ABSTRACT
Social justice can be defined as sustaining social welfare by maintaining a balance in social life within a society in terms of life standards, income levels and opportunities. Governments commonly resort to social aid measures as a flexible and effective tool to maintain social justice. The most effective way of reducing poverty is through creating jobs and increasing employment. Around the world, poor people are generally less qualified and therefore are employed informally or they stay unemployed. Being poor and receiving social aid should be a temporary situation for employable people, as they can be employed in regular jobs and pulled away from poverty. Otherwise, they will get used to receiving social aids and become dependent to it, which would cause their poverty to be transferred to the following generations. There should be a balance between social aid and employment to reduce their dependency on social aid and decrease the amount of time on social aid dependency. Employment of these people would increase domestic production and foster economic development. A social aid framework needs to be developed by designing a balance between social aid and employment, so that people who prefer and are able to work without depending on social aid would not be discouraged to work and would not feel like they are facing social injustice. In this chapter, we will try to explore how social aids affect people’s willingness to work and whether if they are useful for maintaining social justice. Within this context, we will describe social aid measures with some historical background and try to evaluate their contribution to social welfare. We will conclude with some new policy implications for today’s social policymakers to set up a better social aid framework in the light of Islamic doctrine and past experiences.
