg Nigeria, Ghana etc. but high in developed countries like Britain, USA etc. Inflation is also an example, but a moderate inflation rate is preferable, i.e. a single digit rate from 1 to 9.
VARIOUS PROGRAMS TO INCREASE WELL-BEING/WELL-BEING IMPROVEMENT PROGRAMS
The government of a country watches over the well-being of its citizens and the individual participates in these programs to improve them. These programs could be grouped into the following:
1. NATIONAL PROVISION FUND (NPF): This program was implemented to take care of workers in the private sector. Here the workers do contribute under the regime called Contributive Pension Regime (CPS) that allows workers to contribute a certain amount of money to take care of retirees.
2. NIGERIA SOCIAL INSURANCE TRUST FUND (NSITF): This was established in 1993 under decree number 73 to replace the National Provident Fund (NPF). The reason for this is to allow a more comprehensive social security scheme for Nigerian private sector employees and allow these workers to contribute 2.5% while their employers contribute 5% of the basic salary for the retirement of the employees. workers. There are a number of benefits under this scheme which will include retirement pension and grant; pension and survivor’s allowance; pension and disability allowance; and finally funeral allowance.
3. NATIONAL HOUSING FUND (NHF): This was established to create a pathway for taxpayers to have access to their own or personal home. Each worker will contribute 2 ½% of their basic monthly salary. Accumulation allows them to take home mortgage loans to facilitate their housing project.
4. EDUCATION TAX FUND (ETF): Under this scheme, all private companies are expected to pay 2% of their after-tax profits to the government that are raised to carry out important programs in education.
There are other quite important programs that helped improve people’s well-being. These include the National Health Insurance Scheme (NHIS), Free Education, Universal Basic Education (UBE), Government Scholarships/Grants and Cooperative Access Scheme.
WHY SOME OF THESE PROGRAMS FAIL
Some of these programs fail because:
Yo. Greed
ii. Bureaucracy
iii. Government actions and inactions causing difficult bottlenecks
IV. Lack of proper records.
v. No remittance from the fund
