Although it was an important specialization in economics in the mid-twentieth century, welfare economics has received less attention in the twenty-first century. This book explores the history of welfare economics, with a view to explaining its rise and subsequent decline. Drawing on both philosophy and economics, this book offers a new and original perspective on the history of welfare economics, starting with Pigou and charting the trajectory of applied and theoretical welfare economics throughout the twentieth century. This book will be of interest to students and researchers of philosophy, economics and history of economic thought.

Social security is a difficult subject. The British system is highly complex, and the details change rapidly. This new textbook is an accessible, broadly based introduction which helps readers to make sense of the system in Britain. Including a broad scope of coverage and accessibility, the book plays a dual role as a preface to both the existing texts on social security policy and the guides on social security benefits. It also looks at the operation of social security benefits. How Social Security Works describes benefits in general terms, as well as the relationship to the welfare state and aspects of the sociology of benefits. Clearly and succinctly, the book lays out the aims, structure, delivery of Britain's main benefits system. It outlines the development of the system, considering the history and political dimensions, and includes a thematic discussion of the main types of benefit: national insurance, means tested, non-contributory, universal, and discretionary; and it conside

This title was first published in 2001. Ethical considerations play a key role in both the theoretical and practical functioning of the welfare state. The contributors to this book examine these ethical issues, and demonstrate how value judgements must be integrated into any analysis of social security reform.

Conventional wisdom argues that welfare state builders in the US and Sweden in the 1930s took their cues from labor and labor movements. Swenson makes the startling argument that pragmatic social reformers looked for support not only from below but also from above, taking into account capitalist interests and preferences. Juxtaposing two widely recognized extremes of welfare, the US and Sweden, Swenson shows that employer interests played a role in welfare state development in both countries.

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.

Originally published in 1994 The Politics of the Welfare State looks at how the privatization and marketization of education, health and welfare services in the past decade have produced a concept of welfare that is markedly different from that envisaged when the welfare state was initially created. Issues of class, gender and ethnicity are explored in chapters that are wide ranging but closely linked. The contributors are renowned academics and policy-makers, including feminist and welfare historians, highly regarded figures in social policy, influential critics of recent educational reforms and key analysts of current reform in the health sector.

This book focuses on relatively unexplored areas in pension and health care arrangements, including financing, in East Asia. The book aims to fill the literature gap on social protection in East Asia by covering issues such as pension and health care arrangements in the depopulating high income countries of Japan and Korea; the challenges of the pay-out phase in Defined Contribution (DC) arrangements in Australia, New Zealand, and Singapore; and the extension of coverage of social protection schemes in China, India, and Indonesia. It also reviews social protection from a much wider perspective and extends coverage of social protection in terms of both the proportion of the population with access to the social protection scheme and the types of risks faced by the households and by society as a whole. The book also gives attention to reforms of civil service pensions.

The absurdity of bureaucracy offers a humorous ethnographic account of policy implementation set in contemporary Danish bureaucracy. Taking the reader deep into the hallways of governmental administration and municipal caseworkers' offices, the book sets out to explore what characterizes policy implementation as a mode of human agency. Using the notions of absurdity and sense-making as lenses through which to explore the dynamic relationship between a policy and its effects, the book reclaims 'implementation studies' for the qualitative sciences and emphasizes the existential dilemma that any policymaker and implementer must confront. Following step-by-step the planning and implementation of the randomized controlled trial, Active - Back Sooner, the book sets out to show that 'going wrong' is not a question of implementation failure but is in fact the only way in which implementation may happen. -- .

This book contains the proceeding of the conferences on Disasters and the Small Dwelling, held at Oxford in September 1990. The 26 papers cover recent experiences of post-disaster shelter and housing provision, review what has been achieved, what needs disseminating and implementing, and assesses what needs further development. The volume thus defines an international agenda to achieve safer low-income dwellings in the course of the 1990s, designated International Decade for Natural Disaster Reduction by the UN. It will be essential reading for anyone - whether governmental or non-governmental agency officials, academic researchers, representatives of private industry or consultants - whose work involves analysis, shelter, mitigation and reconstruction programmes for low-income dwellings in disaster-prone areas.

Against the background of a high incidence of long-term benefit receipt and an increasing focus of interventions on the individual beneficiary, this study shows how individualised policies within the German minimum income scheme serve long-term beneficiaries as a way out of benefit receipt. By applying a qualitative research design, the link between individual appropriations of policies and individual life planning is reconstructed in the form of an empirically grounded typology. The analysis shows that individualised policies are ridden with prerequisites. Beneficiaries, that are not able to expertly appropriate them and to plan in the long-term, face unintended consequences like a limitation of life planning, a separation from the scheme or an establishment within entitlement.

What is welfare racism? It is the images that politicians evoke when they speak of "welfare queens" or "deadbeat dads." It is the disproportionate representation of people of color who are in the US poverty population. It is the view that welfare is a black problem.
In Welfare Racism, sociologists Neubeck and Cazenave analyze the impact of racism on U.S. welfare policy. For decades, they argue, Americans have been bombarded with racist comments and stereotypes about those who receive welfare, allowing politicians to exploit racial cliches for their own political gains. Even liberal politicians have now joined in playing the "race card" by supporting the ill-conceived welfare reforms of 1996 which abolished Air to Families with Dependent Children. Such recent reforms are anti-welfare not anti-poverty.
In a hard-hitting and eloquently written investigation of historical and current attitudes toward welfare, Welfare Racism shows how racist motives, policies, and administrative policies have long undermined public assistance programs. Challenging the current contention that racism is of decreasing importance in our society, Neubeck and Cazenave warn that avoidance of the race issue will lead to unprecedented racial conflict in the 21st century.
A powerful expose of a deeply-rooted but woefully ignored form of racial blindness, Welfare Racism is an important first step toward more humane and rational policies for the men, women, and children who have been ravaged by the current system.
Kenneth J. Neubeck and Noel A. Cazenave have written extensively on poverty and social problems in the U.S. Neubeck is the author of Social Problems:A Critical Approach, and Cazenave is an expert on the War on Poverty of the 1960s. They are both Associate Professors of Sociology at the University of Connecticut.

Born of idealism, and once an icon of the Labour movement and pillar of the Welfare State, council housing is now nearing its end. But do its many failings outweigh its positive contributions to public health and wellbeing?
Alison Ravetz here provides the first comprehensive and apolitical history from which to arrive at a balanced judgement. Drawing on the widest possible evidence, from tenant and government records to the built environment itself, she tells the story of British council housing, from its seeds in Victorian reactions to 'the Poor', in philanthropy and model villages, Christian and other varieties of socialism. Her depiction of council housing in its mature years shows the often bizarre persistence of 'utopian' attitudes (whether in architectural design or management styles); its rise to a monopoly position in working-class family housing; the many compromises consequent on its state finance and local authority control; and the impact on working-class lives as an intellectuals' 'utopian dream' was converted into a social policy for the masses.

Originally published in 1973, Social Security and Society examines of the dominant forces that form the British social security system and argues that social security provision is not the result of concern felt by the dominant groups in society. Instead the book suggests that it is the result of the threat posed to the status quo by the growing political power of the working class, and the realization by the dominant groups, that social security benefits are functional to economic growth and political stability. The book covers poverty, low pay, unemployment and equality, and demonstrates how social security measures reflect and reinforce the inequalities of the economic and social system - inequalities which are accepted, legitimised and approved by society.

Originally published in 1968, Social Security: Beveridge and After concentrates on the development of social security in the U.K. since the Beveridge report. The book looks at the system of Social Security, since it was unified with the Ministry of Social Security, and looks at the extent to which the original proposals of Lord Beveridge have been modified over time. The book adopts an interesting, functional approach to addressing the acts and regulations that have been implemented, and clearly brings out the essential principles and elements in this complicated field of social provision.

This book, first published in 1989, assesses the existing tax and benefit systems as being beyond repair, and examines the case for integration. Integrated tax/benefit systems change the basis of entitlement from contribution record and contingency to citizenship and need. Having shown that full integration is not realistic, the author discusses four major partial integration options in detail. Basing her comparison on detailed analysis of specific models, she is able to compare the redistributive and incentive efforts of each scheme.

Tony Blair was the longest serving Labour Prime Minister in British history. This book, the third in a trilogy of books on New Labour edited by Martin Powell, analyses the legacy of his government for social policy, focusing on the extent to which it has changed the UK welfare state. Drawing on both conceptual and empirical evidence, the book offers forward-looking speculation on emerging and future welfare issues. The book's high-profile contributors examine the content and extent of change. They explore which of the elements of modernisation matter for their area. Which sectors saw the greatest degree of change? Do terms such as 'modern welfare state' or 'social investment state' have any resonance? They also examine change over time with reference to the terms of the government. Was reform a fairly continuous event, or was it concentrated in certain periods? Finally, the contributors give an assessment of likely policy direction under a future Labour or Conservative government. Previous books in the trilogy are "New Labour, new welfare state?" (1999) and "Evaluating New Labour's welfare reforms" (2002) (see below). The works should be read by academics, undergraduates and post-graduates on courses in social policy, public policy and political science.

First published in 1978, this book gathers an extensive range of documents which illuminate the complex and important process by which the State in Britain has taken on increased responsibility for the health and welfare of its citizens. It uses extracts from a variety of sources, including reports, debates, speeches, articles and reviews, and commentary from leading figures of the period, such as Disraeli, Dickens, Edwin Chadwick and Churchill. The book begins with a discussion of the notion of an 'age of laissez-faire' in the mid-nineteenth century, and an examination of the extent to which the Liberal government embarked on a conscious policy of 'welfarism' between 1906 and 1914. The extracts themselves cover the entire field of social policy, including factory legislation, public health, housing, education, poverty, pensions and unemployment. This book will be of interest to those studying the history of social welfare and social policy.

Homing Devices is a collection of ethnographies that address the central problem affecting not only the United States but also other developed and developing nations around the globe-affordable housing. These ethnographies cut across national and cultural borders, offering a diverse look at housing policies and practices as well as addressing the problems associated with providing or obtaining affordable housing. The studies incorporate perspectives of both policymakers and recipients and as such provide comparative insight into public housing policy programs and practices based on qualitative research. The collected experts provide an analysis of such problems as displacement, resettlement, policy implementation, collaborative planning, exclusionary practices, environmental racism, and silencing the voices of dissent. Editors Schuller and thomas-houston have assembled a strong volume that offers a fresh approach to discussing policy while bringing the particular problem of housing to the forefront in a way that will appeal to scholars of anthropology and social science, governmental policy departments, and activists from the general public across the nation.

New Zealand has experienced both sweeping economic and social reform and growing poverty and income inequality in the last twenty years, re-enacting claims of a social laboratory, but rather different from the 1930s. The reforms include changes in social security provision and coverage. This book explores these social security changes in the context of widening national and international poverty and inequality. It argues that the policy initiatives have altered the nature of social security and in doing so have significantly transformed the nature of social citizenship. The author brings the New Zealand data together in a way that has not been done previously and provides the reader with both a detailed discussion of the work on poverty and living standards in New Zealand and the political and economic context within which social security changes have occurred.Linking the discussion to international changes in social security and to the international literature on poverty and inequality, the author demonstrates the important implications the New Zealand directions have for the development of social security internationally. The book will be invaluable reading for those who want to widen their understanding and knowledge about social security reform Down Under and its development in a neoliberal and Third Way environment. Equally significantly it will be of considerable interest for all those interested in international reshaping of state support for the poorest and most vulnerable and will contribute to those debates and analysis.

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.

John Welshman's new book fills a major gap in social policy: the history of debates over 'transmitted deprivation', and their relationship with current initiatives on social exclusion. The book explores the content and background to Sir Keith Joseph's famous 'cycle of deprivation' speech in 1972, examining his own personality and family background, his concern with 'problem families', and the wider policy context of the early 1970s. Tracing the direction taken by the DHSS-SSRC Research Programme on Transmitted Deprivation, it seeks to understand why the Programme was set up, and why it took the direction it did. With this background, the book explores New Labour's approach to child poverty, initiatives such as Sure Start, the influence of research on inter-generational continuities, and its new stance on social exclusion. The author argues that, while earlier writers have acknowledged the intellectual debt that New Labour owes to Joseph, and noted similarities between current policy approaches to child poverty and earlier debates, the Government's most recent attempts to tackle social exclusion mean that these continuities are now more striking than ever before. Making extensive use of archival sources, private papers, contemporary published documents, and oral interviews with retired civil servants and social scientists, "Policy, Poverty and Parenting" is the only book-length treatment of this important but neglected strand of the history of social policy. It will be of interest to students and researchers working on contemporary history, social policy, political science, public policy, sociology, and public health.

Stress, Coping, and Health in Families: Sense of Coherence and Resiliency, the first volume in the new Resiliency in Families series, has an unusual sociological focus. Rather than focusing on pathology, the authors of this volume study individuals, families, and ethnic groups moving toward health. In Part I, scholar Aaron Antonovsky's landmark work in salutogenesis lays the foundation for a new approach to family studies. His work provides insight as to why some families manage life events with relative ease and recover from adversity with renewed strength, harmony, and purpose. Health is redefined, not as a static norm, but as a process of coping with a myriad of external stress factors. Part II examines how culture and family influence the creation and maintenance of the sense of coherence, which seems to be key in promoting health and well-being. It draws on studies of families facing serious illness, single parenthood, homelessness, or culture shock.

The sense of coherence is also vital to the study of aging and immunology: Parts III and IV examine those links and their wide-ranging implications. This book will appeal to social workers, clinical practitioners, and scholars in ethnic studies, family studies, sociology, counseling, and psychology.

Eric Jabbari examines Pierre Laroque's contribution to the rise of the French welfare state, namely his role as the architect of the social security plan which was adopted by the provisional government in 1945. The conception of the Laroque Plan was a product of his work as a civil servant and social policy expert, and it reflected the diverse combination of influences: his background in administrative law and his onetime support for the corporatist management of industrial relations. These experiences were all the more notable since they were marked by his belief in the necessity of an increased state interventionism which was mitigated by administrative decentralisation. The purpose of social policy, in his mind, was to cultivate social solidarity, a task which could best be achieved if the beneficiaries of this policy could be encouraged to participate in its implementation. These concerns remained central to his conception of the state and society long after he lost his enthusiasm for corporatism, and contributed to the shape of post-war social security.

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.

How can we best analyse contemporary welfare state change? And how can we explain and understand the politics of it? This book contributes to these questions both empirically and theoretically by concentrating on one of the least likely cases for welfare state transformation in Europe. It analyzes in detail how and why institutional change has taken Germany's welfare state from a conservative towards a new work-first regime. Christof Schiller introduces a novel analytical framework to make sense of the politics of welfare state transformation by providing the missing link: the capacity of the core executive over time. Examining the policy making process in labour market policy in the period between 1980 and 2010, he identifies three different policy making episodes and analyses their interaction with developments and changes in such policy areas as pension policy, family policy, labour law, tax policy and social assistance. The book advances existing efforts aimed at conceptualizing and measuring welfare state change by proposing a clear-cut conceptualization of social policy regime change and introduces a comprehensive analysis of the transformation of the welfare-work nexus between 1980 and 2010 in Germany. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of social policy, comparative welfare state reform, welfare politics, government, governance, public policy, German politics, European politics, political economy, sociology and history.