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.

The Covid-19 pandemic has tragically exposed how today's welfare state cannot properly protect its citizens. Despite the valiant efforts of public sector workers, from under-resourced hospitals to a shortage of housing and affordable social care, the pandemic has shown how decades of neglect has caused hundreds to die. In this bold new book, leading policy analyst Ursula Huws shows how we can create a welfare state that is fair, affordable, and offers security for all. Huws focuses on some of the key issues of our time - the gig economy, universal, free healthcare, and social care, to criticize the current state of welfare provision. Drawing on a lifetime of research on these topics, she clearly explains why we need to radically rethink how it could change. With positivity and rigor, she proposes new and original policy ideas, including critical discussions of Universal Basic Income and new legislation for universal workers' rights. She also outlines a 'digital welfare state' for the 21st century. This would involve a repurposing of online platform technologies under public control to modernize and expand public services, and improve accessibility.

This book contains the Agreements on Social Security between the United States and Iceland, Uruguay and the Republic of Slovenia. The Agreements are similar in objective and content to the social security totalization agreements already in force with other leading economic partners in Europe and elsewhere, including Australia, Canada, Chile, Japan, Norway, the Republic of Korea, and Switzerland. Such bilateral agreements provide for limited coordination between the United States and foreign social security systems to eliminate dual social security coverage and taxation and to help prevent the loss of benefit protection that can occur when workers divide their careers between two countries.

In the first book devoted exclusively to the contentious politics of autism, noted political scientist and public policy expert John J. Pitney, Jr., explains how autism has evolved into a heated political issue disputed by scientists, educators, social workers, and families. Nearly everything about autism is subject to debate and struggle, including its measurement and definition. Organizational attempts to deal with autism have resulted in not a single "autism policy," but a vast array of policies at the federal, state, and local levels, which often leave people with autism and their families frustrated and confused. Americans with autism are citizens, friends, coworkers, sons, daughters, fathers, and mothers. No longer simply the objects of public policy, they are active participants in current policy debates. Pitney's fascinating look at how public policy is made and implemented offers networks of concerned parents, educators, and researchers a compass to navigate the current systems and hope for a path towards more regularized and effective policies for America's autism community.

Bryan M. Evans, Stephen McBride, and their contributors delve further into the more practical, ground-level side of the austerity equation in Austerity: The Lived Experience. Economically, austerity policies cannot be seen to work in the way elite interests claim that they do. Rather than soften the blow of the economic and financial crisis of 2008 for ordinary citizens, policies of austerity slow growth and lead to increased inequality. While political consent for such policies may have been achieved, it was reached amidst significant levels of disaffection and strong opposition to the extremes of austerity. The authors build their analysis in three sections, looking alternatively at theoretical and ideological dimensions of the lived experience of austerity; how austerity plays out in various public sector occupations and policy domains; and the class dimensions of austerity. The result is a ground-breaking contribution to the study of austerity politics and policies.

In this fully revised third edition of Australia's Welfare Wars, Philip Mendes questions many of the key values and assumptions that determine contemporary social welfare policies, and the factors and forces that shape these policies in Australia. Rather than concentrating on the history of the welfare state, or the process of making social policy, Mendes examines welfare politics in Australia from a broad political perspective, exploring the role played by key socio-economic players and their respective ideologies in the political struggles around welfare. The book looks closely at: the influence of ideas and ideologies - such as neoliberalism, laborism, social democracy and social investment - on the welfare state how different local interest and lobby groups influence welfare policy the significant impact of economic globalisation, and global social policy trends, on Australian welfare policy debates.

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.

The impact of science and technology on culture raises a number of questions about the ways in which people relate to each other and to their environment. Such questions cannot be answered by traditional approaches. Thus another level of analysis is needed to complement the traditional approaches and to address future challenges. The first step in creating this new analysis was taken by Willem H. Vanderburg in 1985 with his pioneering work The Growth of Minds and Cultures. In this book, the first of a multi-volume series that includes Our Battle for the Human Spirit (2016), Vanderburg shows how the culture of a society underlies its science, technology, economy, social structure, political institutions, morality, religion, and art. As such, he seeks to build bridges not only between the 'two cultures' but between all the sciences in order to gain a deeper understanding of our age. This expanded second edition makes the author's ground-breaking analysis available to a generation of digital natives.

System Kids considers the daily lives of adolescent mothers as they negotiate the child welfare system to meet the needs of their children and themselves. Often categorized as dependent and delinquent, these young women routinely become wards of the state as they move across the legal and social borders of a fragmented urban bureaucracy. Combining critical policy study and ethnography, and drawing on current scholarship as well as her own experience as a welfare program manager, Lauren Silver demonstrates how social welfare ""silos"" construct the lives of youth as disconnected, reinforcing unforgiving policies and imposing demands on women the system was intended to help. As clients of a supervised independent living program, they are expected to make the transition into independent adulthood, but Silver finds a vast divide between these expectations and the young women's lived reality. Digging beneath the bureaucratic layers of urban America and bringing to light the daily experiences of young mothers and the caseworkers who assist them, System Kids illuminates the ignored work and personal ingenuity of clients and caseworkers alike. Ultimately reflecting on how her own understanding of the young women has changed in the years since she worked in the same social welfare program that is the focus of the book, Silver emphasizes the importance of empathy in research and in the formation of welfare policies.

John Porter's landmark study of social and ethnic inequality, The Vertical Mosaic, became an instant classic when it was first published in 1965. A national best seller that sold more than 100,000 copies, the book was the first major study of Canada's class structure and one of the foundational texts in Canadian sociology. Sociologist Irving Louis Horowitz described it as "the sociological study of present-day Canada." Fifty years later, the book retains vast significance both for its powerful critique of social exclusivity in a country that prides itself on equality and diversity and for its influence on generations of sociological researchers. The 50th Anniversary Edition features new material which contextualizes the legacy of this important book: a foreword by Porter's colleague, Wallace Clement, and his biographer, Rick Helmes-Hayes, and a new introductory essay by historian Jack Jedwab and sociologist Vic Satzewich.

"Justice as Welfare" provides an egalitarian account of distributive justice by rethinking notions of welfare. It first considers possible forms of decentered welfare to promote communal and individual autonomy rather than the bureaucratic, centralized market-oriented control. Next, it uses theoretical resources to rethink the conventional notions of solidarity that support welfare. Drawing on recent work in continental philosophy, Justice as Welfare suggests that welfare requires a notion of social ontology. It provides both an account of the existential context of communal risk sharing and a framework to think about desire, value, and opportunity. Noting present political and economic realities, it suggests that international strategies to control 'flight capital' are necessary to create and maintain egalitarian welfare. Justice as Welfare aims to present a convincing theoretical account of welfare as social justice and to show how this requires the assertion of democratic control over economic and social reproduction at both national and international levels. This philosophically informed argument about egalitarian justice will appeal to anyone researching issues of social welfare, political theory, and applied political philosophy.

The Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), formerly called the Food Stamp Program, is designed primarily to increase the food purchasing power of eligible low-income households to help them buy a nutritionally adequate low-cost diet. This book describes the rules related to eligibility for SNAP benefits as well as their redemption.

The Welfare and Retirement Fund of the United Mine Workers of America (UMWA) is widely acknowledged as the most innovative effort at group health care in the United States in the twentieth century. Ivana Krajcinovic describes the establishment, operation, and demise of the Fund that brought mining families from the backwater to the forefront of medical care in less than a decade. Krajcinovic analyzes the success of the Fund over nearly three decades in providing high-quality cost-effective care to miners and their families. She also explains the irony of its dismantlement at the very moment when its innovations gained currency among mainstream commercial plans.

A state-of-the-art assessment of welfare provision, policy and reform at national and at EU level which spans the whole of Europe - East, West and Central. Uniquely broad-ranging in scope, and covering the latest research findings and theoretical debates, it provides a genuinely comparative overview text for students of 21st century Europe.

In an age of government imposed austerity, and after 30 years of neoliberal restructuring, the future of the welfare state looks increasingly uncertain. Asbjorn Wahl offers an accessible analysis of the situation across Europe, identifies the most important challenges and presents practical proposals for combating the assault on welfare. Wahl argues that the welfare state should be seen as the result of a class compromise forged in the 20th century, which means that it cannot easily be exported internationally. He considers the enormous shifts in power relations and the profound internal changes to the welfare state which have occurred during the neoliberal era, pointing to the paradigm shift that the welfare state is going through. This is illustrated by the shift from welfare to workfare and increased top down control. As well as being a fascinating study in its own right that will appeal to students of economics and politics, The Rise and Fall of the Welfare State also points to an alternative way forward for the trade union movement based on concrete examples of struggles and alliance-building.

When most people think of policies designed to help the poor, welfare is the first program that comes to mind. Traditionally welfare has served individuals who do not work --hence much of the stigma that some attach to the program. An equally important strand of American social policy, however, is meant to support low-wage workers and their families. In "Boosting Paychecks," Daniel Gitterman illuminates this often neglected part of the American safety net.

Gitterman focuses on two sets of policy instruments that have been used to aid the working poor since the early twentieth century: the federal tax code and the minimum wage. The income tax code can be fine-tuned in many ways --through exemptions, deductions, credits, changing tax brackets and rates --to alter the amount of income workers are left with at the end of the day. In addition, it interacts with the minimum wage to determine the economic well-being of many lowincome households. "Boosting Paychecks "analyzes the partisan politics that have shaped these policies since the New Deal era, with particular attention paid to the past three decades. It also examines the degree to which they have succeeded in lifting low-wage workers and their families out of poverty.

Forging a new political bargain that balances labor market flexibility with security for poor working families is one of the most critical challenges facing government today. "Boosting Paychecks" sheds new light on the scope of this challenge and the political constraints and opportunities policymakers face.

"South Koreans in the Debt Crisis" is a detailed examination of the logic underlying the neoliberal welfare state that South Korea created in response to the devastating Asian Debt Crisis (1997-2001). Jesook Song argues that while the government proclaimed that it would guarantee all South Koreans a minimum standard of living, it prioritized assisting those citizens perceived as embodying the neoliberal ideals of employability, flexibility, and self-sufficiency. Song demonstrates that the government was not alone in drawing distinctions between the "deserving" and the "undeserving" poor. Progressive intellectuals, activists, and organizations also participated in the neoliberal reform project. Song traces the circulation of neoliberal concepts throughout South Korean society, among government officials, the media, intellectuals, NGO members, and educated underemployed people working in public works programs. She analyzes the embrace of partnerships between NGOs and the government, the frequent invocation of a pervasive decline in family values, the resurrection of conservative gender norms and practices, and the promotion of entrepreneurship as the key to survival.

Drawing on her experience during the crisis as an employee in a public works program in Seoul, Song provides an ethnographic assessment of the efforts of the state and civilians to regulate social insecurity, instability, and inequality through assistance programs. She focuses specifically on efforts to help two populations deemed worthy of state subsidies: the "IMF homeless," people temporarily homeless but considered employable, and the "new intellectuals," young adults who had become professionally redundant during the crisis but had the high-tech skills necessary to lead a transformed post-crisis South Korea.

A house generally refers to a shelter or builing that is a dwelling or place for habitation by human beings. The term includes many kinds of dwellings ranging from rudimentary huts of nomadic tribes to hig-rise apartment buildings. This book presents the rapid growth of urban areas in most of the developed countries and it compares the international perspectives on public housing by comparing policies used in various countries.

"Stuck in the Middle" examines both economic and social public policy initiatives in its assertion that enhancing the welfare of people in developed and developing nations requires an explicit focus on the middle class.

Contents

Foreword

1. Overview: Fiscal Policy, Distribution, and the Middle Class

2. Stylized Facts on the Middle Class and the Development Process

3. The Future of Global Income Inequality

4. The Scope and Limits of Subsidies

5. Policies for Lower Global Wealth Inequality

6. Can Happiness Research Help Fiscal Policy?

7. The Politics of Effective and Sustainable Redistribution

Social Security, in the United States, currently refers to the Federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance (OASDI) program. The original Social Security Act[1] and the current version of the Act, as amended encompass several social welfare or social insurance programs. The larger and better known initiatives of the program are: Federal Old-Age, Survivors, and Disability Insurance; Unemployment Insurance; Temporary Assistance to Needy Families; Health Insurance for Aged and Disabled (Medicare); Grants to States for Medical Assistance Programs (Medicaid); State Children's Health Insurance Program (SCHIP); Supplemental Security Income (SSI). Social Security in the United States is a social insurance program funded through dedicated payroll taxes called Federal Insurance Contributions Act (FICA). The term, in everyday speech, is used only to refer to the benefits for retirement, disability, survivorship, and death, which are the four main benefits provided by traditional private-sector pension plans. By dollars paid, the U.S. Social Security program is the largest government program in the world. Largely because of solvency questions ranging from immediate crisis to large projected future shortfalls, reform of the Social Security system has been a major political issue for more than three decades. This book presents the latest issues and developments related to this program.

No international relationship of the United States is as encumbered by history, geography, culture, language, and economics as the one with Mexico. Given the scale and importance of the flow of commerce and culture across the border, however, surprisingly few studies have examined the micro-level impact of border immigration patterns, economic systems, and policies on families in the region. Recognizing this void, the women scholars represented here-all of whom have studied and lived near la frontera-explore the complexity of border dynamics. They offer a well-rounded portrayal of Latino families and their response to changes at the border. The authors focus primarily on women and changes within families on the border-in response to women's economic strategies, labor market participation, and interactions with relatives and others. Quantitative chapters provide demographic analyses of population changes in new immigrant areas, the conditions of children and families along the border, and the work patterns of border families and women entrepreneurs. Qualitative chapters provide insights into the rites of passage celebrated across borders and the transnational lives of women and their families. The volume concludes with recommendations for collaborative U.S.-Mexico border policies that support families.

Disability and Impairment introduces professionals working with families to the everyday issues faced by disabled people of all ages in family life.Peter C Burke shows how social attitudes shape the world of the 'disabled family' either positively or negatively and the effects of stigma. He demonstrates the normality of disability - that children are children whatever their label - and the need for a sensitive professional understanding of the impact of both physical and learning disabilities on family members, in order to improve their quality of life.This book covers the spectrum of disability issues, and offers information and advice for professionals working with families and disability, explaining the value of family support, how to validate the feelings of siblings with disabled brothers and sisters, tackling social exclusion and understanding the role of lifelong professional help.Case studies, activity exercises and chapter summaries make this an accessible reference for social work students and practitioners.