A dramatic change of ownership, regulation, and organisation of essential public services, such as electricity, gas, and telecommunications, has taken place in Europe in less than 20 years. This was not the outcome of spontaneous adaptation, but an entirely top-down policy experiment, mainly conceived in London during Mrs Thatcher's years, then pursued in Brussels - the 'capital' of the European Union - and imposed on more or less reluctant players by laws, directives, regulations, and administrative and judicial decisions. The European reform paradigm revolves around three pillars: privatisation, unbundling, and regulated liberalisation of network industries. These industries, despite the reforms, are still special, as they include core natural monopoly components (the electricity grid, the gas pipelines, the telephony networks, etc.), are often based on complex system integration of different segments (for example of electricity generation, transmission, distribution and retail supply), and offer services that have critical social and economic importance, from heating to internet. This book offers a careful scrutiny of energy and telephony reforms and prices paid by households in 15 countries across Western Europe. It attempts to answer such questions as: Are the consumers in Europe happier than they were before the reforms? Do they pay less? Do they get a better quality for the services? Network Industries and Social Welfare provides an overview of the main facts, the conceptual issues, and of the empirical evidence on pricing, perceptions of quality of service, and the issues of utility poverty and social affordability. It suggests that the benefits of the reforms for the consumers have often been limited and that governments should reconsider their overconfidence in regulated market mechanisms in network industries.

A TIMES POLITICAL BOOK OF THE YEAR A LONGMAN/HISTORY TODAY BOOK OF THE YEAR The award-winning history of the British Welfare State - now fully revised and updated for the 21st Century. 'A masterpiece' Sunday Times Giant Want. Giant Disease. Giant Ignorance. Giant Squalor. Giant Idleness. These were the Five Giants that loomed over the post-war reconstruction of Britain. The battle against them was fought by five gargantuan programmes that made up the core of the Welfare State: social security, health, education, housing and a policy of full employment. This book brilliantly captures the high hopes of the period in which the Welfare State was created and the cranky zeal of its inventor, William Beveridge, telling the story of how his vision inspired an entire country. The pages of this modern classic hum with the energies and passions of activists, dreamers and ordinary Britons, and seethe with personal vendettas, forced compromises, awkward contradictions, and the noisy rows of the succeeding seventy years. The Five Giants is a testament to a concept of government that is intertwined with so many of our personal histories, and a stark reminder of what we might stand to lose.

'A brilliant expose' - Danny Dorling Covid-19 has exposed the limits of a neoliberal public health orthodoxy. But instead of imagining radical change, the left is stuck in a rearguard action focused on defending the NHS from the wrecking ball of privatisation. Public health expert Christopher Thomas argues that we must emerge from Covid-19 on the offensive - with a bold, new vision for our health and care. He maps out five new frontiers for public health and imagines how we can move beyond safeguarding what we have to a radical expansion of the principles put forward by Aneurin Bevan, the founder of the NHS, over 70 years ago. Beyond recalibrating our approach to healthcare services, his blueprint includes a fundamental redesign of our economy through Public Health Net Zero; a bold new universal public health service fit to address the real causes of ill health; and a major recalibration in the efforts against the epidemiological reality of an era of pandemics.

Health and Social Justice provides a theoretical framework for health ethics, public policy and law in which Dr Ruger introduces the health capability paradigm, an innovative and unique approach which considers the capability of health as a moral imperative. This book is the culmination of more than a decade and a half of work to develop the health capability paradigm, with a vision of a world where all have the capability to be healthy. This vision is grounded in the Aristotelian view of human flourishing and also Amartya Sen's capability approach. In this new paradigm, not just health care, or even just health alone, but the capability for health itself is a moral imperative, as is ensuring the conditions that allow all individuals the means to achieve central health capabilities. Key tenets of health capability include health agency, shared health governance, where individuals, providers and institutions work together to create a social system enabling all to be healthy, and the use of theorized agreements and shared reasoning to guide social choice and shape health policy and decision-making. This book provides philosophical justification for the direct moral importance of health and the capability for health and follows a norms-based approach to health promotion. It employs a joint scientific and deliberative approach to guide health system development and reform, and the allocation of scarce health resources. The health capability paradigm integrates both proceduralist and consequentialist approaches to justice, and both moral and political legitimacy are critical.

A New York Times Bestseller A Wall Street Journal Bestseller A New York Times Notable Book of 2020 A New York Times Book Review Editors' Choice Shortlisted for the Financial Times and McKinsey Business Book of the Year A New Statesman Book to Read From economist Anne Case and Nobel Prize winner Angus Deaton, a groundbreaking account of how the flaws in capitalism are fatal for America's working class Life expectancy in the United States has recently fallen for three years in a row-a reversal not seen since 1918 or in any other wealthy nation in modern times. In the past two decades, deaths of despair from suicide, drug overdose, and alcoholism have risen dramatically, and now claim hundreds of thousands of American lives each year-and they're still rising. Anne Case and Angus Deaton, known for first sounding the alarm about deaths of despair, explain the overwhelming surge in these deaths and shed light on the social and economic forces that are making life harder for the working class. They demonstrate why, for those who used to prosper in America, capitalism is no longer delivering. Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism paints a troubling portrait of the American dream in decline. For the white working class, today's America has become a land of broken families and few prospects. As the college educated become healthier and wealthier, adults without a degree are literally dying from pain and despair. In this critically important book, Case and Deaton tie the crisis to the weakening position of labor, the growing power of corporations, and, above all, to a rapacious health-care sector that redistributes working-class wages into the pockets of the wealthy. Capitalism, which over two centuries lifted countless people out of poverty, is now destroying the lives of blue-collar America. This book charts a way forward, providing solutions that can rein in capitalism's excesses and make it work for everyone.

A hugely important contribution to one of the key questions of our time: how to combine, in a socially just way, the universalism embodied in national welfare states with the diversity and transnational mobility of populations. Using Myrdal's 1944 analysis, An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy, as a launch, the chapters circumnavigate this question 360 degrees across twentieth century history, across the Atlantic, and across the contemporary world, tracking the arguments this way and that. A must read.' - Fiona Williams, University of Leeds, UK'Gathering excellent contributors, this book explores the contested relationship between social policy and ethnic-racial diversity. Adopting an historical perspective and starting from Gunnar Myrdal's seminal book An America Dilemma, the volume compares the American experience with the European situation, where the implications of ethnic and racial diversity for social policy are now widely debated. Students of ethnic relations and of social policy from both sides of the Atlantic should read and engage with this unique and outstanding volume.' - Daniel Beland, University of Saskatchewan, Canada 'Has racial and ethnic fragmentation undermined American social solidarity and undercut the US welfare state? Even more pertinently, now that we are all multiculturalists and every nation is a melting pot, do the formerly so-homogenous Europeans face similar dilemmas? Are they joining in a race to the social policy bottom, or have they found ways to overcome these divisions? Such questions are pursued by these fascinating essays that have relevance for both sides of the Atlantic, and for scholars and policy makers alike.' - Peter Baldwin, Global Distinguished Professor, New York University, US In this interdisciplinary volume, leading and emerging scholars examine the relationship between homogeneity and welfare state development. They trace Gunnar Myrdal's influence on thinking about race in the US and explore current European states' approaches to the strangers in their midst, and what social citizenship looks like from a global perspective. Myrdal's An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy persuaded many scholars that the United States failed to develop a robust welfare state because of its ethnic and racial heterogeneity. Conversely, it argued that homogeneity was a precondition for the creation of strong welfare states in European, especially Nordic, countries. With increasing diversity now challenging these welfare states, the kind of 'dilemma' that Myrdal identified no longer appears to be solely an American one. Students and scholars of contemporary welfare states in the social sciences and policy studies will find this to be an insightful read, as the book challenges current perceptions. It will also be of interest to policy makers and practitioners looking to examine the historical context behind the politics of welfare states in the US and Scandinavia. Contributors: H. Blomberg-Kroll, G. Brochmann, R. Careja, P. Emmenegger, T. Faist, P. Kettunen, D. King, J. Kvist, S. Michel, M. Morey, H.B. Nassif, A. O'Connor, R.S. Parrenas, S. Pellander, K. Petersen, D. Roberts, A.V. Schwennicke, A.H. Sinno, E. Tatari, S. Williamson

The ongoing privatization of pensions--the shift from state to private responsibility for old age retirement income--raises fundamental issues of social and participatory rights. The recent financial market crisis makes the problematic nature of funded private pensions that fall short of expected returns dramatically clear. What have been the experiences in developed multipillar systems? What can be learned for those pensions systems currently under reform?
This edited book compares the varieties of pension governance in ten European countries. Contrasting the experience of developed multipillar systems such as Britain, Denmark, the Netherlands, and Switzerland with the recent shift toward private occupational and personal pensions in Belgium, France, Finland, Germany, Italy, and Sweden. The country chapters investigate how and why old age income responsibilities are being shifted to employers, unions, and individuals. They describe the changing public and private pension mix, and the particular features of the private occupational and personal pensions.
In particular The Varieties of Pension Governance discusses four major questions: who is covered, what kind of benefits, who pays, and who governs? Three comparative analyses provide an additional value, describing the long-term institutional change from public to multipillar pension systems, the variations in regulation and governance of private pensions, and the consequences for income inequality in old age. This book combines the benefits of a reference work--ten up-to-date country studies of major pension systems in Europe--with three cross-national comparative empirical analyses that provide comprehensive information on important aspects of the reform development, societal governance, and social outcomes of pension systems.

This volume, comprised of contributions by urban planners and social scientists sets forth accumulated experience directed at improving the quality of life in cities through neighbourhood programmes. Policy issues, housing programmes and job development plans, along with organizational innovations aimed at redistribution of power, are described and evaluated.;The book shows that in spite of national and local differences, there are common lines of thinking in the urban planning profession that lead to similar approaches to solving problems of urban neighbourhoods in western countries. In all of them, slum clearance has been substituted by programmes to improve the existing housing stock and to open new opportunities to the local residents. In addition, government-only large projects are being replaced by public-private smaller initiatives. The collection of papers leads to the conclusion that there are reasons and ways to cultivate our neighbourhoods. This may be important in our times, when changing employment arrangements cause a larger proportion of the population to spend more time at home and at its immediate environment, the neighbourhood.

Basic income is one the most innovative, powerful and controversial proposals for addressing poverty and growing inequalities. This book examines the arguments for and against basic income from the point of view of economic and social justice.

Family Diversity and Family Policy describes the dimensions of diversity which characterize the contemporary American family and discusses the implications for public policy and associated intervention programs linked to this diversity. The authors contend that if the programs and policies available to support families are to be most useful, they need to reflect the diversity of the families they intend to help. Beginning with a discussion of the historical and contemporary context of the American family, Family Diversity and Family Policy focuses on child poverty and argues that this topic may be usefully studied within the context of developmental systems theory. This theory systematically links the development of individuals to variations in their physical and social ecology, and is used as a framework for discussing: Contemporary challenges faced by parents charged with rearing adolescents, and the familial and societal issues that arise when the adolescents being reared are parents themselves. Current policy issues that arise from welfare debates in the United States and from recently-enacted welfare reform legislation. The importance for our nation of developing a comprehensive national youth policy. The authors draw implications for the design, delivery, and evaluation of diversity-sensitive policies and programs for families and youth, and offer a vision of how to link scholars, policy makers, and community members in multi-professional and multi-institutional collaborations promoting the positive development of American families and youth. Family Diversity and Family Policy is relevant to scholars and policy makers interested in human development, particularly of children andadolescents. In addition, it should be essential reading for practitioners and policy makers in government, private industry, and public and private social service organizations.

Bill Clinton's 1993-94 health care reform initiative was one of the most active and sustained presidential campaigns ever undertaken in support of a single social issue, and certainly the boldest attempt to establish national health insurance in the United States. An analysis of the Clinton campaign, therefore, reveals much about the politics of divided government in the late 20th century, the apparent end of the New Deal-Great Society approach to governance and the enduring democratic coalition which supported it, and, of course, the high stakes politics of health care reform. This study attempts to advance our understanding of why national health insurance has proven to be such a potent idea while seemingly impossible to accomplish. The work focuses on the political factors which derailed the Clintons' health care reform initiative, providing a case study of a most significant modern-day political and policy battle.

Increasingly flexible labour markets and reforms of old-age pension systems are still ranking high on the political agenda of European countries. This volume investigates whether, and to what extent, the interplay between pension reforms and the spread of 'atypical' employment patterns and fragmented careers has a negative influence uponeconomic security in old age. The volume, therefore, analyzes the flexibility-security nexus by focusing on the post-retirement phase, thus extending the conventional narrow concept of 'flexicurity'. The book also questions whetherreforms of public and private pension schemes compensate or aggravate the risks of increasingly flexible labor markets and atypical employment careers after retirement? Around this overarching research question, the various contributions in the volume employ the same analytical framework in order to map, and then compare, the developments in seven European countries - Denmark, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Switzerland, and the UK - which present different labour market arrangements and various degrees of flexibility, as well as diverse pension systems.

The Richer, The Poorer charts the rollercoaster history of both rich and poor and the mechanisms that link wealth and impoverishment. This landmark book shows how, for 200 years, Britain's most powerful elites have enriched themselves at the expense of surging inequality, mass poverty and weakened social resilience. Stewart Lansley reveals how Britain's model of 'extractive capitalism' - with a small elite securing an excessive slice of the economic cake - has created a two-century-long 'high-inequality, high-poverty' cycle, one broken for only a brief period after the Second World War. Why, he asks, are rich and poor citizens judged by very different standards? Why has social progress been so narrowly shared? With growing calls for a fairer post-COVID-19 society, what needs to be done to break Britain's destructive poverty/inequality cycle?

This volume of Research on Economic Inequality contains research on how we measure poverty, inequality and welfare and how these measurements contribute towards policies for social mobility. The volume contains eleven papers, some of which focus on the uneven impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on poverty and welfare. Opening with debates on theoretical issues that lie at the forefront of the measurement of inequality and poverty literature, the first two chapters go on to propose new methods for measuring wellbeing and inequality in multidimensional categorical environments, and for measuring pro-poor growth in a Bayesian setting. The following three papers present theoretical innovations for measuring poverty and inequality, namely, in estimating the dynamic probability of being poor using a Bayesian approach, and when presented with ordinal variables. The next three chapters are contributions on empirical methods in the measurement of poverty, inclusive economic growth and mobility, with a focus on India, Israel and a unique longitudinal dataset for Chile. The volume concludes with three chapters exploring the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic as an economic shock on income and wealth poverty in EU countries and in an Argentinian city slum.

Social investment policies have enjoyed prominence during recent welfare reforms across the OECD world, and yet there is insufficient long-term strategy for their success. Reviewing labour market, family and education policies, this edited collection analyses the emergence of social investment policies in both Europe and East Asia. Adopting a life course perspective and examining both public and private investments, this book addresses key contemporary policy issues including care, learning, work, social mobility and inequalities. Providing original observations, this seminal text explores the roads and barriers towards effective social investment policies, derives practical social policy implications and highlights important lessons for future policymaking.

Claims around 'who deserves what and why' moralise inequality in the current global context of unprecedented wealth and its ever more selective distribution. Ethnographies of Deservingness explores this seeming paradox and the role of moralized assessments of distribution by reconnecting disparate discussions in the anthropology of migration, economic anthropology and political anthropology. This edited collection provides a novel and systematic conceptualization of Deservingness and shows how it can serve as a prime and integrative conceptual prism to ethnographically explore transforming welfare states, regimes of migration, as well as capitalist social reproduction and relations at large.

This book explores a variety of social risks and possible policy options that could be put in place to either prevent, or lessen the negative consequences of their materialisation. Pieters groups these policy issues into four major social risks -- income replacement in case of old age and survivorship; unemployment; incapacity for work; and social health care protection - all of which are crucial to the development of a social security system. Navigating Social Security Options draws on extensive knowledge of various national social security systems to compare their costs and benefits, taking into account both their structural elements (conditions of work, education and living), and cultural elements (influence of political parties, trade unions, employers' organisations, traditions). As a concise comparative point of reference, this book will be an invaluable resource for students and scholars of social policy and law, as well as policy makers.

From Consent to Coercion examines the increasing assault against trade union rights and freedoms in Canada by federal and provincial governments. Centring the struggles of Canadian unionized workers, this book explores the diminution of the welfare state and the impacts that this erosion has had on broader working-class rights and standards of living. The fourth edition witnesses the passing of an era of free collective bargaining in Canada - an era in which the state and capital relied on obtaining the consent of workers and unions to act as subordinates in Canada's capitalist democracy. It looks at how the last twenty years have marked a return to a more open reliance of the state and capital on coercion - on force and on fear - to secure that subordination. From Consent to Coercion considers this conjuncture in the Canadian political economy amid growing precarity, poverty, and polarization in an otherwise indeterminate period of austerity. This important edition calls attention to the urgent task of rebuilding and renewing socialist politics - of thinking ambitiously and meeting new challenges with unique solutions to the left of social democracy.

Couples seek therapy for a variety of reasons, from short-lived adjustment difficulties to deeply entrenched conflict. Yet marital therapy has lacked a conceptual framework for matching treatment to a couple's particular problem. This outstanding new book, by a team of researcher-clinicians from the Center for Family Learning, is the first to address this deficiency.The authors systematically assess the duration and intensity of a couple's present conflict, as well as how the spouses function alone and in their extended families. They have found that troubled couples tend to fall into one of four categories, each best suited to a particular treatment program. The mild conflicts of stage one, for example, respond well to a six-week educational program; whereas the extreme anger and alienation of stage three is best handled without direct confrontation.The authors describe their evaluation and treatment procedures--including assessing multigenerational systems, dealing with triangles, and reducing emotional arousal--and illustrate their explanations with lengthy case illustrations and session-by-session transcripts. Because it offers a carefully articulated, clinically tested method of treating a broad range of marital problems, this valuable book makes a unique and much-needed contribution to the field.

Amartya Sen has made deep and lasting contributions to the academic disciplines of economics, philosophy, and the social sciences more broadly. He has engaged in policy dialogue and public debate, advancing the cause of a human development focused policy agenda, and a tolerant and democratic polity. This argumentative Indian has made the case for the poorest of the poor, and for plurality in cultural perspective. It is not surprising that he has won the highest awards, ranging from the Nobel Prize in Economics to the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian honor. This public recognition has gone hand in hand with the affection and admiration that Amartya's friends and students hold for him.
This volume of essays, written in honor of his 75th birthday by his students and peers, covers the range of contributions that Sen has made to knowledge. They are written by some of the world's leading economists, philosophers and social scientists, and address topics such as ethics, welfare economics, poverty, gender, human development, society and politics.
Contributors include: Bina Agarwal, Isher Ahluwalia, Montek S Ahluwalia, Ingela Alger, Sabina Alkire, Paul Anand, Sudhir Anand, Kwame Anthony Appiah, Muhammad Asali, Department of Economics, A. B. Atkinson, Amiya Kumar Bagchi, Pranab Bardhan, Lourdes Beneria, Francois Bourguignon, Sugata Bose, Walter Bossert, John Broome, Satya R. Chakravarty, Lincoln C. Chen, Martha Alter Chen, Kanchan Chopra, Rajat Deb, Simon Dietz, Bhaskar Dutta, James E. Foster, Sakiko Fukuda-Parr, Wulf Gaertner, Indranil K. Ghosh, Jonathan Glover, Peter Hammond, Christopher Handy, Christopher Harris, Cameron Hepburn, Jane Humphries, Rizwanul Islam, Satish K. Jain, Ayesha Jalal, Mary Kaldor, Sunil Khilnani, Stephan Klasen, Jocelyn Kynch, Isaac Levi, Oliver Linton, Enrica Chiappero Martinetti, Kirsty McNay, Martha C. Nussbaum, Siddiqur R. Osmani, Elinor Ostrom, Prasanta K. Pattanaik, Edmund S. Phelps, Mozaffar Qizilbash, Gustav Ranis, Martin Ravallion, Sanjay G. Reddy, Kevin Roberts, Ingrid Robeyns, Maurice Salles, Emma Samman, Cristina Santos, Thomas. M. Scanlon, Arjun Sengupta, Tae Kun Seo, Anthony Shorrocks, Ronald Smith, Rehman Sobhan, Robert M. Solow, Nicholas Stern, Frances Stewart, Joseph E. Stiglitz, S. Subramanian, Kotaro Suzumura, Alain Trannoy, Ashutosh Varshney, Sujata Visaria, Guanghua Wan, Jorgen W. Weibull, John A. Weymark, and Yongsheng Xu.

Research teams from Great Britain, Japan, the Netherlands, Germany, former East Germany and the United States of America examine the transition from paid employment to retirement in each country. The work is based on empirical data of the relevant actor systems: the states, collective organisations, firms and workers. Demographic trends and labour market dynamics, tight government finances and company budgets however give rise to fundamental changes in industrial work and social welfare regulation modes.

Throughout the history of European integration, economic wealth has increased to the benefit of citizens in the European Union (EU). However, inequalities in well-being persist within and between Europe's regions, undermining the legitimacy of the EU in the eyes of citizens. This book investigates how the EU can use its regional funding programmes in ways that increase citizen well-being. The book shows that while EU social investments improve labour market performance in rich regions, they exacerbate income inequality in poor regions. Based on this insight, the book presents a theory on the conditions under which EU funding will enhance well-being. Crucially, it argues the case for enhancing the inclusivity of EU growth, which yields the promise of a more legitimate and stronger union.

Anna Tarrant's revealing research explores the dynamics of men's caring responsibilities in low-income families' lives. The book draws on pioneering multigenerational research to examine men's involvement in care for their families. It interrogates how this is affected by the resources available and the constraints upon them, considering intersections of gender, generation and work, as well as the impact of austerity and welfare support. Illuminating aspects of care within economic hardship that often go unseen, it deepens our understanding of masculinities and family life and the policies and practices that support or undermine men's participation.

Who should bear the financial and social costs of the consequences of crime? In answer to this question, this book offers a comprehensive review of the public and private benefits currently available to compensate victims for the losses suffered as a result of crime. The author analyzes the social philosophy and legislative policy behind such remedies as restitution, private insurance, and civil litigation, notes their histories and their limitations, and makes recommendations for ways that each can be improved.