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Books > Social sciences > Sociology, social studies > Social welfare & social services > Welfare & benefit systems
This book brings together information linking where people live, with their health. The author reviews how housing has influenced health throughout the past hundred and fifty years; discusses in detail current issues concerning housing and health and describes attempts at housing particular groups whose health is at risk. Essential reading for those involved in the design and management of housing, and its public health aspects. This book should be of interest to environmental health officers, town planners, social administrators, community doctors, architects, and housing managers.
While the first half of the 20th century was characterized by total war, the second half witnessed, at least in the Western world, a massive expansion of the modern welfare state. A growing share of the population was covered by ever more generous systems of social protection that dramatically reduced poverty and economic inequality in the post-war decades. With it also came a growth in social spending, taxation and regulation that changed the nature of the modern state and the functioning of market economies. Whether and in which ways warfare and the rise of the welfare state are related, is subject of this volume. Distinguishing between three different phases (war preparation, wartime mobilization, and the post-war period), the volume provides the first systematic comparative analysis of the impact of war on welfare state development in the western world. The chapters written by leading scholars in this field examine both short-term responses to and long-term effects of war in fourteen belligerent, occupied, and neutral countries in the age of mass warfare stretching over the period from ca. 1860 to 1960. The volume shows that both world wars are essential for understanding several aspects of welfare state development in the western world.
This book is Volume I of a two-volume set on antitrust policy, analyzing the economic efficiency and moral desirability of various tests for antitrust legality, including those promulgated by US and EU antitrust law. The overall study consists of three parts. Part I (Chapters 1-8) introduces readers to the economic, moral, and legal concepts that play important roles in antitrust-policy analysis. Part II (Chapters 9-16) analyzes the impacts of eight types of conduct covered by antitrust policy and various possible government responses to such conduct in terms of economic efficiency, the securing of liberal moral rights, and the instantiation of various utilitarian, non-utilitarian-egalitarian, and mixed conceptions of the moral good. Part III (Chapters 17-18) provides detailed information on US antitrust law and EU competition law, and compares the extent to which-when correctly interpreted and applied-these two bodies of law could ensure economic efficiency, protect liberal moral rights, and instantiate various morally defensible conceptions of the moral good. This first volume contains Part I and the first two chapters of Part II of the overall study-the two chapters that focus on oligopolistic and predatory conduct of all kinds, respectively. The book will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students of economics and law who are interested in welfare economics, antitrust legality and the General Theory of the Second Best.
This book examines national fair housing policy from 1960 through 2000 in the context of the American presidency and the country's segregated suburban housing market. It argues that a principal reason for suburban housing segregation lies in Richard Nixon's 1971 fair housing policy, which directed Federal agencies not to place pressure on suburbs to accept low-income housing. After exploring the role played by Lyndon Johnson in the initiation and passage of the Fair Housing Act of 1968, Nixon's politics of suburban segregation is contrasted to the politics of suburban integration espoused by his HUD secretary, George Romney. Nixon's fair housing legacy is then traced through each presidential administration from Gerald Ford to Bill Clinton and detected in the decisions of Nixon's Federal Court appointees.
Experiences of the struggle for housing, ignited by the lack of social and affordable housing, have led to the establishing of shared and self-managed housing areas. In such a context, it becomes crucially important to re-think the need to define common urban worlds "from below". Here, Penny Travlou and Stavros Stavridis trace contemporary practices of urban commoning through which people re-define housing economies. Connecting to a rich literature on the importance of commons and of practices of commoning for the creation of emancipated societies, the authors discuss whether housing struggles and co-habitation experiences may contribute in crucial ways to the development of a commoning culture. The authors explore a variety of urban contexts through global case studies from across the Global North and South, in search of concrete examples that illustrate the potentialities of urban commoning.
For over three decades, the capability approach proposed and developed by Amartya Sen and Martha Nussbaum has had a distinct impact on development theories and approaches because it goes beyond an economic conception of development and engages with the normative aspects of development. This book explores the new frontiers of the capability approach and its links to human development in three main areas. First, it delves into the philosophical foundations of the approach, re-examining its links to concepts of common good, collective agency and epistemic diversity. Secondly, it addresses its 'operational frontier', aiming to give inclusive explanations of some of the most advanced methods available for capability researchers. Thirdly, it offers a wide range of the applications of this approach, as carried out by a mix of renowned capability scholars and researchers from different disciplines. This broad interdisciplinary range includes the areas of human and sustainable development, inequalities, labour markets, education, special needs, cities, urban planning, housing, social capital and happiness studies, among others.
Tax by Design identifies what makes a good tax system for an open developed economy in the 21st century and suggests how the UK tax system could be reformed to move in that direction. The recommendations stress the importance of neutrality and transparency in tax design. It draws on the expert evidence from the commissioned chapters and commentaries in Dimensions of Tax Design. It also acknowledges the growing importance of globalised markets and multinational corporations as well as the challenges created by changing population demographics, the growth of new technologies, and the broadened objectives of policy makers. The Commission's work was directed by: Timothy Besley Richard Blundell Malcolm Gammie James Poterba The Commission's editorial team: Stuart Adam Stephen Bond Robert Chote Paul Johnson Gareth Myles
How does social spending relate to economic growth and which countries have got this right and wrong? Peter Lindert examines the experience of countries across the globe to reveal what has worked, what needs changing, and who the winners and losers are under different systems. He traces the development of public education, health care, pensions, and welfare provision, and addresses key questions around intergenerational inequality and fiscal redistribution, the returns to investment in human capital, how to deal with an aging population, whether migration is a cost or a benefit, and how social spending differs in autocracies and democracies. The book shows that what we need to do above all is to invest more in the young from cradle to career, and shift the burden of paying for social insurance away from the workplace and to society as a whole.
Murray presents an argument for a system of social insurance that replaces welfare with a Guaranteed Adequate Income. The book reviews the current public assistance programs, including SSI, AFDC, Unemployment Compensation, and Food Stamps, summarizing the positive aspects and inadequacies of each plan; it also evaluates other plans that have been proposed. A rationale and cost analysis of GAI concludes the book. Written in a non-technical and comprehensible style, the plan is designed to be politically non-partisan and appeal to both liberals and conservatives.
An accessible and entertaining narrative history of the establishment, development and unravelling of the British Welfare State - now fully revised to cover Blair's first term. Lively writing in the style of Peter Hennessy. 'Giant Want. Giant Disease. Giant Ignorance. Giant Squalor. And the insidious Giant Idleness, "which destroys wealth and corrupts men". These were evils to be vanquished by the postwar reconstruction of Britain. Timmins' book recaptures brilliantly the high hopes of the period in which the Welfare State began to be created, and conveys the cranky zeal of its inventor, William Beveridge. The onslaught on the five Giants was the work of five gargantuan programmes that made up the core of Beveridge's Welfare State. These were social security, health, education, housing and a policy of full employment. It is notoriously difficult to write about such subjects and keep the reader reading, but Timmins performs wonders of narrative clarity, anecdote and human detail in a book that finds its chosen level somewhere between Gibbon's 'Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire' and '1066 and All That'...There is something very moving about his rhetoric of transformation and 'The Five Giants' will stir up strong emotions. It is impossible not to respond in personal terms to a book that is a part of so many of our histories, woven into the day-to-day texture of our lives.' Fiona MacCarthy, Observer Beveridge was originally only supposed to sort out the web of insurance services stifling Britain. 'The Five Giants' recounts how his original vision and campaign blossomed enormously to inspire a country at war with the hope that the peace might bring comfort and security for all. The tale hums with the energies and passions of activists, dreamers and ordinary Britons, and seethes with personal vendettas, forced compromises, arguments about money, awkward contradictions, noisy rows and fervent perseverance. Nicholas Timmins, who has seen how the Welfare State works every day for the last two decades, assesses the key personalities, the key problems, the key victories and key defeats in his anecdotal, witty and illuminating study of the Welfare State from the 1940s to the present day.
One of the fundamental challenges facing modern welfare states is the question of work-family reconciliation. An increasing share of mothers work, but many European welfare states do not adequately support the dual-earner model, especially in southern Europe. After 2005, German policy-makers transformed the nature of Germany's family policy regime through a number of legislative measures, whilst Italy, a country with many similarities, witnessed little change. Using a multi-methods approach, this book addresses the puzzle of why Germany was able to implement far-reaching reforms in this policy area after a long impasse and Italy was not. As such, it delivers a broad, systematic account of these reforms and sheds light on why similar reforms were not also adopted in other similar welfare states at the same time. More generally, it contributes to understanding the determinants of welfare policy change in modern European welfare states. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and professionals working on topics linked to European politics, welfare and work-family policies, comparative politics, social policy, and more broadly to political science and gender studies.
In recent years, debates on the economics of happiness have shown that, over the long-term, well-being is influenced more by social and personal relationships than by income. This evidence challenges the traditional economic policy paradigm that has emphasized income as the primary determinant of well-being. This volume brings together contributions from leading scholars to ask: What should be done to improve the quality of people's lives? Can economic and social changes be made which enhance well-being? What policies are required? How do policies for well-being differ from traditional ones targeted on redistribution, the correction of market inefficiencies, and growth? Are there dimensions of well-being that have been neglected by traditional policies? Is happiness a meaningful policy target? The volume presents reflections and proposals which constitute a first step towards answering these questions.
While there is no denying that the world has made huge progress against absolute poverty over the last 200 years, until recent times the bulk of that progress had been made in wealthy countries only. The good news is that we have seen greater progress against poverty in the developing world in recent times-indeed, a faster pace of progress against extreme poverty than the rich world saw over a period of 100 years or more of economic development. However, continuing progress is far from assured. High and rising inequality has stalled progress against poverty in many countries. We are seeing generally rising relative poverty in the rich world as a whole over recent decades. And even in the developing world, there has been less progress in reaching the poorest, who risk being left behind, and a great many people in the emerging middle class remain highly vulnerable to falling back into poverty. The Economics of Poverty strives to support well-informed efforts to put in place effective policies to assure continuing success in reducing poverty in all its dimensions. The book reviews critically the past and present debates on the central policy issues of economic development everywhere. How much poverty is there? Why does poverty exist? What can be done to eliminate poverty? Martin Ravallion provides an accessible new synthesis of current knowledge on these issues. It does not assume that readers know economics already. Those new to economics get a lot of help along the way in understanding its concepts and methods. Economics lives though its relevance to real world problems, and here the problem of global poverty is both the central focus and a vehicle for learning.
Southern Europe has been hit hard by the global economic crisis and, as such, their welfare states have come under acute strain. Unmet need has sharply increased while significant welfare reforms and deep social spending cuts have been prominent in the crisis management solutions implemented by governments, labouring under EU constraints and the strict rescue-deal requirements for Greece and Portugal. This volume provides a systematic comparative appraisal of welfare-state reform trajectories across Southern Europe prior to and during the crisis, and traces the impact of austerity policies and wider recession upon income inequality and poverty. It brings together a number of cross-country studies on major social policy areas, raising crucial questions. What policy choices are driving reforms as Southern European economies work their way out of fiscal difficulty? Can the crisis provoke the improvement of institutional capabilities and recalibration of social? Or, instead, does structural adjustment indicate a significant policy turn towards the erosion of social rights? The contributions critically approach these issues and bring evidence to bear upon whether Southern European welfare capitalisms are becoming more dissimilar. This book was originally published as a special issue of South European Society & Politics.
The Right and the Welfare State studies the welfare state policies of conservative and liberal governments. These parties have been assumed to be nothing but the welfare-sceptical flip-side of the Left, but the book presents a new theory arguing that the conventional wisdom is wrong. The policy goals of the Right - and the political means by which they pursue them - is a lot less straightforward than simply "pro" or "con" the welfare state. The book uses the distinction between labor market risks and life-course risks in order to explain why the Right's voters care much more about some social programs than about others and why, consequently, the policies of Right governments are much more diverse than is normally thought. The book also introduces the concepts of "marketization via layering" and "erode and attack" to help explain the peculiar approach to reforms adopted by Right governments. The book analyses data on public opinion and public policies from a large set of Western democracies and combines this with in-depth case studies of Australia, Denmark, and the UK.
Human Development is widely recognised as the overriding goal of development, yet its realization is challenged by growing inequality, macro-economic fluctuations, and recurrent financial crises. This edited collection reflects on the work of Richard Jolly and includes contributions from leading scholars of development, all of whom have worked with Richard Jolly at varying points in his distinguished career. The volume advances thinking in the area of Human Development by discussing the evolution of its conceptualization and the policy implications, and the achievements in related key areas such as education, social protection, and employment. It juxtaposes these theoretical and (at times) real life improvements with disturbing developments in terms of growing inequality and macro-economic instability. It documents the growing income inequality which has characterized both developing and developed countries. It shows that there has been a decline in some countries and identifies the policies adopted in these exceptional cases. It also shows also where and how public expenditure on Human Development in developing countries has been affected by the 2008 financial crisis and presents a new framework for a pro-growth pro-Human Development macro-economics, including suggestions for the countercyclical regulation of financial flows. The book also argues that a series of disruptive factors are nudging the innovation trajectory in new potentially pro-poor and pro-Human Development directions, especially if policies speed-up the diffusion of new efficient appropriate technologies in low and middle income economies
In recent years, various tributaries of psychoanalytic and developmental theory have flowed into our dawning understanding of the role of early sensory and affective experiences in the construction of our personal worlds. In Patterns: Building Blocks of Experience, Marilyn Charles shows how such primary experiences coalesce into patterns, those essential units of meaning that capture the unique subjectivity of each individual. Frequently "known" by their prosody or affective melody, patterns come to have profound meanings that we utilize in constructing basic notions of self and other. Through pattern, Charles holds, we approach elusive meanings through dimensions of shape, contour, and affective resonance. Such patterned understandings, in turn, become a mode of interchange through which we touch one another in ways that go beyond the overtly physical. Analytic patients, Charles finds, have often led early lives too full of "noise" to use their early sensory and affective experiences constructively. Such patients tend to live out patterns that operate unconsciously and have become literally incomprehensible. Analytic communication, by drawing explicit attention to such patterned experience, provides new images that intrude on ingrained patterns of thinking about the self and other. Out of the productive clash of analytically co-constructed images and the invariant patterns of the past emerge new conceptions of what the patient may choose to be in the present moment. Through it all, Charles displays an admirable willingness to sit in difficult spaces and to work through troubling therapeutic impasses from the inside out, rather than from some point of ostensible safety. This finely textured and richly evocative study, which grows out of Charles' extensive clinical work with artists, writers, and musicians, is a signal contribution to developmental theory, clinical theory, and the psychology of creativity.
Changing Welfare States is is a major new examination of the wave of social reform that has swept across Europe over the past two decades. In a comparative fashion, it analyses reform trajectories and political destinations in an era of rapid socioeconomic restructuring, including the critical impact of the global financial crisis on welfare state futures. The book argues that the overall scope of social reform across the member states of the European Union varies widely. In some cases welfare state change has been accompanied by deep social conflicts, while in other instances unpopular social reforms received broad consent from opposition parties, trade unions and employer organizations. The analysis reveals trajectories of welfare reform in many countries that are more proactive and reconstructive than is often argued in academic research and the media. Alongside retrenchments, there have been deliberate attempts - often given impetus by intensified European (economic) integration - to rebuild social programs and institutions and thereby accommodate welfare policy repertoires to the new economic and social realities of the 21st century. Welfare state change is work in progress, leading to patchwork mixes of old and new policies and institutions, on the lookout, perhaps, for greater coherence. Unsurprisingly, that search process remains incomplete, resulting from the institutionally bounded and contingent adaptation to the challenges of economic globalization, fiscal austerity, family and gender change, adverse demography, and changing political cleavages.
Elites have a disproportionate impact on development outcomes. While a country's endowments constitute the deep determinates of growth, the trajectory they follow is shaped by the actions of elites. But what factors affect whether elites use their influence for individual gain or national welfare? To what extent do they see poverty as a problem? And are their actions today constrained by institutions and norms established in the past? This volume looks at case studies from South Africa to China to seek a better understanding of the dynamics behind how elites decide to engage with economic development. Approaches include economic modelling, social surveys, theoretical analysis, and program evaluation. These different methods explore the relationship between elites and development outcomes from five angles: the participation and reaction of elites to institutional creation and change, how economic changes affect elite formation and circulation, elite perceptions of national welfare, the extent to which state capacity is part of elite self-identity, and how elites interact with non-elites.
A uniquely hybrid approach to welfare state policy, ecological sustainability and social transformation, this book explores transformative models of welfare change. Using Ireland as a case study, it addresses the institutional adaptations needed to move towards a sustainable welfare state, and the policy of making such transformation happen. It takes a theoretical and practical approach to implementing an alternative paradigm for welfare in the context of globalisation, climate change, social cohesion, automation, economic and power inequalities, intersectionality, and environmental sustainability, as well as perpetual crisis, including the pandemic.
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.
The European welfare systems, established after the Second World War, have been under sustained attack since the late 1970s from the neoliberal drive towards a small state and from the market as the foremost instrument for the efficient allocation of scarce resources. After the 2008 financial crash, Europe's high tax and generous benefits welfare states were, once again, blamed for economic stagnation and political immobilism. If anything, however, the long decade of the Great Recession proved that the welfare state remained a fundamental asset in hard times, stabilizing the economy, protecting households and individuals from poverty, reconciling gendered work and family life, while improving the skills and competences needed in Europe's knowledge economy and ageing society. Finally, the spread of the Covid-19 pandemic has, unsuprisingly, brought back into the limelight the productive role of welfare systems in guaranteeing basic security, human capabilities, economic opportunities, and democratic freedoms. In this important contribution, Anton Hemerijck and Robin Huguenot-Noel examine the nature of European welfare provision and the untruths that surround it. They evaluate the impact of the austerity measures that followed the Great Recession, and consider its future design to better equip European societies to face social change, from global competition to accelerated demographic ageing, the digitalization of work and climate change.
For much of human history, most of the population lived and worked
on farms but today, information about livestock is more likely to
come from children's books than hands-on experience. When
romanticized notions of an agrarian lifestyle meet with the
realities of the modern industrial farm, the result is often a plea
for a return to antiquated production methods. The result is a
brewing controversy between animal activist groups, farmers, and
consumers that is currently being played out in ballot boxes,
courtrooms, and in the grocery store. Where is one to turn for
advice when deciding whether to pay double the price for cage-free
eggs, or in determining how to vote on ballot initiates seeking to
ban practices such as the use of gestation crates in pork
production or battery cage egg production? At present, there is no
clear answer. What is missing from the animal welfare debate is an
objective approach that can integrate the writings of biologists
and philosophers, while providing a sound and logical basis for
determining the consequences of farm animal welfare policies. What
is missing in the debate? Economics.
What do we mean by inequality comparisons? If the rich just get richer and the poor get poorer, the answer might seem easy. But what if the income distribution changes in a complicated way? Can we use mathematical or statistical techniques to simplify the comparison problem in a way that has economic meaning? What does it mean to measure inequality? Is it similar to National Income? Or a price index? Is it enough just to work out the Gini coefficient? Measuring Inequality tackles these questions and examines the underlying principles of inequality measurement and its relation to welfare economics, distributional analysis, and information theory. The book covers modern theoretical developments in inequality analysis, as well as showing how the way we think about inequality today has been shaped by classic contributions in economics and related disciplines. Formal results and detailed literature discussion are provided in two appendices. The principal points are illustrated in the main text, using examples from US and UK data, as well as other data sources, and associated web materials provide hands-on learning. Measuring Inequality is designed to appeal to both undergraduate and post-graduate students, and academic economists. Its emphasis on practical application means that it will also be useful to policy analysts and advisors.
For generations, women have experienced disadvantage in the paid labour market, the devaluation of their unpaid caring roles and multiple constraints on their agency. This book analyses fresh empirical evidence which demonstrates the gendered impacts of the new conditionality regime within Universal Credit. It shows how the regime affects women's unpaid caring roles, their position in the paid labour market and their agency regarding engagement in unpaid care and paid work. Ultimately, it highlights the impacts on the position of low-income women in the UK's social security system and society. Drawing on in-depth interviews with mothers, this book offers a compelling narrative and crucial policy recommendations to improve the gendered impact of Universal Credit and make the social citizenship framework in the UK more inclusive of women. |
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