As social security comes of age in an uncertain climate, Americans find news reports and 'official' projections disturbing in ways they do not fully understand - but dare not ignore. The challenges that beset social security, however, are not just actuarial or fiscal in nature. The choices before us require a confrontation with the political and philosophical underpinnings of the American experiment. Fifty years ago, Franklin Roosevelt envisioned social security to be the cornerstone 'for the kind of protection America wants' from the financial troubles people faced due to old age and family tragedies. By fulfilling its initial promise, social security has evolved into the nation's largest, costliest, and most successful domestic institution. But the optimistic assumptions that inspired its incremental expansion have dissipated in the face of demographic, political, economic, and cultural shifts in American society. Despite past successes, social security no longer enjoys solid support. Critics predict further trouble in coming decades. Social Security: Visions and Revisions encourages lawmakers, academic experts, and general readers alike to think more broadly and boldly about social security and its relation to public assistance and other income-maintenance and health-care programs. Pulling together information and insights previously scattered and fragmentary, this book draws lessons from the past that free us of outdated assumptions and unexamined shibboleths. The re-vision of social security that Achenbaum advocates - one that highlights intergenerational features and underscores the provision of a socially acceptable, universal minimum standard of living - should become the basisof all discussions of government's responsibility to promote 'the general welfare' in our aging society.

With over 1000 photographs, Shelter is a classic celebrating the imagination, resourcefulness, and exuberance of human habitat. First published in 1973, it is not only a record of the countercultural builders of the '60s, but also of buildings all over the world. There is a history of shelter and the evolution of building types. Tents, yurts, timber buildings, barns, small homes, domes, etc. There is a section on building materials, including heavy timber construction and stud framing, as well as stone, straw bale construction, adobe, plaster and bamboo. There are interviews with builders and tips on recycled materials and wrecking. The spirit of the '60s counterculture is evident throughout the book, and the emphasis is on creating your own shelter (or space) with your own hands. A joyful, inspiring book.

How did Britain transform itself from a nation of workhouses to one that became a model for the modern welfare state? The Winding Road to the Welfare State investigates the evolution of living standards and welfare policies in Britain from the 1830s to 1950 and provides insights into how British working-class households coped with economic insecurity. George Boyer examines the retrenchment in Victorian poor relief, the Liberal Welfare Reforms, and the beginnings of the postwar welfare state, and he describes how workers altered spending and saving methods based on changing government policies. From the cutting back of the Poor Law after 1834 to Parliament's abrupt about-face in 1906 with the adoption of the Liberal Welfare Reforms, Boyer offers new explanations for oscillations in Britain's social policies and how these shaped worker well-being. The Poor Law's increasing stinginess led skilled manual workers to adopt self-help strategies, but this was not a feasible option for low-skilled workers, many of whom continued to rely on the Poor Law into old age. In contrast, the Liberal Welfare Reforms were a major watershed, marking the end of seven decades of declining support for the needy. Concluding with the Beveridge Report and Labour's social policies in the late 1940s, Boyer shows how the Liberal Welfare Reforms laid the foundations for a national social safety net. A sweeping look at economic pressures after the Industrial Revolution, The Winding Road to the Welfare State illustrates how British welfare policy waxed and waned over the course of a century.

Older Americans are a powerful force in America politics because of high participation in elections and active lobbying organisations. In addition, the younger set who pay the largest taxes keep a steady eye on the often shifty actions of politicians with regard to pensions. This book deals with some of the critical issues of health insurance for retirees, reform of pensions plans, and company actions with regard to pension plans.

According to the World Health Organization's World Health Report 2001, one family in four worldwide has at least one member currently suffering from a mental disorder. This disorder often remains undiagnosed and untreated, but the behaviour of the ill person usually has a significant impact on the quality of life of the family and on the mental health of the other members of the family, and generates feelings of shame, guilt, helplessness and despair.

This book provides a comprehensive picture of currently available evidence about the specific characteristics of the burden on the families of people with the various mental disorders, the coping strategies which increase or decrease this burden, the family interventions of proven efficacy, and what should be said and what should not be said to the relatives of people with the various conditions.

Public Finance and Public Choice provides a solid foundation in contemporary public economics, analysing different theoretical approaches and contextualising the theory with relevant and up-to-date examples. The authors have retained the focus on the public choice school of thought in this new edition and have also added an emphasis on behavioural public finance. The comprehensive nature of the analysis, coupled with the intuitive diagrammatic approach, ensures that students using this book gain a thorough understanding of the subject.
Online Resource Centre
The text will be accompanied by an Online Resource Centre which comprises
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Artwork from the book
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Self-test questions (5 per chapter)
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In the past decades the role of the State has undergone major alterations regarding supply of goods and services in general, particularly housing supply. There is a clear trend towards less direct intervention of the public agents in the supply process, encouraging participation of non-public agents, such as the private sector, NGO's (non-governmental organisations, with a volunteer character), and communities that receive goods and services -- in this case, housing. This is certainly a global trend encompassing both industrially advanced and developing countries. The mechanism of supplying housing or other goods and services consists of several elements, such as planning, financing, management, production, monitoring and supervision. The general supply pattern is defined by how these elements are distributed among public and non-public agents. The following questions are essential in this context: how are these elements distributed? What is the appropriate relation for a certain context? This book approaches these questions by means of a comparative analyses of different modes of housing provision emphasising the relations between public and non-public agents. To this end it uses case studies in Sao Paulo, Brazil where the fieldwork for the research was conducted. Nevertheless, the findings of the book have much wider implications for housing policy formulation and market development in developing countries as a whole.

No sector has been as vital as oil to the Russian economy since Vladimir Putin came to power. The longest serving leader since Stalin, Putin has presided during a period of relative economic prosperity driven largely by booming oil windfalls. Oil in Putin's Russia offers an in-depth examination of the contests over windfalls drawn from the oil sector. Examining how the Russian leadership has guided the process of distributing these windfalls, Adnan Vatansever explores the causes behind key policy continuities and policy reversals during Putin's tenure. The product of over ten years of research, including interviews with decision-makers and oil industry officials, Oil in Putin's Russia takes an innovative approach to understanding the contested nature of resource rents and the policy processes that determine how they are allocated. In so doing, it offers a comprehensive and timely account of politics and policy in contemporary Russia, and a significant contribution to research on the political economy of resource rents in mineral resource-rich countries.

Low-income families with housing problems are found in every section of the United States. They are located in large cities like Los Angeles and New York, but also in small towns and rural areas, in colonias on the border with Mexico, and on American Indian tribal areas of Arizona, New Mexico, and elsewhere. Long-term demographic and economic trends point to an increase in the number of low-income people with housing difficulties. Recent changes in welfare programs could accentuate these problems. This book presents an overview of housing problems currently facing low-income families and individuals and trends that may accentuate or mitigate these problems. For one thing, rising rents in private rental housing associated with a robust economy are resulting in a dwindling supply of decent and affordable housing available to low-income households. Contents: Preface; Housing Problems, Current and Emerging; Housing Construction and Rehabilitation Programs for Low-income Households; Using the Existing Inventory of Housing; Housing for Special Populations; Community Development Block Grants and Other Programs; Index.

Sure to raise the hackles of many across the nation is any mention of welfare and federal entitlement programs. All agree that no one should be on welfare, but the question is what to do about those who really need the income provided by the federal government. In 1996, welfare reform legislation enacted the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, which is a block grant provided to the state with a chief purpose of ending the dependence of needy families on government assistance. Among the principal groups impacted by the welfare reform legislation are female headed families with children. Recent analyses have revealed that single mothers are more likely to be working than in the past and that welfare receipt among poor families with women at the head has declined. Despite these trends, single mothers' net income has shown no increase, suggesting that full-time work may not be enough to eliminate poverty and welfare dependency among female families. This book reports on several current trends in the economic status of female headed families, providing an overview of federal programs and their effects along with several useful charts based on Census Bureau information. The combination of statistics and evaluation make for an important contribution to the study of initiatives to defeat poverty and income deficiencies in a significant part of the population.

For over three decades, mature European welfare states have been on their way into an austerity phase marked by greater needs and more insecure revenues. A number of reform pressures-including population ageing, unemployment, economic globalization, and increased migration-call into question the economic sustainability and normative underpinnings of transfer systems and public services. And while welfare states long seemed resilient to growing challenges, it now seems clear that they are changing. Election Campaigns and Welfare State Change examines how political leaders and the public respond to reform pressures at a pivotal moment in a mass democracy: the election campaign. Do campaigns facilitate debate and attention to welfare state challenges? Do political parties present citizens with distinct choices as to how challenges might be met? Do leaders prepare citizens for the idea that some solutions may be painful? Do their messages have adaptive consequences for how the public perceives the need for reform? Do citizens adjust their normative support for welfare policies in the process? The answers to these questions affect how we understand welfare state change and representative democracy in an era of mounting challenges.

Japan is aging rapidly, and its government has been groping with the implications of this profound social change. In a pioneering study of postwar Japanese social policy, John Creighton Campbell traces the growth from small beginnings to an elaborate and expensive set of pension, health care, employment, and social service programs for older people. He argues that an understanding of policy change requires a careful disentangling of social problems and how they come to be perceived, the invention (or borrowing) of policy solutions, and conflicts and coalitions among bureaucrats, politicians, interest groups, and the general public. The key to policy change has often been the strategies adopted by policy entrepreneurs to generate or channel political energy. To make sense of all these complex processes, the author employs a new theory of four "modes" of decision-making--cognitive, political, artifactual, and inertial. Campbell refutes the claim that there is a unique "Japanese-style welfare state." Despite the big differences in cultural values, social arrangements, economic priorities, and political control, government responsibility for the "aging-society problem" is broadly similar to that in advanced Western nations. However, Campbell's account of how Japan has taken on that responsibility raises new issues for our understanding of both Japanese politics and theories of the welfare state.

Originally published in 1992.

The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These paperback editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

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 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.

During the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, more Americans belonged to fraternal societies than to any other kind of voluntary association, with the possible exception of churches. Despite the stereotypical image of the lodge as the exclusive domain of white men, fraternalism cut across race, class, and gender lines to include women, African Americans, and immigrants. Exploring the history and impact of fraternal societies in the United States, David Beito uncovers the vital importance they had in the social and fiscal lives of millions of American families. Much more than a means of addressing deep-seated cultural, psychological, and gender needs, fraternal societies gave Americans a way to provide themselves with social-welfare services that would otherwise have been inaccessible, Beito argues. In addition to creating vast social and mutual aid networks among the poor and in the working class, they made affordable life and health insurance available to their members and established hospitals, orphanages, and homes for the elderly. Fraternal societies continued their commitment to mutual aid even into the early years of the Great Depression, Beito says, but changing cultural attitudes and the expanding welfare state eventually propelled their decline. |David Beito's book establishes the enormous impact of fraternal societies on the social lives and fiscal circumstances of millions of Americans between 1890 and 1967. In addition to creating vast social and mutual aid networks for the poor and the working class, fraternal organizations offered insurance policies to members and established hospitals, orphanages, and homes for the elderly.

Children of Parents with Mental Illness is a groundbreaking study into the frequently overlooked impact on children whose parents have a mental illness. By balancing theory with first-hand experiences from parents and adult children, it examines the nature of a wide range of psychological disorders.Through case studies, it analyses a parent's ability to still function in the role of caregiver, and the impact their illness can have on their children.

Medicare is a nation-wide health insurance programme for the aged and certain disabled persons. Over its 32 year history, it has provided important protection for millions of Americans. However, the programme is now facing a number of problems. The first and most pressing concern is whether Medicare's financing mechanism will be able to sustain it in the long run. Many people are also concerned that the programme's structure, which in large measure reflects both the health care delivery system as well as political considerations in effect at the time of enactment, has failed to keep pace with the changes in the health care system as a whole. A related concern is whether the programme's benefit structure adequately responds to the health care need of today's aged and disabled populations. This book addresses these and other related issues.

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?

This book is concerned with some of the conceptual and practical problems of measuring the changes in welfare of individuals and the excess burdens arising from taxation. It provides an introductory review of alternative concepts and practical approaches to the measurement of welfare as well as providing a number of practical examples of welfare analyses in a variety of contexts. The excess burden of a tax is a central concept in economics. John Creedy provides an introduction to various concepts of welfare change, paying particular attention to the measurement issues involved. He then applies the methods outlined to the measurement of marginal tax reform and indirect tax reform, with empirical data taken from Australia. He also examines the redistributive effect of price changes in Australia between 1980 and 1995, and the effects of inflation in New Zealand over the period 1993-1995. Finally, he calculates the welfare costs of monopoly and measures the burdens of carbon taxation and welfare. Measuring Welfare Changes and Tax Burdens will be of interest to students and academics working in the areas of public finance and public policy, as well as economists working in government.

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

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.

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.

Countries with smaller governments grow faster. Tobacco taxes are the best way to cut smoking. Government regulation discourages entrepreneurship. Award-winning investigative journalist Tom Bergin digs into eight mantras widely accepted by Western governments and, by talking to the people who promote those ideas and the workers, businesspeople and consumers who have felt their impacts, finds they often don't play out as expected. Smart, funny and incisive, Free Lunch Thinking is essential reading for anyone who really wants to know how economies tick - and why they often don't. _______________________________________________________________ 'I couldn't put it down. A thorough and nuanced examination of the evolution of supply side economics . . . I loved it.' Arthur Laffer, creator of the Laffer Curve 'An entertaining and thought-provoking exploration of economic theories that have been both widely accepted and largely wrong . . . I devoured it in a couple of sittings.' Reuters Breakingviews 'An insightful account of the recent history of economic thought. If you are looking for a book which challenges you without being annoying - make it this one.' Institute of Economics Affairs

In 1965, the United States government enacted legislation to provide low-income individuals with quality health care and related services. Initially viewed as the friendless stepchild of Medicare, Medicaid has grown exponentially since its inception, becoming a formidable force of its own. Funded jointly by the national government and each of the fifty states, the program is now the fourth most expensive item in the federal budget and the second largest category of spending for almost every state. Now, under the new, historic health care reform legislation, Medicaid is scheduled to include sixteen million more people.

Laura Katz Olson, an expert on health, aging, and long-term care policy, unravels the multifaceted and perplexing puzzle of Medicaid with respect to those who invest in and benefit from the program. Assessing the social, political, and economic dynamics that have shaped Medicaid for almost half a century, she helps readers of all backgrounds understand the entrenched and powerful interests woven into the system that have been instrumental in swelling costs and holding elected officials hostage. Addressing such fundamental questions as whether patients receive good care and whether Medicaid meets the needs of the low-income population it is supposed to serve, Olson evaluates the extent to which the program is an appropriate foundation for health care reform.

This book makes the case for the welfare state. Nearly every government in the developed world offers some form of social protection, and measures to improve the social and economic well-being of its citizens. However, the provision of welfare is under attack. The critics argue that welfare states are illegitimate, that things are best left to the market, and that welfare has bad effects on the people who receive it. If we need to be reminded why we ought to have welfare, it is because so many people have come think that we should not. Arguments for Welfare is a short, accessible guide to the arguments. Looking at the common ideas and reoccurring traits of welfare policy across the world it discusses: *The Meaning of the 'Welfare State' *The Moral Basis of Social Policy *Social Responsibility *The Limits of Markets *Public Service Provision *The Role of Government With examples from around the world, the book explains why social welfare services should be provided and explores how the principles are applied. Most importantly, it argues for the welfare state's continued value to society. Arguments for Welfare is an ideal primer for practitioners keen to get to grips with the fundamentals of social policy and students of social policy, social work, sociology and politics.