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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social welfare & social services > Welfare & benefit systems
An international and historical look at how parenting choices change in the face of economic inequality Parents everywhere want their children to be happy and do well. Yet how parents seek to achieve this ambition varies enormously. For instance, American and Chinese parents are increasingly authoritative and authoritarian, whereas Scandinavian parents tend to be more permissive. Why? Love, Money, and Parenting investigates how economic forces and growing inequality shape how parents raise their children. From medieval times to the present, and from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Italy, Spain, and Sweden to China and Japan, Matthias Doepke and Fabrizio Zilibotti look at how economic incentives and constraints-such as money, knowledge, and time-influence parenting practices and what is considered good parenting in different countries. Through personal anecdotes and original research, Doepke and Zilibotti show that in countries with increasing economic inequality, such as the United States, parents push harder to ensure their children have a path to security and success. Economics has transformed the hands-off parenting of the 1960s and '70s into a frantic, overscheduled activity. Growing inequality has also resulted in an increasing "parenting gap" between richer and poorer families, raising the disturbing prospect of diminished social mobility and fewer opportunities for children from disadvantaged backgrounds. In nations with less economic inequality, such as Sweden, the stakes are less high, and social mobility is not under threat. Doepke and Zilibotti discuss how investments in early childhood development and the design of education systems factor into the parenting equation, and how economics can help shape policies that will contribute to the ideal of equal opportunity for all. Love, Money, and Parenting presents an engrossing look at the economics of the family in the modern world.
This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-ND 3.0 IGO licence. It is free to read at Oxford Scholarship Online and offered as a free PDF download from OUP and selected open access locations. This volume is the second of three addressing a wide range of policy issues relating to the role of public action in combating hunger and deprivation in the modern world. It deals with the background nutritional, economic, social, and political aspects of the problem of world hunger. Volume 2 deals with famine prevention, paying particular attention to sub-Saharan Africa. The topics covered include: the problems of early warning and early action; the politics of famine prevention; the influence of market responses; the role of cash support and employment provision in protecting threatened food entitlements; and long-term issues of reduction of famine vulnerability. In addition to general analyses, the book contains a number of case studies of failures and successes in famine prevention, both in South Asia and in sub-Saharan Africa. Taken together, these essays provide a comprehensive and authoritative analysis of the problem of hunger and deprivation, and an important guide for action.
A candid explanation of how the labor market really works and is central to everything-and why it is not as healthy as we think Relying on unemployment numbers is a dangerous way to gauge how the labor market is doing. Because of a false sense of optimism prior to the COVID-19 shock, the working world was more vulnerable than it should have been. Not Working is about how people want full-time work at a decent wage and how the plight of the underemployed contributes to widespread despair, a worsening drug epidemic, and the unchecked rise of right-wing populism. David Blanchflower explains why the economy since the Great Recession is vastly different from what came before, and calls out our leaders for their continued failure to address one of the most unacknowledged social catastrophes of our time. This revelatory and outspoken book is his candid report on how the young and the less skilled are among the worst casualties of underemployment, how immigrants are taking the blame, and how the epidemic of unhappiness and self-destruction will continue to spread unless we deal with it. Especially urgent now, Not Working is an essential guide to strengthening the labor market for all when we need it most.
This book explores the politics, institutional dynamics, and outcomes of neoliberal restructuring in Israel. It puts forward a bold proposition: that the very creation of a neoliberal political economy may be largely a state project. Correspondingly, it argues that key political conflicts surrounding the realization of this project may occur within the state. Neoliberal restructuring and the institutionalization of permanent austerity are dependent on reconfigured power relations between state actors and are manifested in a new institutional architecture of the state. This architecture, in turn, is the context in which efforts to change social and employment policies play themselves out. The volume frames the coming of neoliberalism in Israel as a set of concrete and far-reaching changes in the power and modes of operation of the key players in the political economy. These changes undermined and neutralized veto players and enabled the ascendance of two state agencies - the Ministry of Finance and the Central Bank - which gained greatly augmented authority and autonomy. These reconfigurations were set in motion by state initiatives that combined punctuated and incremental change. The volume comprises case studies of changes in specific social and labor market policies, revealing a close elective affinity between programmatic neoliberal changes on the one hand, and on the other the proactive drive of the Ministry of Finance to enhance its control over public spending and policy design. The book explores successful neoliberal reforms but also reforms that were blocked, undermined, or overturned by opposition, emphasizing the importance of reformers' capacity to translate temporary achievements into entrenched strategic advantages.
The 2008 financial crisis triggered the worst global recession since the Great Depression. Many OECD countries responded to the crisis by reducing social spending. Through 11 diverse country case studies (Belgium, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Spain, Sweden, United Kingdom, and the United States), this volume describes the evolution of child poverty and material well-being during the crisis, and links these outcomes with the responses by governments. The analysis underlines that countries with fragmented social protection systems were less able to protect the incomes of households with children at the time when unemployment soared. In contrast, countries with more comprehensive social protection cushioned the impact of the crisis on households with children, especially if they had implemented fiscal stimulus packages at the onset of the crisis. Although the macroeconomic 'shock' itself and the starting positions differed greatly across countries, while the responses by governments covered a very wide range of policy levers and varied with their circumstances, cuts in social spending and tax increases often played a major role in the impact that the crisis had on the living standards of families and children.
The politics and policies that led to America's expansion of the penal system and reduction of welfare programs In 1970s America, politicians began "getting tough" on drugs, crime, and welfare. These campaigns helped expand the nation's penal system, discredit welfare programs, and cast blame for the era's social upheaval on racialized deviants that the state was not accountable to serve or represent. Getting Tough sheds light on how this unprecedented growth of the penal system and the evisceration of the nation's welfare programs developed hand in hand. Julilly Kohler-Hausmann shows that these historical events were animated by struggles over how to interpret and respond to the inequality and disorder that crested during this period. When social movements and the slowing economy destabilized the U.S. welfare state, politicians reacted by repudiating the commitment to individual rehabilitation that had governed penal and social programs for decades. In its place, they championed strategies of punishment, surveillance, and containment. The architects of these tough strategies insisted they were necessary, given the failure of liberal social programs and the supposed pathological culture within poor African American and Latino communities. Kohler-Hausmann rejects this explanation and describes how the spectacle of enacting punitive policies convinced many Americans that social investment was counterproductive and the "underclass" could be managed only through coercion and force. Getting Tough illuminates this narrative through three legislative cases: New York's adoption of the 1973 Rockefeller drug laws, Illinois's and California's attempts to reform welfare through criminalization and work mandates, and California's passing of a 1976 sentencing law that abandoned rehabilitation as an aim of incarceration. Spanning diverse institutions and weaving together the perspectives of opponents, supporters, and targets of punitive policies, Getting Tough offers new interpretations of dramatic transformations in the modern American state.
Poverty whether as drain theory at the start of the twentieth century or through garibi hatao towards the end of those 100 yearswas the predominant economic, political, and social paradigm within which late colonial, nationalist and post-independence era science policy was constructed. Whether as critics of Indias poverty, or as architects of measures for its eradication, Indias commentators called on a broad framework of science both to diagnose and treat poverty. Yet, when we think of science in India today, this earlier priority of poverty eradication is now hard to find. Poverty eradication as a goal in itself seems to have fallen off Indias scientific agenda almost entirely. What accounts for this? This volume asks: Has the problem of poverty in India been solved? Or, has it become inconvenient alongside the rise of new narratives that frame India as a site of remarkable economic growth? Indeed, has there been a loss of faith in the ability of science to tackle poverty? Together, the essays in this volume explore the broader implications for the new role of science in India: as a driver of economic growth for India, rather than as a solution to the persistence of poverty.
How big of a role have national cultures-the collection of values, beliefs, attitudes and preferences-played in the formation of social and economic identities? If substantial, can these identities impact work related attitudes and impact personal decision as specific as the preferred type of job or even the choice of seeking employment at all? At a time when Millennials and Generation Z'ers are facing prodigious employment challenges, it is more timely than ever to examine the ways culture, especially cultural transmission from older to younger generations facilitate (hinder) influence labor force attachment and even the work ethic itself. Caught in the Cultural Preference Net examines work-related beliefs, attitudes and preferences that characterize the value orientations of three generational families in Germany, Sweden, Spain, Italy, India and the United States. These six countries have developed significantly different forms of capitalism ranging from the social democratic form in Sweden to the relatively unfettered, free market capitalism in the United States. Michael J. Camasso and Radha Jagannathan investigate whether these cultural and economic contexts have resulted in enduring attitude and preference structures or if these values and preferences have been changing as economic conditions in a nation have changed. These two experts focus a great deal of their attention on the roles that parents and grandparents have in socializing Millennials into the world of work and if this influence trumps the often competing influences of education, labor market and peers. The book is organized around three lines of inquiry: (1) Do some national cultures possess value orientations that are more successful than others in promoting economic opportunity? (2) Does the transmission of these value orientations demonstrate a persistence irrespective of economic conditions or are they simply the results of these conditions? (3) If a nation's value orientation does indeed impact economic opportunity, does it do so by influencing an individual's preferences? To answer this third question, Camasso and Jagannathan conduct a cross-national, multi-generational stated preference experiment-one of the very few ever attempted. The resulting book reveals substantial cultural stability across generations in some of the six capitalist democracies and substantial intergenerational change in others. The implications of this differential impact for national employment strategies are explored as are the implications for a global economy distinguished by abundant, well-paying service jobs for youth.
As Americans experiment with dismantling the nation's welfare system, cliches and slogans proliferate, ranging from charges that the poor are simply lazy to claims that existing antipoverty programs have failed completely. In this impeccably researched book, Rebecca Blank provides the definitive antidote to the scapegoating, guesswork, and outright misinformation of today's welfare debates. Demonstrating that government aid has been far more effective than most people think, she also explains that even private support for the poor depends extensively on public funds. It takes a nation to fight a problem as pervasive and subtle as modern poverty, and this book argues that we should continue to implement a mix of private and public programs. Federal, state, and local assistance should go hand in hand with private efforts at community development and personal empowerment and change. The first part of the book investigates the changing nature of poverty in America. Poverty is harder to combat now than in the past, both because of the changing demographics of who is poor as well as the major deterioration in earnings among less-skilled workers. The second part of the book delves into policies designed to reduce poverty, presenting evidence that many though not all programs have done exactly what they set out to do. The final chapters provide an excellent review of recent policy changes and make workable suggestions for how to improve public assistance programs to assure a safety net, while still encouraging poor adults to find employment and support their families."
The first volume of The Cambridge Economic History of the Modern World traces the emergence of modern economic growth in eighteenth century Britain and its spread across the globe. Focusing on the period from 1700 to 1870, a team of leading experts in economic history offer a series of regional studies from around the world, as well as thematic analyses of key factors governing the differential outcomes in different parts of the global economy. Topics covered include population and human development, capital and technology, geography and institutions, living standards and inequality, international flows of trade and labour, the international monetary system, and war and empire.
The traditionally, and wrongly, imagined vulnerabilities of the welfare state are economic. The true threats are demographic and political. The most frequently imagined threat is that the welfare state package reduces the level and growth of GDP. It does not, according to broad historical patterns and non-experimental panel econometrics. Large-budget welfare states achieve a host of social improvements without any clear loss of GDP. This Element elaborates on how this 'free lunch' is gained in practice. Other threats to the welfare state are more real, however. One is the rise of anti-immigrant backlash. If combined with heavy refugee inflows, this could destroy future public support for universalist welfare state programs, even though they seem to remain economically sound. The other is that population aging poses a serious problem for financing old age. Pension deficits threaten to crowd out more productive social spending. Only a few countries have faced this issue well.
The political and economic landscape of UK social security provision has changed significantly since the 2008 financial crisis. This fully revised, restructured and updated 3rd edition of a go-to text book covers all the key policy changes and their implications since the elections of 2010 and 2015. With contributions from leading academics in the field this book critically examines the design, entitlement, delivery and impact of current welfare provision. The first half of the book examines social security across the lifecycle from Child Benefit to retirement pensions. The second half focuses on key issues in policy and practice including new topics such as the realities of life on benefits in an era of austerity, and the pros and cons of Universal Basic Income. * Framework supports teachers and students, encouraging analytical thinking of issues and providing pointers to related sources * Authoritative and evidence-based arguments * Clear section and chapter summaries, overviews, questions for discussion, website resources and a bibliography * Includes tables, charts and text boxes for clarity, interest and appeal This book is suitable for undergraduate and postgraduate students of Social Policy taking modules on Social Security Policy, Poverty and Inequality, Income Support and Welfare Reform, as well as Social Work students and those on other Social Science degree programmes.
This book provides a fresh and even-handed account of the newly modernized AARP (formerly the American Association of Retired Persons) - the 40-million member insurance giant and political lobby that continues to set the national agenda for Medicare and Social Security. Frederick R. Lynch addresses AARP's courtship of 78 million aging baby boomers and the possibility of harnessing what may be the largest ever senior voting bloc to defend threatened cutbacks to Social Security, Medicare, and under-funded pension systems. Based on years of research, interviews with key strategists, and analyses of hundreds documents, "One Nation under AARP" profiles a largely white generation, raised in the relatively tranquil 1950s and growing old in a twenty-first century nation buffeted by rapid economic, cultural, and demographic change. Lynch argues that an ideologically divided boomer generation must decide whether to resist entitlement reductions through its own political mobilization or, by default, to empower AARP as it tries to shed its 'greedy geezer' stereotype with an increasingly post-boomer agenda for multigenerational equity.
The Multilevel Politics of Trade presents a timely comparative analysis of eight federations (plus the European Union) to explore why some sub-federal actors have become more active in trade politics in recent years. As the contributing authors find, there is considerable variation in the intensity and modes of sub-federal participation. This they attribute to three key factors: the distinctive institutional features of federal systems; the nature and scope of trade policy and trade agreements; and the extent of social mobilization that accompanies a particular trade policy conversation. As a whole, The Multilevel Politics of Trade argues that sub-federal actors' interests (jurisdictional, political, and economic) are what motivate them to participate in trade debates. However, institutional configurations, coupled with the influence of civil society actors, political parties, and others determine the nature and scope of that participation. Informed by a deep knowledge of federal dynamics, this volume provides extensive comparative analyses of all seven of the North American and European federations and represents a significant intervention into the study of both federalism and political economy.
Social mobility is the hope of economic development and the mantra of a good society. There are disagreements about what constitutes social mobility, but there is broad agreement that people should have roughly equal chances of success regardless of their economic status at birth. Concerns about rising inequality have engendered a renewed interest in social mobility-especially in the developing world. However, efforts to construct the databases and meet the standards required for conventional analyses of social mobility are at a preliminary stage and need to be complemented by innovative, conceptual, and methodological advances. If forms of mobility have slowed in the West, then we might be entering an age of rigid stratification with defined boundaries between the always-haves and the never-haves-which does not augur well for social stability. Social mobility research is ongoing, with substantive findings in different disciplines-typically with researchers in isolation from each other. A key contribution of this book is the pulling together of the emerging streams of knowledge. Generating policy-relevant knowledge is a principal concern. Three basic questions frame the study of diverse aspects of social mobility in the book. How to assess the extent of social mobility in a given development context when the datasets by conventional measurement techniques are unavailable? How to identify drivers and inhibitors of social mobility in particular developing country contexts? How to acquire the knowledge required to design interventions to raise social mobility, either by increasing upward mobility or by lowering downward mobility?
The future of the United States' social welfare commitments,
including retirement and disability payments, unemployment
insurance, Medicare and Medicaid, and the State Child Health
Insurance Program, poses urgent questions as social and demographic
change in the country accelerates. Yet even many social welfare
policy experts fail to grasp the sheer size and intricacy of the
Social Security Act, which governs those commitments, and the
resulting complexity of any reform efforts. In this outstanding
guide to the Act's programs and policies, along with the context
that shaped them, Andrew Dobelstein takes readers step by step
through their maze, providing the kind of comprehensive view of the
U.S. social welfare system that is essential for any would-be
reformers to master.
In one of the most provocative books ever published on America's social welfare system, economist Janet Currie argues that the modern social safety net is under attack. Unlike most books about antipoverty programs, Currie trains her focus not on cash welfare, which accounts for a small and shrinking share of federal expenditures on poor families with children, but on the staples of today's American welfare system: Medicaid, Food Stamps, Head Start, WIC, and public housing. These programs, Currie maintains, form an effective, if largely invisible and haphazard safety net, and yet they are the very programs most vulnerable to political attack and misunderstanding. This book highlights both the importance and the fragility of this safety net, arguing that, while not perfect, it is essential to fighting poverty. Currie demonstrates how America's safety net is threatened by growing budget deficits and by an erroneous public belief that antipoverty programs for children do not work and are riddled with fraud. By unearthing new empirical data, Currie makes the case that social programs for families with children are actually remarkably effective. She takes her argument one step further by offering specific reforms--detailed in each chapter--for improving these programs even more. The book concludes with an overview of an integrated safety net that would fight poverty more effectively and prevent children from slipping through holes in the net. (For example, Currie recommends the implementation of a benefit "debit card" that would provide benefits with less administrative burden on the recipient.) A complement to books such as Barbara Ehrenreich's bestselling "Nickel and Dimed," which document the personal struggles of the working poor, "The Invisible Safety Net" provides a big-picture look at the kind of programs and solutions that would help ease those struggles. Comprehensive and authoritative, it will prompt a major reexamination of the current thinking on improving the lives of needy Americans.
Focusing on health care, education, and elderly care, Privatizing Welfare Services draws on extensive research on the consequences of introducing market-based mechanisms to deliver welfare services. Empirical evidence over the last few decades is summarized and condensed to policy lessons. How to balance equity and efficiency is a central theme. The book also addresses the challenges of financing the Swedish model of welfare services as well as the importance of management practices and public opinion. The privatization of service production has occurred despite major political controversy between two competing visions for the welfare state. Successful experiments have spread organically to neighbouring municipalities. What was done well in this process and what were the mistakes? The book addresses the fundamental economic challenges, the trends of the future, and the implications for institutional design.
The Political Economy of Social Welfare Policy in Africa: Transforming policy through practice is a groundbreaking text that uses a political economy and human rights lens to analyse and critique social welfare policy in selected countries in Africa. Tracing the political transformation of South Africa and other sub-Saharan countries, it provides the reader with critical insight into how social welfare policy evolved during periods of colonial and post-colonial governance regimes and the contemporary period characterised by neoliberal globalisation. The text focuses on the interdependence of economic and social development policies and processes to advance human development and protect the basic human rights of all, especially the poorest and most marginalised.
Consuming Crisis is a crucial account of how consumer culture capitalized on Coronavirus (COVID-19). Sobande explores how brands claim to care while they encourage people to 'keep calm and consume'. This critical analysis of the power and politics of marketing examines an eclectic mix of campaigns, content, and experiences. Such work outlines the societal significance of fast-fashion adverts, banana bread's pandemic 'moment', university social media strategies, and how digital technology mediates memories and work. Based on the belief that brands cannot be activists, Sobande creatively considers how brands construct care, camaraderie, culture, and so-called 'normal' life during times of crisis. Francesca Sobande is a Senior Lecturer in Digital Media Studies at Cardiff University
Despite costing hundreds of billions of dollars and subsidizing everything from homeownership and child care to health insurance, tax expenditures (commonly known as tax loopholes) have received little attention from those who study American government. This oversight has contributed to an incomplete and misleading portrait of U.S. social policy. Here Christopher Howard analyzes the "hidden" welfare state created by such programs as tax deductions for home mortgage interest and employer-provided retirement pensions, the Earned Income Tax Credit, and the Targeted Jobs Tax Credit. Basing his work on the histories of these four tax expenditures, Howard highlights the distinctive characteristics of all such policies. Tax expenditures are created more routinely and quietly than traditional social programs, for instance, and over time generate unusual coalitions of support. They expand and contract without deliberate changes to individual programs. Howard helps the reader to appreciate the historic links between the hidden welfare state and U.S. tax policy, which accentuate the importance of Congress and political parties. He also focuses on the reasons why individuals, businesses, and public officials support tax expenditures. "The Hidden Welfare State" will appeal to anyone interested in the origins, development, and structure of the American welfare state. Students of public finance will gain new insights into the politics of taxation. And as policymakers increasingly promote tax expenditures to address social problems, the book offers some sobering lessons about how such programs work.
"There are places where history feels irrelevant, and America's inner cities are among them," acknowledges Michael Katz, in expressing the tensions between activism and scholarship. But this major historian of urban poverty realizes that the pain in these cities has its origins in the American past. To understand contemporary poverty, he looks particularly at an old attitude: because many nineteenth-century reformers traced extreme poverty to drink, laziness, and other forms of bad behavior, they tried to use public policy and philanthropy to improve the character of poor people, rather than to attack the structural causes of their misery. Showing how this misdiagnosis has afflicted today's welfare and educational systems, Katz draws on his own experiences to introduce each of four topics--the welfare state, the "underclass" debate, urban school reform, and the strategies of survival used by the urban poor. Uniquely informed by his personal involvement, each chapter also illustrates the interpretive power of history by focusing on a strand of social policy in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries: social welfare from the poorhouse era through the New Deal, ideas about urban poverty from the undeserving poor to the "underclass," and the emergence of public education through the radical school reform movement now at work in Chicago. Why have American governments proved unable to redesign a welfare system that will satisfy anyone? Why has public policy proved unable to eradicate poverty and prevent the deterioration of major cities? What strategies have helped poor people survive the poverty endemic to urban history? How did urban schools become unresponsive bureaucracies that fail to educate most of their students? Are there fresh, constructive ways to think about welfare, poverty, and public education? Throughout the book Katz shows how interpretations of the past, grounded in analytic history, can free us of comforting myths and help us to reframe discussions of these great public issues.
The sixth edition of this successful textbook discusses elements of the welfare system, including cash benefits, the health service and education. The text argues that the welfare state does not exist just to help the underprivileged, but also offers efficiencies in areas where the private markets would be inefficient or would not exist at all. Suitable for both economics students and students on related disciplines, this book places the content within a theoretical framework, and uses learning features to engage students with the discussion. Each chapter is concluded with a summary of the key points and an appendix, which provides a non-technical summary for students with no previous exposure to economics. Worked examples from around the world facilitate the comparison of global welfare issues, while diagrams allow readers to visualize concepts. The author ends each chapter with 'questions for further discussion' which could be prepared to structure seminars or to independently test understanding, while an annotated list of further reading suggestions guides additional research. This book is accompanied by the following online resources. For students: - Web links - Further reading For lecturers: - PowerPoint slides
"An excellent introduction to issues surrounding the postwar
French welfare state." "An important and groundbreaking book." Little noticed by much of the world, France, during the 1960s and 1970s, developed into one of the most generous welfare states in the world. This book describes and explains this spectacular growth, and examines some of the problems that have emerged in its wake. The distinguished contributors to this volume are: Douglas E. Ashford (University of Pittsburgh), David R. Cameron (Yale University), Bruno Jobert (National Center for Scientific Research), Rmi Lenoir (University of Paris), Nathan H. Schwartz (University of Louisville), and David Wilsford (Georgia Institute of Technology).
Immiserizing growth occurs when growth fails to benefit, or harms, those at the bottom. It is not a new concept, appearing in some of the towering figures of the classical tradition of political economy including Malthus, Ricardo, and Marx. It is also not empirically insignificant, occurring in between 10% and 35% of cases. In spite of this, it has not received its due attention in the academic literature, dominated by the prevailing narrative that 'growth is good for the poor'. Immiserizing Growth: When Growth Fails the Poor challenges this view to arrive at a better understanding of when, why, and how growth fails the poor. Taking a diverse disciplinary perspective, Immiserizing Growth combines discussion of mechanisms of this troubling economic phenomenon with empirical data on trends in growth, poverty, and related welfare indicators. It draws on political economy, applied social anthropology, and development studies, including contributions from experts in these fields. A number of methodological approaches are represented including statistical analysis of household survey and cross-country data, detailed ethnographic work and case study analysis drawing on secondary data. Geographical coverage is wide including Bolivia, the Dominican Republic, Ecuador, India, Indonesia, Mexico, Nigeria, the People's Republic of China, Singapore, and South Korea, in addition to cross-country analysis. This volume is the first full-length treatment of immiserizing growth, and constitutes an important step in redirecting attention to this major challenge. |
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