Social policy is often constructed and implemented by people who have little experience of its impact as a service user, but there has been a growing interest in greater public, patient and service user involvement in social policy as both political activity and academic discipline. Social Policy First Hand is the first comprehensive international social policy text from a participatory perspective and presents a new service user-led social policy that addresses the current challenges in welfare provision. A companion volume to Peter Beresford's bestselling All our welfare, it introduces the voices of different groups of service users, starting from their lived experience. With an impressive list of contributors, this important volume fills a gap in looking at social policy using participatory and inclusive approaches and the use of experiential knowledge in its construction. It will challenge traditional state and market-led approaches to welfare.

What are the challenges facing social welfare in America? Theories of stakeholders, the policy process, electoral politics, the precariat, child welfare, online education, the devolution of the welfare state, and its sequel, the investment state, illuminate critical factors determining the future of social welfare as well as the professions. Beyond explaining social change, theories include applications for future research. After the turmoil of the 2016 election, Pandora's Dilemma is not only the first empirically-based theoretical explanation, but also a long-overdue illustration of the value of theory in social welfare. This book is essential reading for social welfare scholars trying to make sense of Brexit and the Trump presidency.

The family has become a political battleground in both East and West. In the West, interventionist policies designed to encourage equality of opportunity and to eliminate the problems encountered by disadvantaged members of the traditional family (usually women, children and the elderly) have been replaced by a fresh quest for individual freedom from interference by the State. Once again inequality of economic power is determining decisions such as whether or if at all to seek divorce or abortion in situations where previously the State regulated by means of offering economic support. The process of 'rolling-back' the influence of the State has been dubbed 'privatisation' of the family, and the consequences of this shift by the State are here examined in considerable detail by a group of experts. The same examination of family in the East throws up similar terminology ('privatisation' for instance appears frequently) but the motivating forces and processes are intriguingly different. In the East concern to retain welfare provision, to reject the past, and to reflect national values without reducing individual liberty now requires a balancing act of extreme delicacy. This book is in

As almost all newspaper or magazine readers know, Canada figured prominently in the turbulent U.S. debates over health care reform in the early Clinton presidency. Furthermore, future news analysts and policymakers will undoubtedly again use Canada to cite the "good" and the "bad" aspects of single-payer national health insurance. Beyond the debate about the desirability of Canadian-style health care reforms, Antonia Maioni sees another question: Why did the United States and Canada, alike in so many ways, part "at the crossroads" to produce such different systems of health insurance? She answers this previously neglected query so interestingly that her book will hold the attention of anyone concerned with health care in either country or both.

The author explores the development of health insurance in the United States and Canada, from the emergence of health care as a political issue in the 1930s to the passage of federal health insurance legislation in the 1960s. Focusing on how political institutions influence policy development, she shows that Canada's federal structure and its parliamentary institutions encouraged a social-democratic third party that became pivotal in demonstrating the feasibility of universal, public health insurance. Meanwhile, the constraints of the U.S. political system forced health care reformers to temper their own ideas to appeal to a wide coalition within the Democratic party. Even readers previously unfamiliar with Canadian politics will find in this book important clues about the "realm of the possible" in the uncertain future of U.S. health care.

Over the last three decades, welfare policies have been informed by popular beliefs that welfare fraud is rampant. As a result, welfare policies have become more punitive and the boundaries between the welfare system and the criminal justice system have blurred-so much so that in some locales prosecution caseloads for welfare fraud exceed welfare caseloads. In reality, some recipients manipulate the welfare system for their own ends, others are gravely hurt by punitive policies, and still others fall somewhere in between. In Cheating Welfare, Kaaryn S. Gustafson endeavors to clear up these gray areas by providing insights into the history, social construction, and lived experience of welfare. She shows why cheating is all but inevitable-not because poor people are immoral, but because ordinary individuals navigating complex systems of rules are likely to become entangled despite their best efforts. Through an examination of the construction of the crime we know as welfare fraud, which she bases on in-depth interviews with welfare recipients in Northern California, Gustafson challenges readers to question their assumptions about welfare policies, welfare recipients, and crime control in the United States.

Britain is going through the most radical upheaval of the benefits system since its foundations were laid at the end of the 1940s. In Broken Benefits, Sam Royston argues that social security isn't working, and without a change in direction, it will be even less fair in the future. Drawing on original research and high-profile debates, this much-needed book provides an introductory guide to social security, correcting misunderstandings and exposing poorly understood problems. It reveals how some workers pay to take on additional hours; that those who pay national insurance contributions may get nothing in return; that some families can be paid to split apart; and that many people on the lowest incomes are seeing their retirement age rise the fastest. Broken Benefits includes real-life stories, models of household budgets, projections of benefit spending, and a free online calculator showing the impact of welfare changes on personal finances. The book presents practical ideas of how benefits should be reformed, to create a fairer, simpler and more coherent system for the future.

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.

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.

This is an open access title available under the terms of a CC BY-NC-SA 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. Detailed analyses of poverty and wellbeing in developing countries, based on household surveys, have been ongoing for more than three decades. The large majority of developing countries now regularly conduct a variety of household surveys, and the information base in developing countries with respect to poverty and wellbeing has improved dramatically. Nevertheless, appropriate measurement of poverty remains complex and controversial. This is particularly true in developing countries where (i) the stakes with respect to poverty reduction are high; (ii) the determinants of living standards are often volatile; and (iii) related information bases, while much improved, are often characterized by significant non-sample error. It also remains, to a surprisingly high degree, an activity undertaken by technical assistance personnel and consultants based in developed countries. This book seeks to enhance the transparency, replicability, and comparability of existing practice. In so doing, it also aims to significantly lower the barriers to entry to the conduct of rigorous poverty measurement and increase the participation of analysts from developing countries in their own poverty assessments. The book focuses on two domains: the measurement of absolute consumption poverty and a first order dominance approach to multidimensional welfare analysis. In each domain, it provides a series of flexible computer codes designed to facilitate analysis by allowing the analyst to start from a flexible and known base. The book volume covers the theoretical grounding for the code streams provided, a chapter on 'estimation in practice', a series of 11 case studies where the code streams are operationalized, as well as a synthesis, an extension to inequality, and a look forward.

This book explores the role of the welfare state in the overall wealth and wellbeing of nations and in particular looks at the American welfare state in comparison with other developed nations in Europe and elsewhere. It is widely believed that the welfare state undermines productivity and economic growth, that the United States has an unusually small welfare state, and that it is, and always has been, a welfare state laggard. This book shows that all rich nations, including the United States, have large welfare states because the socialized programs that comprise the welfare state-public education and health and social insurance-enhance the productivity of capitalism. In public education, the most productive part of the welfare state, for most of the 19th and 20th centuries, the United States was a leader. Though few would argue that public education is not part of the welfare state, most previous cross national analyses of welfare states have omitted education. Including education has profound consequences, undergirding the case for the productivity of welfare state programs and the explanation for why all rich nations have large welfare states, and identifying US welfare state leadership. From 1968 through 2006, the United States swung right politically and lost its lead in education and opportunity, failed to adopt universal health insurance and experienced the most rapid explosion of health care costs and economic inequality in the rich world. The American welfare state faces large challenges. Restoring its historical lead in education is the most important but requires investing large sums in education, beginning with universal pre-school and in complementary programs that aid children's development. The American health insurance system is by far the most costly in the rich world, yet fails to insure one sixth of its population, produces below average results, crowds out useful investments in children, and is the least equitably financed. Achieving universal coverage will increase costs. Only complete government financing is likely to restrain long term costs. In memory of Robert J. Lampman Colleague, Co-author, Friend and Mentor

The utility idea has had a long history in economics, especially in the explanation of demand and in welfare economics. In a comprehensive survey and critique of the Slutsky theory and the pattern to which it belongs in the economic context, S. N. Afriat offers a resolution of questions central to its main idea, including sufficient conditions as well. Originally published in 1980. 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 editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover 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.

First published in 1989, The Undeserving Poor was a critically acclaimed and enormously influential account of America's enduring debate about poverty. Taking stock of the last quarter century, Michael B. Katz's new edition of this classic is virtually a new book. As the first did, it will force all concerned Americans to reconsider the foundations of our policies toward the poor, especially in the wake of the Great Recession that began in 2008. Katz highlights how throughout American history, the poor have been regarded as undeserving: people who do not deserve sympathy because they brought their poverty on themselves, either through laziness and immorality, or because they are culturally or mentally deficient. This long-dominant view sees poverty as a personal failure, serving to justify America's mean-spirited treatment of the poor. Katz reminds us, however, that there are other explanations of poverty besides personal failure. Poverty has been written about as a problem of place, of resources, of political economy, of power, and of market failure. Katz looks at each idea in turn, showing how they suggest more effective approaches to our struggle against poverty. The Second Edition includes important new material. It now sheds light on the revival of the idea of culture in poverty research; the rehabilitation of Daniel Patrick Moynihan; the resurgent role of biology in discussions of the causes of poverty, such as in The Bell Curve; and the human rights movement's intensified focus on alleviating world poverty. It emphasizes the successes of the War on Poverty and Great Society, especially at the grassroots level. It is also the first book to chart the rise and fall of the "underclass" as a concept driving public policy. A major revision of a landmark study, The Undeserving Poor helps readers to see poverty-and our efforts to combat it-in a new light.

Moving beyong traditional concern with pattern and process, this innovative text explores the political and legislative history of a raciala segregation in Britain. It provides a critical commentary on the development of national and local housing policy, on the operation of the major markets and institutions, and on the organization of urban management. This book rejects the reality of a racea as an explanatory construct, focusing instead on how and why racial inequality is constituted through economic, political and social activity. It is a contribution to the growing literature in search of an anti--racist social science. To that end, segragation is analysed not just as a spatial form, but also as a politically constructed problem and as a socially constructed way of life. Together, these insights implicate the organization of residential space in the iniquitous dispensation of many economic, welfare and civil rights associated with citizenship in capitalist democracies. The Politics of a Racea and Residence explores the connections between social geography, social administration and political science. The book gathers together a hitherto fragmented body of data to provide a reinterpretation of a racial segregationa that is both theoretically innovative and politically relevant. It will therefore serve the needs of advanced undergraduates in a variety of social science disciplines, while providing a useful source of reference for courses offering professional qualifications in housing and urban management.

'Basic Income is an idea whose time has come, and Guy Standing has pioneered our understanding of it... Standing's analysis is vital' Paul Mason 'Guy Standing has been at the forefront of the movement for nearly 4 decades, and in this superb and thorough survey he explains how it works and why it has the potential to revitalise life and democracy in our societies. This is an essential book.' Brian Eno Shouldn't everyone receive a stake in society's wealth? Could we create a fairer world by granting a guaranteed income to all? What would this mean for our health, wealth and happiness? Basic Income is a regular cash transfer from the state, received by all individual citizens. It is an acknowledgement that everyone plays a part in generating the wealth currently enjoyed only by a few. Political parties across the world are now adopting it as official policy and the idea generates headlines every day. Guy Standing has been at the forefront of thought about Basic Income for the past thirty years, and in this book he covers in authoritative detail its effects on the economy, poverty, work and labour; dissects and disproves the standard arguments against Basic Income; explains what we can learn from pilots across the world and illustrates exactly why a Basic Income has now become such an urgent necessity.

The social security system of Great Britain has reached a crossroads, following the election of a Labour Government promising a 'New Age' of welfare and seemingly prepared to 'think the unthinkable' on welfare reform, at a time when public expenditure on welfare benefits has reached nearly GBP100 billion per annum. In 1985 the Conservative's Green Paper on social security reform announced that the benefits system had 'lost its way'. Attempts were made to curb benefits expenditure and reduce welfare dependency, for example through better 'targeting' of needs, the reinforcement of personal and family responsibility, and tighter administrative controls. The ten years from 1988 to 1998 saw the introduction of many new benefit schemes including income support, family credit, the social fund, disability living allowance, incapacity benefit, and jobseeker's allowance as well as the increasing influence of European Law. Yet the system 'achieves too little' according to the new Government's Green Paper on welfare reform, which promises ' a new contract between the citizen and the Government, based on responsibilities and rights'. The precise form these responsibilities and rights will take remains unknown, although we already have schemes like the New Deal and proposals for stakeholder pensions. Meanwhile, social security law continues to impact upon the lives of millions of citizens. After ten years of major legislative change, and with the prospect of a new direction, this is a time to take stock and to analyse the social and legal impact of the past decade's legislation, case law, and policy, as well as considering possible reforms. The book's approach is to organise this task thematically, particularly with regard to the social context to social security, through discrete chapters on, for example, gender and the family, disability, housing, old age, and unemployment. It is also opportune to examine the theoretical framework of state welfare and social security, particularly in the context of social rights. The book aims to provide an authoritative, contextual and critical account of how British social security law has evolved, how it operates, its substance, and its social effects.

This is the book that nobody thinks they need … until they see it.

Information is power. Those who can afford it and know how to navigate their way around the Internet have unfettered access to knowledge and information that gives them a distinct advantage when it comes to exploring opportunities, developing their own potential and finding solutions to problems.

In the words of Truida Prekel, this printed collection of tools, resources, services and solutions offered by non-profit, faith-based, civil society and government organisations is lLike holding Google in your hands. A huge time-saver, as you get curated what you are looking for, in compact form – rather than getting lost, misled or distracted by surfing around.

The Resource Directory is a direct result of the issues we learn about during Community Conversations and the follow-up research we do for articles in the magazine. The outcome? A comprehensive Directory of solutions, resources, tools and services from non-profit, faith-based, civil society and government programmes – letting South Africans know where to find what they need – online and offline.

The Repoliticization of the Welfare State grapples with the evolving nature of political conflict over social spending after the Great Recession. While the severity of the economic crisis encouraged strong social spending responses to protect millions of individuals, governments have faced growing pressure to reduce budgets and make deep cuts to the welfare state. Whereas conservative parties have embraced fiscal discipline and welfare state cuts, left-wing parties have turned away from austerity in favor of higher social spending. These political differences represent a return of traditional left-right beliefs over social spending and economic governance. This book is one of the first to systematically compare welfare state politics before and after the Great Recession arguing that a new and lasting post-crisis dynamic has emerged where political parties once again matter for social spending. At the heart of this repoliticization are intense ideological debates over market regulation, social inequality, redistribution, and the role of the state. The book analyzes social spending dynamics for 28 countries before and after the crisis. It also includes in-depth country case studies representing five distinct welfare state types: Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, Spain, and the Czech Republic.

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.

Employment and Development brings together the contributions of 2014 IZA Prize in Labor Economics award winner Gary S. Fields to address global employment and poverty problems. Most of the poor in developing countries live in households in which people work, but still they are poor because the best available work pays so little. Employment and Development: How Work Can Lead From and Into Poverty questions how economic growth affects standards of living, how labor markets work in developing countries, and how different labor market policies affect well-being. Through a collection of essays, this book tackles major questions in development and labor economics. Who benefits from economic growth and who is hurt by economic decline? Why are distributional factors and labor market conditions improving in some countries but not in others? How do developing countries' labor markets work? How would labor market conditions change if different policies were to be put into effect? What are the welfare consequences of these changes? Through distributional analysis, Fields examines inequality, poverty, income mobility, and economic well-being, and through analysis of changing labor market conditions he examines employment and unemployment, employment composition, and labor earnings. By concentrating on the poor and understanding how the labor markets work for them and how their labor market earnings might be raised in response to different policy interventions, Fields addresses questions of first-order importance for human well-being.

Social Care, Service Users and User Involvement provides a definitive introduction to practical, philosophical and theoretical issues at the heart of user involvement. This book provides an accessible account of the latest research findings regarding user involvement on three levels: the delivery and provision of services, practice and practitioners, and research and evaluation. It explores a wide range of service user needs and concerns, including the latest developments in personalisation and the effect of the Equality Act 2010. First-hand accounts illustrate the range of issues and service user needs which could be addressed by increased involvement within and beyond the social care system. The book also distinguishes between user views and user involvement, and addresses their processes outcomes and impact, as well as their measurement. This book will be a key source of information for care workers, service managers, policy makers, researchers, service users and social and health care professionals involved in social care and support service planning. This topical series examines areas of particular interest to those in social and community work and related fields. Each book draws together different aspects of the subject, highlighting relevant research and drawing out implications for policy and practice.