"Creating the Welfare State" investigates how private business and public bureaucracy worked together to create the structure of much of the modern welfare state in America. Covering the period from the 1980s to the present, this important volume employs interdisciplinary techniques to demonstrate how politics, economics, law, and social theory merged over the course of a century of policy formulation and implementation. The authors also draw upon previously unconsulted sources from government warehouses and archives to analyze the operation of early federal social welfare programs such as vocational rehabilitation. Their discussions range from those early programs to modern ones such as cost of living pay adjustments and social security disability benefits. This emphasis on the notion of the continuing development of welfare programs is a significant factor in the welfare state controversies--a factor often ignored by other historians and writers.

This book offers unprecedented insights into both the workings of the Commonwealth and into the contrasting experiences of member states within it, with regard to social exclusion. Chapters on British social policy tradition and on concepts of social inclusion/exclusion, preface a series of case studies illustrative of different member states' experiences to date. The book concludes by re examining the Commonwealth per se, with reference to its own problems of development and, nevertheless, its social policy development potential for the future. PATRICIA HARRIS is Professor of Sociology and Social Policy, and Director of the Centre for Social and Community Research at Murdoch University, Australia BARBARA HARRISS-WHITE is Professor of Development Studies and Deputy Directory of Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University, UK LAKSIRI JAYASURIYA is Emeritus Professor and Honorary Senior Research Fellow at the School of Social and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia, Australia JAMES LEE is Associate Professor at the City University of Hong Kong, China W.DAVID MCINTYRE is Emeritus Professor at the Macmillan Brown Centre of Pacific Studies at the University of Christchurch, N

This book sets out unique findings on whether social capital influences health and health inequalities in European welfare states. Drawing on cross-national data from the European Social Survey (ESS) as well as Swedish national survey data and registers, the book develops a new theoretical definition of social capital that guides the books empirical studies. The findings suggest that welfare state generosity is a decisive factor for social capital and that social capital is of significance for health inequalities both between and within European welfare states. The book also discusses the potential dark sides of social capital and examines evidence of circumstances in which social capital has negative health externalities.

In late summer 2015, Sweden embarked on one of the largest self-described humanitarian efforts in its history, opening its borders to 163,000 asylum seekers fleeing the war in Syria. Six months later this massive effort was over. On January 4, 2016, Sweden closed its border with Denmark. This closure makes a startling reversal of Sweden's open borders to refugees and contravenes free movement in the Schengen Area, a founding principle of the European Union. What happened? This book sets out to explain this reversal. In her new and compelling book, Vanessa Barker explores the Swedish case study to challenge several key paradigms for understanding penal order in the twenty-first century and makes an important contribution to our understanding of punishment and welfare states. She questions the dominance of neoliberalism and political economy as the main explanation for the penalization of others, migrants and foreign nationals, and develops an alternative theoretical framework based on the internal logic of the welfare state and democratic theory about citizenship, incorporation, and difference, paying particular attention to questions of belonging, worthiness, and ethnic and gender hierarchies. Her book develops the concept of penal nationalism as an important form of penal power in the twenty-first century, providing a bridge between border control and punishment studies.

While social welfare programs, often inspired by international organizations, are spreading throughout the world, the more far-reaching notion of governmental responsibility for the basic well-being of all members of a political society is not, although it remains a feature of Europe and the former British Commonwealth. The welfare state in the European sense is not simply an administrative arrangement of various measures of social protection but a political project embedded in distinct cultural traditions. Offering the first accessible account in English of the historical development of the European idea of the welfare state, this book reviews the intellectual foundations which underpinned the road towards the European welfare state, formulates some basic concepts for its understanding, and highlights the differences in the underlying structural and philosophical conditions between continental Europe and the English-speaking world.

This title offers a front-burner issue on the public policy agenda today is the increased use of partnerships between government and nongovernmental entities, including faith-based social service organizations. In the wake of President Bush's faith-based initiative, many are still wondering about the effectiveness of these faith-based organizations in providing services to those in need, and whether they provide better outcomes than more traditional government, secular nonprofit, and for-profit organizations. In "Faith, Hope, and Jobs", Stephen V. Monsma and J. Christopher Soper study the effectiveness of 17 different welfare-to-work programs in Los Angeles County - a county in which the U.S. government spends 14 per cent of its entire welfare budget - and offer groundbreaking insight into understanding what works and what doesn't. Monsma and Soper examine client assessment of the programs, their progress in developing attitudes and resources important for finding self-supporting employment, and their experience in finding actual employment. This study reveals that the clients of the more explicitly faith-based programs did best in gaining in social capital and were highly positive in evaluating the religious components of their programs. For-profit programs tended to do the best in terms of their clients finding employment. Overall, the religiously active respondents tended to experience better outcomes than those who were not religiously active but surprisingly, the religiously active and non-active tended to do equally well in faith-based programs. "Faith, Hope, and Jobs" concludes with three sets of concrete recommendations for public policymakers, social service program managers, and researchers.

This book provides an up-to-date survey of existing economic literature on the dimensions of growing income inequalities in both advanced and emerging countries. The different explanations and dimensions of inequalities are addressed, particularly globalization, technical progress, in-work poverty, changes in labour market institutions, education and intergenerational mobility, growth and development. The nine chapters provide simplified models exploring each of these elements, and assess commonly accepted explanations and mechanisms.

In the midst of growing criticism of current economic orthodoxies and welfare systems, basic income is growing in popularity. This is the first book to discuss existing at examples of basic income, in both rich and poor countries, and to consider its prospects in other places around the world.

Since the early 1990s, European welfare states have undergone substantial changes, in terms of objectives, areas of intervention, and instruments. Traditional programmes, such as old age pensions have been curtailed throughout the continent, while new functions have been taken up. At present, welfare states are expected to help non-working people back into employment, to complement work income for the working poor, to reconcile work and family life, to promote gender equality, to support child development, and to provide social services for an ageing society. The welfare settlement that is emerging at the beginning of the 21st century is nonetheless very different in terms of functions and instruments from the one inherited from the last century. This book seeks to offer a better understanding of the new welfare settlement, and to analyze the factors that have shaped the recent transformation.

Using an analytical framework based on Foucault's concept of governmentality, and through unique case-studies, this volume explores the ongoing transformations taking place in the Swedish welfare state.

Housing allowances have become increasingly important policy instruments in the advanced welfare states. Operating at the interface between housing and social security policy, they provide means-tested assistance with housing costs for low income households. In the present era of fiscal austerity, such schemes are seen by many governments as a more efficient way to help tenants than rent controls or 'bricks and mortar' subsidies to landlords. Yet as the contributions to this collection show, housing allowances are not without problems of their own, especially in relation to housing consumption and work incentives. This book examines income-related housing allowance schemes in advanced welfare states as well as in transition economies of central and eastern Europe. Drawing on experiences in ten countries, including Britain, Sweden, Germany, Australia and the USA, it presents new evidence on the origins and design of housing allowances; their role within housing and social security policy; their impact on affordability; and current policy debates and recent reforms. Unique in it's depth of coverage, "Housing Allowances in Comparative Perspective" is essential reading for researchers, students and lecturers in social policy, housing and urban studies.

Social protection systems are intended to support households in financial difficulties, a role that has been underlined during the recent Great Recession in many countries around the world. This volume presents new results on the dynamics of social assistance, minimum-income and related out-of-work benefits in a range of different country contexts. It contains eight original articles, which shed light on benefit spell durations, the movements into and out of receipt of safety net benefits, the individual or family characteristics associated with these movements, the extent of state dependence or 'scarring', and the interaction of various welfare programs. The results establish an evidence base for an informed policy debate in a range of OECD countries. They also provide methodological background for future work on benefit receipt patterns.

This book fills an important gap in housing research, covering the impact of recent changes in housing policies and markets on the development of state-of-the-art asset management within the social rented sector in various countries.

This unique project explores one of the increasingly popular policies for long-term care: the provision to care users of cash, rather than services so that they can employ their own caring labour directly. The authors are scholars from Austria, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the USA and the United Kingdom in the fields of social policy and gerontology. The book includes introductory and concluding chapters by the editors, which develop new theories of care commodification and present a comparative overview of these important policy trends.

The Economics of Social Insurance and Employee Benefits focuses on non-wage benefits paid to workers in the United States, covering both government-mandated and voluntarily provided benefits. The author argues that benefits affect workplace productivity, and concentrates on the economic thinking behind how to design non-wage benefits in order to achieve competitive advantage. Part I briefly introduces these programs and discusses some of the insurance and economic concepts that are useful both for evaluating current programs and in analyzing what changes might mean for future costs and benefits. Part II deals with mandated social insurance programs, while Part III discusses benefits voluntarily provided by employers. Throughout the book, private sector human resource practices and public sector human resource policies are linked to various benefit models: the human capital model; the passive participant model; the insurance model; the managed care model; and the integrated health benefits model. Butler argues that the current program-centered approach to human resource and risk management is often ineffectual because it (1) ignores overlapping benefits that mitigate useful cost-sharing mechanisms; (2) often results in the concentration of benefits among relatively few workers; and (3) sometimes has the unintended consequences of negatively affecting workers' human capital. In advocating a worker-specific' approach to employee benefits, the book offers a unique perspective on how human resource managers, risk managers, and public policy makers can promote those institutions and programs that best increase workers' productivity.

Drawing upon qualitative material from parents and professionals, including ethnography, narrative inquiry, interviews and focus groups, this book brings together feminist and critical disability studies theories.

Living with Things provides an account of consumption in terms of its centrality to our dwelling practices. Its focus is on the home, particularly on the movement of people and things within and through it in everyday habitation. Here dwelling is seen as an activity, as doing things with and to the things to hand around us. Being 'at home' is achieved through living amongst things, as well as amongst people and other non-human presences, such as pets and gardens. Being at home is achieved through what we do with objects, the things that are acquired and stored, that linger around in our homes, sometimes for decades, and which we may eventually get rid of. These ordinary things make dwelling structures accommodating accommodations; they make them homes. Based primarily on a former coal-mining village in North-east England, this book explores practices of inhabitation, from moving in or being modernised, to the daily accommodation of sleep and children. It provides a demonstration of what happens to consumption research when it 'comes home' and is positioned not in sites of exchange but within the home and in households.

Prior to the onset of the current financial crisis, global trends of social security in industrialised societies were indicating a progressive disengagement from the state in favour of tax-financed measures similar to social assistance - which may fail to ensure a basic standard of living. In this timely book, the author with his lifelong experience of international social security advocates reinstating social insurance by reducing the volume of income redistribution, increasing the transparency of money flows and improving citizen information. Additionally, the book makes the case that in order to preserve social security institutions against any future economic upheavals, adequate financial reserves within the national economy should be available. It will be of interest to a wide audience, including undergraduate and postgraduate students, researchers, lecturers, policy makers, social partners, professionals dealing with social security institutions and civil society groups.

Demand for owner-occupied housing expanded dramatically across modern, industrialized societies in recent years leading to volatile increases in residential property values. Entry into the owner-occupied sector has become increasingly critical to households, while the viability of rental-tenure has been undermined. This book explores the rise of modern home-ownership as a cultural, socio-political and ideological phenomenon. It focuses on housing consumption across a range of societies dominated by a political and cultural commitment to home-ownership, which has been largely manipulated and ideologically charged.

The welfare state has a problem: each generation living under its protection has lower work motivation than the previous one. In order to fix this problem we need to understand its causes, lest the welfare state ends up undermining its own economic and social foundations. In The Welfare Trait, award-winning personality researcher Dr Adam Perkins argues that welfare-induced personality mis-development is a significant part of the problem. In support of his theory, Dr Perkins presents data showing that the welfare state can boost the number of children born into disadvantaged households, and that childhood disadvantage promotes the development of an employment-resistant personality profile, characterised by aggressive, antisocial and rule-breaking tendencies. The book concludes by recommending that policy should be altered so that the welfare state no longer increases the number of children born into disadvantaged households. It suggests that, without this change, the welfare state will erode the nation's work ethic by increasing the proportion of individuals in the population who possess an employment-resistant personality profile, due to exposure to the environmental influence of disadvantage in childhood.

The story of Medicaid comes alive for readers in this strong narrative, including detailed accounts of important policy changes and extensive use of interviews. A central theme of the book is that Medicaid is a "weak entitlement," one less established or effectively defended than Medicare or Social Security, but more secure than welfare or food stamps. In their analysis, the authors argue that the future of Medicaid is sound. It has the flexibility to be adapted by states as well as to allow for policy innovation. At the same time, the program lacks an effective mechanism for overall reform. They note Medicaid has become a source of perennial political controversy as it has grown to become the largest health insurance system in the country. The book's dual emphasis on politics and policy is important in making the arcane Medicaid program accessible to readersand in distinguishing policy grounded in analysis from partisan ideology. This second edition features a new preface, three new chapters accounting for the changes to the Affordable Care Act, and an updated glossary.

"This book explores the 'lesbian baby boom'. Drawing on interviews with lesbian parents in two European countries, Sweden and Ireland, the book examines reproductive decision-making, reproductive health-care, the everyday spaces of parenthood such as daycare and schools, the negotiation of biology and kinship in families where only one partner is the biological parent, and the possibility for a more flexible approach to gender relations within these families."--BOOK JACKET.

One measure of public program response to rapidly expanding older populations is the approach to old-age pensions under social insurance, social assistance, and provident fund systems. Social insurance is clearly the preferred method of meeting the income needs of the elderly, but historical, as well as current social and economic conditions are forcing many nations to reevaluate the characteristics of viable and sustainable social insurance programs. This has led to a variety of innovations in old-age pension programs development, including revised benefit formulas, raised retirement ages, increased income testing, and expanded reliance on private occupational supplemental programs.

The essays in this new international handbook analyze the impact of the economic, social, and cultural effects of aging populations on government social insurance policies. They offer a perspective on how twenty different countries have approached income maintenance programs for the elderly. Collectively, the contributors demonstrate how governments, non-governmental entities, communities, and families respond to changes in traditional income and social service support systems. They provide not only descriptions of existing programs, but also a better understanding of the factors that gave rise to their distinct characteristics. This important new collection will be required reading for everyone involved in elderly services.

Estates on the Edge recounts the decline and rescue of low-income government-sponsored housing estates across Northern Europe giving a vivid account of the intense physical, social and organisational problems facing social landlords in five countries. The ownership, management and letting patterns diverge sharply between the Continent, Britain and Ireland, between council landlords, non-profit, co-operative and independent landlords. But their community problems reveal similar trends towards poverty, polarisation and incipient breakdown. To avert the threat of incipient ghettos the stabilising pressures need to be stronger than the growing pressures towards chaos. Governments have become directly involved in estate rescue because of the vital social role estates are playing. The book traces the process of decline and renewal and shows how we can learn the lessons of policy failures and successes.