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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social welfare & social services > Welfare & benefit systems
In the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, the internal
migration of a growing population transformed Britain into a
'society of strangers'. The coming and going of so many people
wreaked havoc on the institutions through which Britons had
previously addressed questions of collective responsibility. Poor
relief, charity briefs, box clubs, and the like relied on personal
knowledge of reputations for their effectiveness and struggled to
accommodate the increasing number of unknown migrants. Trust among
Strangers re-centers problems of trust in the making of modern
Britain and examines the ways in which upper-class reformers and
working-class laborers fashioned and refashioned the concept and
practice of friendly society to make promises of collective
responsibility effective - even among strangers. The result is a
profoundly new account of how Britons navigated their way into the
modern world.
Against the background of a high incidence of long-term benefit
receipt and an increasing focus of interventions on the individual
beneficiary, this study shows how individualised policies within
the German minimum income scheme serve long-term beneficiaries as a
way out of benefit receipt. By applying a qualitative research
design, the link between individual appropriations of policies and
individual life planning is reconstructed in the form of an
empirically grounded typology. The analysis shows that
individualised policies are ridden with prerequisites.
Beneficiaries, that are not able to expertly appropriate them and
to plan in the long-term, face unintended consequences like a
limitation of life planning, a separation from the scheme or an
establishment within entitlement.
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 transformation of women's lives over the past century is among
the most significant and far-reaching of social and economic
phenomena, affecting not only women but also their partners,
children, and indeed nearly every person on the planet. In
developed and developing countries alike, women are acquiring more
education, marrying later, having fewer children, and spending a
far greater amount of their adult lives in the labor force. Yet,
because women remain the primary caregivers of children, issues
such as work-life balance and the glass ceiling have given rise to
critical policy discussions in the developed world. In developing
countries, many women lack access to reproductive technology and
are often relegated to jobs in the informal sector, where pay is
variable and job security is weak. Considerable occupational
segregation and stubborn gender pay gaps persist around the world.
The Oxford Handbook of Women and the Economy is the first
comprehensive collection of scholarly essays to address these
issues using the powerful framework of economics. Each chapter,
written by an acknowledged expert or team of experts, reviews the
key trends, surveys the relevant economic theory, and summarizes
and critiques the empirical research literature. By providing a
clear-eyed view of what we know, what we do not know, and what the
critical unanswered questions are, this Handbook provides an
invaluable and wide-ranging examination of the many changes that
have occurred in women's economic lives.
Pinder explores how globalization has shaped, and continues to
shape, the American economy, which impacts the welfare state in
markedly new ways. In the United States, the transformation from a
manufacturing economy to a service economy escalated the need for
an abundance of flexible, exploitable, cheap workers. The
implementation of the Personal Responsibility Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act (PRWORA), whose generic term is workfare, is one
of the many ways in which the government responded to capital need
for cheap labor. While there is a clear link between welfare and
low-wage markets, workfare forces welfare recipients, including
single mothers with young children, to work outside of the home in
exchange for their welfare checks. More importantly, workfare
provides an "underclass" of labor that is trapped in jobs that pay
minimum wage. This "underclass" is characteristically gendered and
racialized, and the book builds on these insights and seeks to
illuminate a crucial but largely overlooked aspect of the negative
impact of workfare on black single mother welfare recipients. The
stereotype of the "underclass," which is infused with racial
meaning, is used to describe and illustrate the position of black
single mother welfare recipients and is an implicit way of talking
about poor women with an invidious racist and sexist subtext, which
Pinder suggests is one of the ways in which "gendered racism"
presents itself in the United States. Ultimately, the book analyzes
the intersectionality of race, gender, and class in terms of
welfare policy reform in the United States.
Inclusive Group Work offers an innovative approach to working with
intervention groups and task groups by redefining the concept of
diversity and reframing core group work concepts. Appropriate for
both undergraduate and graduate courses, this book introduces
readers to the foundations of group practice with an emphasis on
social justice. The book presents diversity as a relational concept
that is at the heart of all group interactions. Individual identity
is complex, and in order for all members to be treated equally
their individuality must be accepted and respected. Using this
framework, the book discusses the values and ethics of social work
with groups, explores the stages of group work including planning,
and presents both basic and advanced skills such as conflict
resolution and the use of self. Theories are put into practice in
three chapters of case studies that show in-detail how diversity
can be employed as a strength in multiple settings to achieve the
wide variety of goals groups pursue. Through this new approach,
students and practitioners alike will learn how to harness
diversity to engage and maintain participation in inclusive group
processes.
Suitable for courses addressing community economic development,
non-profit organizations, co-operatives and the social economy more
broadly, the second edition of Understanding the Social Economy
expands on the authors' ground-breaking examination of
organizations founded on a social mission - social enterprises,
non-profits, co-operatives, credit unions, and community
development organizations. While the role of the private and public
sectors are very much in the public light, the social economy is
often taken for granted. However, try to imagine a society without
the many forms of organizations that form the social economy:
social service organizations, arts and recreation organizations,
ethno-cultural associations, social clubs, self-help groups,
universities and colleges, hospitals and other healthcare
providers, foundations, housing co-operatives, or credit unions.
Not only do these organizations provide valuable services, but they
employ many people, and purchase goods and services. They are both
social and economic entities. Understanding the Social Economy
illustrates how organizations in the social economy interact with
the other sectors of the economy and highlights the important
social infrastructure that these organizations create. The second
edition contains six new case studies as well three new chapters
addressing leadership and strategic management, and human resources
management. A much-needed work on an important but neglected facet
of organizational studies, Understanding the Social Economy
continues to be an invaluable resource for the classroom and for
participants working in the social sector.
This book explains why the Korean welfare state is underdeveloped
despite successful industrialization, democratization, a militant
labor movement, and a centralized meritocracy. Unlike most social
science books on Korea, which tend to focus on its developmental
state and rapid economic development, this book deals with social
welfare issues and politics during the critical junctures in
Korea's history: industrialization in the 1960-70s, the
democratization and labor movement in the mid-1980s, globalization
and the financial crisis in the 1990s, and the wind of free welfare
in the 2010s. It highlights the self-interested activities of
Korea's enterprise unionism at variance with those of a more
solidaristic industrial unionism in the European welfare states.
Korean big business, the chaebol, accommodated the unions' call for
higher wages and more corporate welfare, which removed practical
incentives for unions to demand social welfare. Korea's
single-member-district electoral rules also induce politicians to
sell geographically targeted, narrow benefits rather than public
welfare for all while presidents are significantly constrained by
unpopular tax increase issues. Strong economic bureaucrats acting
as veto player also lead Korea to a small welfare state.
The Social Security Administration (SSA) uses a screening tool
called the Listing of Impairments to identify claimants who are so
severely impaired that they cannot work at all and thus immediately
qualify for benefits. In this report, the IOM makes several
recommendations for improving SSA's capacity to determine
disability benefits more quickly and efficiently using the
Listings. Table of Contents Front Matter Executive Summary Overview
1 Introduction 2 Social Security Disability Programs and Procedures
3 Cardiovascular Disability Trends 4 Approaches to Revising the
Cardiovascular Listings 5 Heart Failure, Cardiomyopathy,and Right
Heart Failure 6 Heart Transplantation 7 Ischemic Heart Disease 8
Peripheral Artery Disease 9 Chronic Venous Insufficiency 10
Congenital Heart Disease 11 Pulmonary Hypertension 12 Valvular
Heart Disease 13 Arrhythmias 14 Aneurysm or Dissection of the Aorta
and Peripheral Arteries 15 Comorbidities 16 Future Directions for
Improving the Listings Appendix A: Biographical Sketches of
Committee Members and Staff Appendix B: Literature Review Appendix
C: Review of ACC/AHA Clinical Practice Guidelines
The fall-out from the economic and financial crisis of 2008 had
profound implications for countries across the world, leading
different states to determine the best approach to mitigating its
effects. In The Austerity State, a group of established and
emerging scholars tackles the question of why states continue to
rely on policies that, on many levels, have failed. After 2008,
austerity policies were implemented in various countries, a fact
the contributors link to the persistence of neoliberalism and its
accepted wisdoms about crisis management. In the immediate
aftermath of the 2008 collapse, governments and central banks
appeared to adopt a Keynesian approach to salvaging the global
economy. This perception is mistaken, the authors argue. The
"austerian" analysis of the crisis is ahistorical and shifts the
blame from the under-regulated private sector to public, or
sovereign, debt for which public authorities are responsible. The
Austerity State provides a critical examination of the accepted
discourse around austerity measures and explores the reasons behind
its continued prevalence in the world.
What is humanitarianism? This authoritative book provides a
comprehensive analysis of the original idea and its evolution,
exploring its triangulation with war and politics. Peter J. Hoffman
and Thomas G. Weiss trace the origins of humanitarianism, its
social movement, and the institutions (international humanitarian
law) and organizations (providers of assistance and protection)
that comprise it. They consider the international humanitarian
system's ability to regulate the conduct of war, to improve the
wellbeing of its victims, and to prosecute war criminals. Probing
the profound changes in the culture and capacities that underpin
the sector and alter the meaning of humanitarianism, they assess
the reinventions that constitute "revolutions in humanitarian
affairs." The book begins with traditions and perspectives-ranging
from classic international relations approaches to "Critical
Humanitarian Studies" -and reviews seminal wartime emergencies and
the creation and development of humanitarian agencies in the late
nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The authors then examine the
rise of "new humanitarianisms" after the Cold War's end and
contemporary cases after 9/11. The authors continue by unpacking
the most recent "revolutions"-the International Criminal Court and
the "Responsibility to Protect"-as well as such core challenges as
displacement camps, infectious diseases, eco-refugees, and
marketization. They conclude by evaluating the contemporary system
and the prospects for further transformations, identifying
scholarly puzzles and the acute operational problems faced by
practitioners.
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 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.
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 examines the long term impact of service reform in
children's mental health, focusing on comprehensive state and local
initiatives to improve care for children with serious behavioral
health and their families to illustrate how programmatic and
contextual forces influence policy and practice in this area, and
inform readers about strategies employed by policy makers,
administrators and advocates to develop and sustain effective
systems of care. This book looks at Virginia's effort to reform
care for at-risk youth, as well as the transformational initiatives
of six states and several localities. Using a comprehensive
ecological framework, the authors focus on a statewide
transformation of services for children/youth with serious
emotional and behavioral challenges to enhance understanding of the
course and consequences of system change efforts over an extended
period of time. Attention is given to the impact of this reform on
individual children and families, and local communities as well as
the Commonwealth. Using data from states' and localities' efforts
to develop comprehensive systems of care for children and families,
this book enhances understanding of the dynamics of large-scale
human service reform efforts. It describes how political, economic,
social, cultural, and technological forces have shaped policy and
practice, offer lessons learned from these ambitious reform
initiatives, and provide guidance for those interested in improving
care for vulnerable children and their families. This book examines
the long-term impact of reform legislation, employing a multi-modal
approach to enrich understanding of this ambitious reform effort.
Examples are provided to illustrate how CSA and other systems of
care have impacted individual children and families as well as the
interplay of local community dynamics and macro level policy and
political processes. This book also offers the first-hand
perspectives of individual consumers and families, child advocates,
community based program providers, and local and state wide
administrators and policymakers. By combining these multiple
perspectives the authors provide a comprehensive perspective on the
issues of child mental health services and related reform efforts.
This book examines the long term impact of service reform in
children's mental health, focusing on comprehensive state and local
initiatives to improve care for children with serious behavioral
health and their families to illustrate how programmatic and
contextual forces influence policy and practice in this area, and
inform readers about strategies employed by policy makers,
administrators and advocates to develop and sustain effective
systems of care. This book looks at Virginia's effort to reform
care for at-risk youth, as well as the transformational initiatives
of six states and several localities. Using a comprehensive
ecological framework, the authors focus on a statewide
transformation of services for children/youth with serious
emotional and behavioral challenges to enhance understanding of the
course and consequences of system change efforts over an extended
period of time. Attention is given to the impact of this reform on
individual children and families, and local communities as well as
the Commonwealth. Using data from states' and localities' efforts
to develop comprehensive systems of care for children and families,
this book enhances understanding of the dynamics of large-scale
human service reform efforts. It describes how political, economic,
social, cultural, and technological forces have shaped policy and
practice, offer lessons learned from these ambitious reform
initiatives, and provide guidance for those interested in improving
care for vulnerable children and their families. This book examines
the long-term impact of reform legislation, employing a multi-modal
approach to enrich understanding of this ambitious reform effort.
Examples are provided to illustrate how CSA and other systems of
care have impacted individual children and families as well as the
interplay of local community dynamics and macro level policy and
political processes. This book also offers the first-hand
perspectives of individual consumers and families, child advocates,
community based program providers, and local and state wide
administrators and policymakers. By combining these multiple
perspectives the authors provide a comprehensive perspective on the
issues of child mental health services and related reform efforts.
This book reflects on the public policies, programmes and
regulatory frameworks that are taking a rights-based approach to
expanding social protection coverage and benefits in Latin America,
with a view to achieving universal coverage. Its discussion of the
policy tools and programmes pursued in the region aims to provide
the reader with technical and programmatic insights for assembling
and coordinating public policies within consistent and sustainable
social protection systems. The combination of normative
orientations and stock of technical knowledge, together with
advances regarding the rights-based approach to social protection
within a life cycle framework, afford the reader not only a tool
box of specific social protection instruments, but also an in-depth
examination of related political economy aspects.
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