Vouchers and the Provision of Public Services


Book Description

A Brookings Institution Press, Committee for Economic Development, and Urban Institute Press publication For decades, the use of vouchers has been widely debated. But often lost in the heat of debate is the fact that vouchers are just another tool in the government's tool chest, a restricted subsidy that falls somewhere between the extremes of cash and direct government provision of services. The instrument itself is not new—the 1944 GI Bill of Rights was a voucher, and vouchers for food, college aid, and housing have been in place for decades. Until now, however, the study of vouchers has been restricted to a few controversial applications. This volume, which grew out of a conference sponsored by the Brookings Institution, the Urban Institute, and the Committee for Economic Development, fills the gap, offering a framework for comparative analysis of specific policy issues related to vouchers. Its 16 essays address the economics, politics, and legal issues of voucher use and explore how vouchers are currently employed in the United States and abroad for education, child care, job training, housing, and health care. C. Eugene Steuerle is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute and has worked under four different U.S. presidents on a variety of reform issues in such areas as social security, budget, tax, and health policy. Robert D. Reischauer, a senior fellow in Economic Studies at the Brookings Institution, was director of the Congressional Budget Office from 1989 to 1995. George Peterson is a senior fellow at the Urban Institute; from 1976 to 1985 he directed the Institute's Public Finance Research Center. Van Doorn Ooms, senior vice president and director of research at the Committee for Economic Development, was formerly executive director for policy and chief economist of the Committee on the Budget, U.S. House of Representatives, 1989-1990, and was the Budget Committee's chief economist from 1981 to 1988.




Innovations in Financing Public Services


Book Description

This book explores new forms of private, mutual municipal, public-private and 'reverse' state funding of public investments, co-payments and shared contributions, vouchers, and pooled public risk-financing. It includes case studies taken from the Nordic countries, UK, Spain, Slovenia, Slovakia, Turkey and South Korea.




Public Services Delivery


Book Description

This publication sets out a framework for analysing the performance of governments in developing countries, looking at the government as a whole and at local and municipal levels, and focusing on individual sectors that form the core of essential government services, such as health, education, welfare, waste disposal, and infrastructure. It draws lessons from performance measurement systems in a range of industrial countries to identify good practice around the world in improving public sector governance, combating corruption and making services work for poor people.




The Tools of Government


Book Description

The Tools of Government is the first professional guide to the principles and practices of public administration in an age when governments no longer provide many services--but arrange for others to do so. Characterized by extensive collaboration among levels of government and between government and the private sector, this new approach to solving public problems presents many new important issues. Comprehensive in scope, this new book offers a first hand look at the challenges faced by contracting out to nonprofit and profit sectors for grants, insurance, regulation, vouchers, cooperative arrangements, tax data, grants-in-aid, and others. The chapters examine over 20 different tools in use today and summarizes their basic features, patterns of usage, key tasks, political and substantive rational, and the major management challenges that each one poses. International in coverage and application, this book is ideal for students, teachers, and scholars in public administration, management, public policy, economics, political science, and nonprofit management; managers and heads of state, local, and federal agencies; executives in foundations and other nonprofit organizations; and academic, government, and research libraries.




The Public Option


Book Description

A solution to inequalities wherever we look—in health care, secure retirement, education—is as close as the public library. Or the post office, community pool, or local elementary school. Public options—reasonably priced government-provided services that coexist with private options—are all around us, ready to increase opportunity, expand freedom, and reawaken civic engagement if we will only let them. Whenever you go to your local public library, send mail via the post office, or visit Yosemite, you are taking advantage of a longstanding American tradition: the public option. Some of the most useful and beloved institutions in American life are public options—yet they are seldom celebrated as such. These government-supported opportunities coexist peaceably alongside private options, ensuring equal access and expanding opportunity for all. Ganesh Sitaraman and Anne Alstott challenge decades of received wisdom about the proper role of government and consider the vast improvements that could come from the expansion of public options. Far from illustrating the impossibility of effective government services, as their critics claim, public options hold the potential to transform American civic life, offering a wealth of solutions to seemingly intractable problems, from housing shortages to the escalating cost of health care. Imagine a low-cost, high-quality public option for child care. Or an extension of the excellent Thrift Savings Plan for federal employees to all Americans. Or every person having access to an account at the Federal Reserve Bank, with no fees and no minimums. From broadband internet to higher education, The Public Option reveals smart new ways to meet pressing public needs while spurring healthy competition. More effective than vouchers or tax credits, public options could offer us all fairer choices and greater security.




A Workbook in Redesigning Public Services


Book Description

While citizens usually want more from government, they generally are included to pay less in taxes. When resources become scarce, as has been the case for most public jurisdictions, innovative methods must be developed for responding to service and cost pressures. How can this be done? A Workbook in Redesigning Public Services stresses a hands-on, how-to approach to diagnosing service delivery problems, analyzing alternative ways of delivering services, and communicating solutions to the policy makers. Among the service options considered are contracting with a private firm, inter-governmental agreements, self-help, franchises, grants and subsidies, and vouchers.




Strategic Public Finance


Book Description

Strategic Public Finance takes a multidisciplinary approach to public finance. It considers the nature of public finance and its symbiotic relationship with economy and society. It considers its philosophical underpinnings, the nature of the services it finances, its relative scale, how it is raised and spent, its possible beneficial and adverse effects, its sustainability, the appropriate governmental level of decision making, the means by which it can be disbursed, and an optimal strategy for public finance.




The Autonomous State of Childcare


Book Description

This title was first published in 2001. Public childcare provision in Britain is an issue that raises much passion and has been the source of much disappointment. Free childcare in Britain is limited. Public policy has been slow to change in terms of providing more childcare. Insufficient public childcare provision is a barrier to acheiving equal rights for women, especially within the employment sector. This book sets out to search for the factors crucial to constraining the development of childcare policy and public childcare provision. It looks at schemes that have been set up but that ultimately fail in allowing women to work by not providing the necessary childcare provision. The book looks at the issue of childcare provision, how the policy process works, the different types of childcare provision past and present, and implementation and operation of childcare schemes.




Modernising Government The Way Forward


Book Description

This book takes stock of the past two decades of public sector modernisation in OECD countries. It assesses failures and successes and identifies challenges ahead. It includes comparable data and tables comparing systems across countries.




New Labour, new welfare state?


Book Description

The New Labour government elected in May 1997 claimed that it would modernise the welfare state, by rejecting the solutions of both the Old Left and the New Right. New Labour, new welfare state? provides the first comprehensive examination of the social policy of New Labour; compares and contrasts current policy areas with both the Old Left and the New Right and applies the concept of the 'third way' to individual policy areas and to broader themes which cut across policy areas. The contributors provide a comprehensive account of developments in the main policy areas and in the themes of citizenship and accountability, placing these within a wider framework of the 'third way'. They find a complex picture. Although the exact shape of the new welfare state is difficult to detect, it is clear that there have been major changes in areas such as citizenship, the mixed economy of welfare, the centrality of work in an active welfare state, and the appearance of new elements such as joined up government at the centre and new partnerships of governance at the periphery. New Labour, new welfare state? provides topical information on the debate on the future of the welfare state and is essential reading for students and researchers in social policy, politics and sociology.