In recent decades, the problem of unemployment has generated fierce political and academic discussion on how national governments should address this issue. This book sheds light on a key debate in unemployment policy - that of whether unemployment benefits should be insurance-based or means-tested. It carefully compares the impact of the British and German benefit systems on poverty, the duration of unemployment and the spread of workless households during the 1990s. In Germany unemployment is regarded as a risk which individuals insure themselves against through the state, whereas in Britain compensation for the unemployed is allocated primarily through means-tested benefits paid for from tax revenue. These contrasting welfare scenarios make this study of the differences in welfare provision and the effect on the lives of the unemployed especially valuable. The author combines an in-depth study of unemployment policies with extensive statistical analysis, to examine the experience over time of unemployed individuals and the households in which they live. In particular, she focuses on the important interactions between the state, labour markets and household structures. This book presents a large amount of new empirical material and employs an innovative methodology by applying event history analysis to social policy questions. Academics and policymakers working in the fields of unemployment, comparative welfare analysis and labour market sociology will welcome this rigorous and highly rewarding volume.

EU expansion has stoked fears that criminals from the East may abuse freedom of movement to exploit the benefit systems of richer states. This book examines the way in which physical state borders are increasingly being replaced by internal border controls in the form of state bureaucracies as a means of regulating westward migration. The work examines the postmodern effect of globalisation and how ontological anxieties contribute to securitisation and social sorting in Western countries. It discusses the changes in control societies and how targeted surveillance as a geopolitical tool leads to new digitalised mechanisms of population selection. The book presents a casestudy of Roma migrants in the UK to examine the coping strategies adopted by those targeted. The book also critically evaluates the limitations of digitalised bureaucratic systems and the dangers of reliance on virtual data and selection methods.

The ongoing social crises and moral conflicts evident in global social policy debates are addressed in this timely volume. Leading interdisciplinary scholars focus on the 'social' of social policy, which is increasingly conceived in a globalised form, as new international agreements and global goals engender social struggles. They tackle pressing 'social questions', many of which have been exacerbated by COVID-19, including growing inequality, changing world population, ageing societies, migration and intersectional disadvantage. This ground-breaking volume critically engages with contested conceptions of the social which are increasingly deployed by international institutions and policy makers. Focusing on social sustainability, social cohesion, social justice, social wellbeing and social progress this text is even more crucial as policy makers look to accelerate socially sustainable solutions to the world's biggest challenges.

Current debates concerning the future of social security provision in advanced capitalist states have raised the issue of a citizen's basic income (CBI) as a possible reform package: a proposal based on the principles of individuality, universality and unconditionality which would ensure a minimum income guaranteed for all members of society. Implementing a CBI, would consequently entail radical reform of existing patterns of welfare delivery and would bring into question the institutionalized relationship between work and welfare. Ailsa McKay's book makes a unique and positive contribution to the CBI literature by examining the proposal from a feminist economics perspective. Gender concerns are central to any debate on the future of social security policy, in that state intervention in the field of income redistribution has differential impacts on men and women. By drawing attention to the potential a CBI has in promoting equal rights of freedom for men and women this book serves to open up the debate to incorporate a more realistic and inclusive vision of the nature of modern socio-economic relationships.

Welfare has been central to a number of significant political debates in modern America:

• What role should the government play in alleviating poverty?
• What does a government owe its citizens, and who is entitled to help?
• How have race and gender shaped economic opportunities and outcomes?
• How should Americans respond to increasing rates of single parenthood?
• How have poor women sought to shape their own lives and influence government policies?

With a comprehensive introduction and a well-chosen collection of primary documents, Welfare in the United States chronicles the major turning points in the seventy-year history of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC). Illuminating policy debates, shifting demographics, institutional change, and the impact of social movements, this book serves as an essential guide to the history of the nation's most controversial welfare program.

First published in 1998, this study offers a survey of the conceptual background, the political dimension, and the macroeconomic context and constraints of the social security system in Israel, which in four decades (since the mid-1950s) grew virtually from scratch into a comprehensive system, similar in scope to that of Western and Northern Europe, North America, the European outposts in the antipodes and, of course, Japan.

Housing, Care and Inheritance draws on the author's long-standing research into housing issues surrounding the ageing society, a phenomenon which is now a concern in many mature economies. If an adult child provides care for their elderly parent, should that person be rewarded? If so, should they inherit their parent's house or a larger share of the assets? The 'generational contract' is often influenced by cultural norms, family traditions, social policy and housing market, so it is negotiated differently in different societies and at different times. Such generational contract is however breaking down as a result of socio-economic and demographic changes. Drawn from the two-part study funded by the UK Economic & Social Research Council, Misa Izuhara explores the myth and the changing patterns of the particular exchange of long-term care and housing assets between older parents and their adult children in Britain and Japan. Highly international and comparative in perspectives, this study addresses important sociological as well as policy questions regarding intergenerational relations involving housing wealth, long-term care, and inheritance.

The diverse composition of American families and changing ways of raising our children have become subjects of intense scrutiny by researchers and policymakers in recent years. Shifting demographics and work patterns, growing numbers of women in the work force, teenage pregnancy, single-parent families, and the deinstitutionalization of the elderly, disabled, and mentally ill--all these trends have significantly affected family life. "Evaluating Family Programs" effectively bridges the gap between researchers and practitioners in order to bring practical, understandable advice to providers of family programs and to program funders and policymakers.

Heather B. Weiss and Francine H. Jacobs have collected in this volume works which move outside the traditional approaches of their disciplines to create new models for delivering and evaluating services. This sets a mood of genuine inquiry and excitement about successful aspects of programs while maintaining openness about the limitations of both research and practice. By expanding the research model, this work is an attempt to understand reciprocal influences of extended family, culture, community, and social institutions. It urges those who advocate program accountability to understand that not all types of evaluations are appropriate for all programs, and it notes that limitations in current evaluation technologies make it difficult to evaluate outcomes.

"Evaluating Family Programs" reminds the reader that in order to develop sound family policy we must look at children and families in context. Beacuse policymakers, program administrators, and informed citizens have come to rely more upon the results of evaluation research, we must improve our methods while not losing sight of its limitations. It is a thought-provoking contribution to the efforts of those who seek to support the American family with compassion, understanding, and realism.

"Heather B. Weiss" is the founder and director of Harvard Family Research Project and a senior research associate at the Harvard Graduate School of Education. She is an advisor to numerous foundations on strategic grant-making and serves on the advisory board of numerous organizations.

"Francine H. Jacobs" is associate professor in the department of child development and associate professor of urban and environmental policy and planning at Tufts University. She is the author of "Evaluating Family Preservation Services: A Guide for State Administrators" (with J. Kapuscik).

Learn what trends and factors are influencing families globally How are families the same or different around the world? Families in a Global Context puts the similarities and differences into perspective, presenting an in-depth comparative analysis of family life in 17 countries around the world. Contributors discuss different countries' family life by using a standard framework to review major influences and patterns. The framework allows readers to do comparative reflection across several countries on a variety of daily living elements, including social and economic forces such as urbanization and modernization, changes in gender/courtship/spousal patterns, and war. This book provides an informative illustration of current as well as future trends of family life worldwide. Each chapter in Families in a Global Context describes customary types of family patterns within each country's social organization and culture. Important social, economic, political, and other trends are explored in detail, and major ethnic, religious, or other subcultures are noted emphasizing marriage and family patterns that differ from the more typical ones. The book is extensively referenced and includes tables to clearly present data. Countries explored in Families in a Global Context include: European countries of Wales, Sweden, Germany, Romania, and Italy African countries of Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Kenya Middle Eastern countries of Turkey and Iran Asian and Oceanian countries of India, China, the Philippines, and Australia Latin American countries of Brazil, Mexico, and Cuba Topics discussed for each country in Families in a Global Context include: demographics mate selection patterns with an emphasis on the dynamics of couple formation marital roles the place and role of children and parenting in families socialization for gender roles differences in education, employment, and other opportunities major stressors affecting families, coping, and adaptation aging and life expectancy issues and much more! Families in a Global Context is an insightful resource for researchers, educators, and advanced undergraduate and graduate students investigating comparative family topics of family life around the world and in cultural context.

Learn what trends and factors are influencing families globally How are families the same or different around the world? Families in a Global Context puts the similarities and differences into perspective, presenting an in-depth comparative analysis of family life in 17 countries around the world. Contributors discuss different countries' family life by using a standard framework to review major influences and patterns. The framework allows readers to do comparative reflection across several countries on a variety of daily living elements, including social and economic forces such as urbanization and modernization, changes in gender/courtship/spousal patterns, and war. This book provides an informative illustration of current as well as future trends of family life worldwide. Each chapter in Families in a Global Context describes customary types of family patterns within each country's social organization and culture. Important social, economic, political, and other trends are explored in detail, and major ethnic, religious, or other subcultures are noted emphasizing marriage and family patterns that differ from the more typical ones. The book is extensively referenced and includes tables to clearly present data. Countries explored in Families in a Global Context include: European countries of Wales, Sweden, Germany, Romania, and Italy African countries of Sierra Leone, South Africa, and Kenya Middle Eastern countries of Turkey and Iran Asian and Oceanian countries of India, China, the Philippines, and Australia Latin American countries of Brazil, Mexico, and Cuba Topics discussed for each country in Families in a Global Context include: demographics mate selection patterns with an emphasis on the dynamics of couple formation marital roles the place and role of children and parenting in families socialization for gender roles differences in education, employment, and other opportunities major stressors affecting families, coping, and adaptation aging and life expectancy issues and much more! Families in a Global Context is an insightful resource for researchers, educators, and advanced undergraduate and graduate students investigating comparative family topics of family life around the world and in cultural context.

This book introduces a unique, new dataset on welfare state reforms in the UK, Denmark, Finland, France and Germany from 1974 to 2014. Using a variety of welfare state types in Europe, the authors have systematically investigated core questions that have preoccupied the welfare state literature at least since the 1990s. These include the extent of path dependency in mature welfare states, the usage of so-called "invisible" policy instruments for hiding cutbacks, and the role of partisanship - on whether the ideological color of the incumbent affects policy - which have been analysed in depth by examining the new dataset presented in this book. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and practitioners studying, and working in, welfare and the welfare state, and more broadly to political science, sociology and social policy.

Segregation: The Rising Costs for America documents how discriminatory practices in the housing markets through most of the past century, and that continue today, have produced extreme levels of residential segregation that result in significant disparities in access to good jobs, quality education, homeownership attainment and asset accumulation between minority and non-minority households.

The book also demonstrates how problems facing minority communities are increasingly important to the nation 's long-term economic vitality and global competitiveness as a whole. Solutions to the challenges facing the nation in creating a more equitable society are not beyond our ability to design or implement, and it is in the interest of all Americans to support programs aimed at creating a more just society.

The book is uniquely valuable to students in the social sciences and public policy, as well as to policy makers, and city planners.

Originally published in 1979, The Idea of Welfare critically reviews the concepts of egoism and altruism as they are expressed in residual and intuitional models of social welfare. The book describes the way in which the scope and limits of obligation and entitlement are determined in practice by the interplay of familial, communal, national and international loyalties. It also looks at the similarities and differences between economic and social forms of exchange and mutual aid. These major themes are developed in a comparative review, which explores the effects of social change on the ways in which people seek to preserve and enhance their welfare through self-help and collective action. The book focuses on Britain, the USA and Russia, it challenges conventional definitions of welfare, largely concerned with formal social policies sponsored by government and uses historical material to illustrate the dominant forms of a mutual aid which were practised before the development of modern welfare states.

Our changing cultural environment and societal attitudes are subtly but unmistakably altering the personality development of the individual and the functioning of the family. The increasing complexity of the emotional and social problems of their clients is requiring social workers to understand and meet the needs of the entire family group as well as of its individual members. Two nationally known experts in the field have collaborated in writing the first comprehensive work to deal with this new trend in social work. The authors' many years of experience in practice, teaching, and observation throughout the field are reflected in this lucid and systematic book, which introduces the reader to what is known about normal and deviant behavior in the context of family life, how families can be helped to lead normal lives, and how disrupted family structures can be rebuilt. In addition, the practitioner will find in this pioneering volume important new diagnostic insights and valuable guidelines for his work. The case material used throughout the book, in brief form, for illustrative purposes, is drawn from various social welfare agencies. In general, the cases were chosen because each has applicability to the work of different kinds of social agencies. Selected reading suggestions have been compiled with respect to each section for the reader interested in enlarging his knowledge about human behavior, our society, and the giving of help to troubled families and individuals. These reading suggestions include not only relevant nonfiction, but also fiction-old and new-that offers valuable insights into certain behaviors and circumstances of troubled individuals and families. Of immediate usefulness as a text in all courses in social work and sociology dealing with the family, this book will prove equally valuable to social workers in voluntary agencies as well as to those in public social agencies at local, state, and national levels, to teachers, and to the "helping professions" in general, including the clergy. "Frances Lomas Feldman" is distinguished professor emerita of social work at the University of Southern California. She has served on a number of state and national committees as well as commissions such as the Governor's Advisory Committee on Mental Health. She also helped start the first credit counseling service. Feldman has contributed widely to professional and scholarly books and journals. "Frances H. Scherz" received her B.A. from the University of Michigan and her M.S.S.W. from the Columbia University School of Social Work. She has directed seminars, workshops, and institutes for, among others, the Child Welfare League of America, Chapters of the National Association of Social Work and the Family Service Association of America, as well as for social work schools throughout the United States. She is a frequent contributor to professional journals, and has also edited and contributed to the "Casebook on F amity Diagnosis and Treatment and the recent Casebook on Families with Adolescents. "

Housing and construction have been at the heart of the rebuilding and revitalization of the Japanese economy since 1945. At the beginning of the 21st century, after a decade of economic insecurity and stagnation, the government is taking a more radical stance on social and economic policies and strategies. Housing is again at the center of transitional initiatives to revive Japanese cities, elevate the global status of the capital, and revitalize the economy.
This book brings together a number of perspectives on the Japanese housing system in order to provide a comprehensive, challenging and theoretically developed account of the dynamic role of the housing system during a period of unprecedented social and economic change in one of the most enigmatic social, political, and economic systems of the modern world. While Japan demonstrates many of the characteristics of some western housing and social systems, including mass homeownership and consumption-based lifestyles, extensive economic growth and rapid urban modernization has been achieved in balance with traditional social values and the maintenance of the family system.
Part one explores the dynamics of the development of the housing system in post-war Japan, while part two deals with social issues related to housing in terms of social aging, family relations, gender and inequality. Part three addresses the Japanese housing system and social change in relation to comparative and theoretical frameworks.
This book provides challenges and insights for the academic community at large, as well as a good introduction to the study of Japan and its housing, economic, social and welfare system generally.

Professor Kriesberg explores in this book the many myths about the poor, the welfare dependents, and the husbandless mothers. The evidence marshalled does not support the idea that people continue on welfare generation after generation, that the children of broken families have disrupted marriages themselves, that the poor seek out public housing and public assistance because they prefer such dependency, or that husbandless mothers all have lower educational goals for their children than do married mothers. Beginning with major theoretical issues, Professor Kriesberg developed specific hypotheses about the life of the poor and the culture of poverty; the hypotheses were tested with data from a study of families in and around four public housing projects in Syracuse. Issues discussed in the book include the social worlds of the housing projects and the relations between the tenants and the residents of surrounding neighborhoods; the recruitment and selection of families into public housing; and the alternatives the female heads of families face in obtaining money for their families. Two chapters are devoted to an analysis of childrearing patterns that affect the child's later independence and educational achievements, focusing upon intergenerational processes and contemporary conditions such as housing, income, and family structure. Here the complex interplay of parental values, beliefs, and actual conduct is studied. Finally the sociological and policy implications of the findings are set forth with specific proposals concerning the reduction of poverty. This in-depth analysis of poverty with its emphasis on fatherless families will be of interest to sociologists and social workers and those concerned with poverty, employment, women's rights, civil rights, education, and urban development.

This groundbreaking book shows how major shifts in federal policy are spurring local public housing authorities to demolish their high-rise, low-income developments, and replace them with affordable low-rise, mixed income communities. It focuses on Chicago, and that city's affordable housing crisis, but it provides analytical frameworks that can be applied to developments in every American city. "Where Are Poor People to Live?" provides valuable new empirical information on public housing, framed by a critical perspective that shows how shifts in national policy have devolved the U.S. welfare state to local government, while promoting market-based action as the preferred mode of public policy execution. The editors and chapter authors share a concern that proponents of public housing restructuring give little attention to the social, political, and economic risks involved in the current campaign to remake public housing. At the same time, the book examines the public housing redevelopment process in Chicago, with an eye to identifying opportunities for redeveloping projects and building new communities across America that will be truly hospitable to those most in need of assisted housing. While the focus is on affordable housing, the issues addressed here cut across the broad policy areas of housing and community development, and will impact the entire field of urban politics and planning.

This book is about the family lives of some 10,000 children and adults who live in an all-Negro public housing project in St Louis. The Pruitt-Igoe project is only one of the many environments in which urban Negro Americans lived in the 1960s, but the character of the family life there shares much with the family life of lower-class Negroes as it has been described by other investigators in other cities and at other times, in Harlem, Chicago, New Orleans, or Washington D.C. This book is primarily concerned with private life as it is lived from day to day in a federally built and supported slum. The questions, which are treated here, have to do with the kinds of interpersonal relationships that develop in nuclear families, the socialization processes that operate in families as children grow up in a slum environment, the informal relationships of children and adolescents and adults with each other, and, finally, the world views (the existential framework) arising from the life experiences of the Pruitt-Igoeans and the ways they make use of this framework to order their experiences and make sense out of them. The lives of these persons are examined in terms of life cycles. Each child there is born into a constricted world, the world of lower class, Negro existence, and as he grows he is shaped and directed by that existence through the day-to-day experiences and relationships available to him. The crucial transition from child of a family; to progenitor of a new family begins in adolescence, and for this reason the book pays particular attention to how each new generation of parents expresses the cultural and social structural forces that formed it and continue to constrain its behavior. This book, in short, is about intimate personal life in a particular ghetto setting. It does not analyze the larger institutional, social structural, and ideological forces that provide the social, economic, and political context in which lower-class Negro life is lived. These larger macro sociological forces are treated in another volume based on research in the Pruitt-Igoe community. However, this book does draw on the large body of literature on the structural position of Negroes in American society as background for its analysis of Pruitt-Igoe private life. "Lee Rainwater" is professor emeritus of sociology at Harvard University and research director of the Luxembourg Income Study. He was one of the original founders of Transaction. He has been associate editor of "Journal of Marriage and the Family" and on the review board of "Sociological Quarterly." He was written various books and in many professional journals.

Aging populations are creating tremendous pressures on social security systems throughout the world, lifting the need for reform to the top of policy agendas. Proposed reforms often have different implications for men and women. At the same time, traditional family and gender roles are changing with the decline in fertility rates and the rapid rise in women's participation in the paid labor force.

While trying to adapt social security systems to the fiscal demands of aging societies, policymakers face the compelling challenge of how to design pension reforms that achieve fair outcomes for women. Gender and Social Security Reform examines how different countries are attempting to meet this challenge. Drawing on comparative studies of European and Latin American countries along with a series of case studies of individual countries, the book provides insights into the gender dimensions of alternative designs for reform. All of the countries studied have recently reformed or are about to reform their pension systems, with a clear trend towards tightening the link between contributions and benefits in order to secure the long-term sustainability of pensions. The book also alerts policymakers to other issues: Should pension systems be gender-neutral or compensate for inequalities in paid and unpaid labor? Does compensation preserve gender discrimination? Are unisex life tables a reliable or fair redistributive tool for women? Or should annuities be linked directly to life expectancy, differentiated by sex and potentially other factors? Does a minimum pension guarantee risk compromising the principle of individual responsibility and work? How can recognition for caring work be balanced with work incentives? What can be done to help social security systems preserve freedom of choice in terms of work-family balance for women, men or the modem family unit as a whole?

In analyzing the gender implications of recent social security policies and practices this book reframes the conventional discourse of reform.

This groundbreaking book shows how major shifts in federal policy are spurring local public housing authorities to demolish their high-rise, low-income developments, and replace them with affordable low-rise, mixed income communities. It focuses on Chicago, and that city's affordable housing crisis, but it provides analytical frameworks that can be applied to developments in every American city. "Where Are Poor People to Live?" provides valuable new empirical information on public housing, framed by a critical perspective that shows how shifts in national policy have devolved the U.S. welfare state to local government, while promoting market-based action as the preferred mode of public policy execution. The editors and chapter authors share a concern that proponents of public housing restructuring give little attention to the social, political, and economic risks involved in the current campaign to remake public housing. At the same time, the book examines the public housing redevelopment process in Chicago, with an eye to identifying opportunities for redeveloping projects and building new communities across America that will be truly hospitable to those most in need of assisted housing. While the focus is on affordable housing, the issues addressed here cut across the broad policy areas of housing and community development, and will impact the entire field of urban politics and planning.

The modern welfare state finds itself in the middle of two major upheavals: the impact of technology and immigration. Having taken in more refugees per capita than most other countries, the pillars of the Swedish welfare state are being shaken, and digital technologies are set to strengthen already existing trends towards job and wage polarization. The development of skills to keep pace with technology will enter into a critical period for the labor market in which inadequate policy responses could result in further inequality and polarization. In this regard, a platform-based labor market could help by opening up a vast range of new work opportunities. Marten Blix examines the implications of these trends that drive change in developed economies and, in particular, the impact that they have on Sweden and other European countries with rigid labor markets and comprehensive tax-financed welfare services. Increasing costs from immigration and rising inequality could further reduce the willingness to pay high taxes and erode support for redistribution. Failure to address challenges like this one could herald much more drastic changes down the road. There are already signs of economic and political tensions and there is a risk that the social contract could crack. This new discussion on the future of work and the welfare state will be of interest not only to scholars but in policy circles and corresponding societies in sociology, labor relations, political science and public administration.

Drawing upon Foucauldian analyzes of governmentality, the authors contend that social housing must be understood according to a range of political rationalities that saturate current practice and policy. They critically address the practice of dividing social from private tenure; situating subjects such as the purpose and financing of social housing, the regulation of its providers and occupiers and its relationship to changing perceptions of private renting and owner-occupation, within the context of an argument that all housing tenures form part of an understanding of social housing. They also take up the ways in which social housing is regulated through the invocation and manipulation of obscure notions of housing 'need' and 'affordability', and finally, they consider how social housing has provided a focus for debates about sustainable communities and for concerns about anti-social behaviour. Regulating Social Housing provides a rich and insightful analysis that will be of value to legal scholars, criminologists and other social scientists with interests in housing, urban studies and contemporary forms of regulation.

One of today's most important national concerns is the projected bankruptcy of Social Security some time in the next few decades and its consequent inability to pay full benefits on time. Yet despite two decades of warnings about this, nothing is being done. The saying that Social Security is the third rail of American politics-touch it and you die-still holds true. In Social Security: False Consciousness and Crisis, John Attarian argues that the major cause of the current impasse is the misleading manner in which the program has been depicted to the public and the beliefs about Social Security which prevail as a result.Most Americans see Social Security as retirement insurance under which taxpayers pay premiums to buy benefits for old age, with their contributions being held in a trust fund which will pay guaranteed benefits which will be theirs as an earned right as America "keeps its compact between the generations." Attarian demonstrates that this false picture was deliberately fostered by Social Security officials to ensure the program's constitutionality while downplaying the power of Congress to eliminate, cut, delay, or tax benefits or deny them to certain classes of people. As the core of his argument shows, Social Security was structured and presented in this manner to the public as well so as to make it popular and politically invulnerable. While this strategy succeeded, it was inaccurate in crucial respects, and the inaccuracies have worsened as the program has aged. The resultant false consciousness about Social Security has decisively shaped the responses to the program's financial crises over the last two decades and helped preclude corrective action. Attarian attacks all of the misconceptions about Social Security point by point so that debate can proceed based on realities, not misunderstandings. He addresses as well issues surrounding Social Security reform, showing how numerous proposals now circulating have lethal faults. Most of these refuse to cut current benefits and are thereby saddled with the huge costs of transition to a new system. Others risk politicizing the stock market. Virtually all ignore the larger economic and political context that threatens to defeat their purpose. Attarian concludes with his own proposal to radically restructure the program from a universal entitlement to a floor of protection.Treating the Social Security crisis in unusually broad perspective, Attarian is critical of both the status quo and the privatization camps, and his recommendations offer an alternative to both. The book will be of interest to policy makers as well as citizens concerned about the future of Social Security.John Attarian is adjunct scholar at the Mackinac Center for Public Policy in Midland, MI. He is the author of Economism and the National Prospect."A contribution to the important discussion of Social Security's fragile future and our options to restore its health."--Dorcas R. Hardy, former Commissioner of Social Security and author of Social Insecurity: The Crisis in America's Social Security System and How to Plan Now for Your Own Financial SurvivalWell written and drawing on lots of research. Does a good job explaining the coming crisis in Social Security, particularly the often overlooked political aspects. Attarian is especially thorough in reporting how the program was misleadingly presented to the public, and on the discrepancies between the perceptions and the realities of Social Security."--A. Haewoth Robertson, The Retirement Policy Institute"As the United States (along with the rest of the developed countries) debates how to reform our pay-as-you-go retirement system and make it sustainable in an aging world, it is essential that we speak and think clearly about how we got here. We need to look critically at the dysfunctional mythology surrounding words 'trust fund,' 'social insurance,' 'earned rights,' and 'lock box.' That's just what John Attarian does in this comprehensive and critical overview of the hisotry of Social Security. It's a first rate peice of work."--Peter G. Peterson, The Blackstone Group"Nearly every historian who looks carefully at growth of Social Security both as a federal program and as a popular mythology comments at least in passing on how the artful or shall we say downright deceitful use of key terms like insurance and statutory right has to pave the way for the programs expansion. At last, John Attarian tells the full story. In comprehensive detail, he shows, blow by blow, of how Social Security's key leaders and advocates were compelled to describe the program in one way to the public and in an entirely different way to legislators and judges. America's understanding of Social Security remians confused today, even as discussion of far-reaching reforms are underway which makes this book timely indeed."--Neil Howe, Life Course Associates

This edited volume provides a synthesis on the question of business attitudes towards and its influence over the development of the modern welfare state. It gathers leading scholars in the field to offer both in-depth historical country case studies and comparative chapters that discuss contemporary developments. Composed of six archive-based historical narratives of business' role in the development of social insurance programs in Germany, Finland, the Netherlands, Switzerland, the United Kingdom and the United States, and six comparative case studies, this volume also extends the study of business to policy fields that have hitherto received little attention in the literature, such as active labor market policies, educational policies, employment protection legislation, healthcare, private pension programs and work-family policies. It illuminates why business groups have responded so very differently to demands for increased social protection against different labor market risks in different countries and over time. This text will be of key interest to students and scholars of comparative welfare, political science, sociology, social policy studies, comparative political economy and welfare history. Chapter 4 of this book is freely available as a downloadable Open Access PDF under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-No Derivatives 4.0 license: https://tandfbis.s3-us-west-2.amazonaws.com/rt-files/docs/Open+Access+Chapters/9780815377917_oachapter4.pdf

The Possibility of Politics explores the power of political reform, specifically reform of the modern welfare state. Can reform be effective if limited to cautious and piecemeal interventions that avoid radicalism and revolution? Can it also avoid unwanted consequences? Will the welfare state survive in the future?

Stein Ringen views the welfare state as a large-scale experiment in political reform. To ask if the welfare state works is to ask if political reform is possible at all. By its nature, the welfare state is reform on a grand scale, for it attempts to change the circumstances individuals and families live under without changing and disrupting society itself. But is it realistic to believe a population can get together, set goals and then try to meet these goals through collective actions, specifically public policies, without causing unintended consequences and destroying the state in the process? The welfare state attempts, idealistically, to redistribute welfare without reshaping the economic processes that cause inequities in the first place. Ringen considers how well redistribution has met the test in terms of political legitimacy, its intended effects on poverty and inequality, as well as its undesired and unintended effects on economic efficiency and the quality of private life. Ultimately, does the welfare state work? Further, is the welfare state a good thing?

In considering these questions, The Possibility of Politics should be of particular value to academics and advanced students interested in political theory, public economics, social administration, and political sociology.

Stein Ringen is professor of sociology and social policy at Oxford University and a Fellow of Green College. He teaches social and political theory and research methodology for graduates in social policy, sociology, politics, economic and social history and other subjects.