The Dynamics of Social Welfare Policy


Book Description

This third edition deploys its distinctive model of how policies develop to include an analysis of the social policy initiatives of the Obama administration. With more graphics, updated charts, and sidebars to highlight main points, this book explains the evolution of US social policy.




The New Welfare Consensus


Book Description

Winner of the 2019 Paul Sweezy Marxist Sociology Book Award presented by the Marxist Section of the American Sociological Association Families on welfare in the United States are the target of much public indignation from not only the general public but also political figures and the very workers whose job it is to help the poor. The question is, What explains this animus and, more specifically, the failure of the United States to prioritize a sufficient social wage for poor families outside of labor markets? The New Welfare Consensus offers a comprehensive look at welfare in the United States and how it has evolved in the last few decades. Darren Barany examines the origins of American antiwelfarism and traces how, over time, fundamentally conservative ideas became the dominant way of thinking about the welfare state, work, family, and personal responsibility, resulting in a paternalistic and stingy system of welfare programs.




Risk Inequality and Welfare States


Book Description

Focusing on the distribution of risk within societies, this book presents a parsimonious theory of social policy emergence, divergence, and change. It is suitable for advanced undergraduate courses and graduate seminars in political economy, social policy, labor market politics, political behavior, political psychology, sociology, and class stratification.




Welfare through Work


Book Description

High economic growth and relatively equitable distribution were among the most conspicuous characteristics of the postwar Japanese political economy. The lure of the Japanese model, however, has faded since the 1990s. Growth is in short supply and equality a thing of the past. In Welfare through Work, Mari Miura looks in depth at Japan’s social protection system as a factor in the contemporary malaise of the Japanese political economy. The Japanese social protection system should be understood as a system of "welfare through work," Miura suggests, because employment protection has functionally substituted for income maintenance. A gendered dual system in the labor market allowed a high degree of labor market flexibility, which enabled Japan to achieve high employment rates as well as strong legal protections for regular workers. In recent years, conservatives gradually replaced the productivism and cooperatism that had resulted from earlier party politics with neoliberalism, which, in turn, hampered the effectiveness of the welfare through work system. In Miura’s view, the dynamics of partisan competition fostered ideational renewal, just as the political visions and ideologies of the governing party strongly affected the design of the social protection system. In the scenario Miura describes, the partisan dynamics since the 1990s resulted in the policy change that further undermined the social protection system, and the ensuing disruption has been felt throughout Japan.




Making Social Welfare Policy in America


Book Description

American social welfare policy has produced a health system with skyrocketing costs, a disability insurance program that consigns many otherwise productive people to lives of inactivity, and a welfare program that attracts wide criticism. Making Social Welfare Policy in America explains how this happened by examining the historical development of three key programs—Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare, and Temporary Aid to Needy Families. Edward D. Berkowitz traces the developments that led to each program’s creation. Policy makers often find it difficult to dislodge a program’s administrative structure, even as political, economic, and cultural circumstances change. Faced with this situation, they therefore solve contemporary problems with outdated programs and must improvise politically acceptable solutions. The results vary according to the political popularity of the program and the changes in the conventional wisdom. Some programs, such as Social Security Disability Insurance, remain in place over time. Policy makers have added new parts to Medicare to reflect modern developments. Congress has abolished Aid to Families of Dependent Children and replaced with a new program intended to encourage work among adult welfare recipients raising young children. Written in an accessible style and using a minimum of academic jargon, this book illuminates how three of our most important social welfare programs have come into existence and how they have fared over time.




The Dynamics of Welfare Markets


Book Description

This volume represents the beginning of a 'cross pollination' of different social scientific disciplines, bridging the boundaries between national and disciplinary epistemic communities in the worlds of European welfare markets. It maps the common ground and uncovers new research directions for the future study of actors, policies and institutions shaping the growth and dynamics of European welfare markets. The book defines welfare markets as politically shaped, regulated and state supported markets that provide social goods and services through the competitive activities of non-state actors. The chapters focus on what happens after states have initiated welfare markets, with equal weight given to the analysis of the agency of state actors and non-state actors in the contraction, stabilisation, and disruption of welfare markets. By focusing the analysis on two cases of welfare markets, private pensions and home-based domestic/care work, the contributions explore and compare the dynamics of different types of markets. The research will be of use to sociologists and scholars of social policy interested in the social dimension of welfare markets, political scientists and political economists, as well as diverse epistemic communities across the social sciences. Chapter 1 is available open access under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License via link.springer.com.




Welfare Policy from Below


Book Description

The future European system of social security and welfare is in need of a new perspective. Invigorating and informative, this book contributes to developing this new form of 'social exclusion knowledge' thanks to its conceptual and theoretical framework and its comparative empirical studies in eight European cities between Bologna and Stockholm.




Social Welfare Responses in a Neoliberal Era


Book Description

Listen to the podcast about Cory Blad's chapter in this book 'Searching for Saviors: Economic Adversities and the Challenge of Political Legitimacy in the Neoliberal Era'. This book seeks to explore welfare responses by questioning and going beyond the assumptions found in Esping-Andersen’s (1990) broad typologies of welfare capitalism. Specifically, the project seeks to reflect how the state engages, and creates general institutionalized responses to, market mechanisms and how such responses have created path dependencies in how states approach problems of inequality. Moreover, if the neoliberal era is defined as the dissemination and extension of market values to all forms of state institutions and social action, the need arises to critically investigate not only the embeddedness of such values and modes of thought in different contexts and institutional forms, but responses and modes of resistance arising from practice that might point to new forms of resilience.




Child Welfare in the United States


Book Description

Provides a balanced critical analysis of the child welfare system along with promising innovations Distinguished by its critical perspective, this book delivers a balanced and comprehensive examination of the child welfare system in the United States today. In a clear and accessible style, it outlines key issues, reviews the history of the child welfare system, and explores the challenges to developing appropriate federal, state and local policies that address child welfare concerns. A chapter devoted to innovative and effective child welfare and prevention practices showcases examples of successful programs. Additionally, the book underscores the importance of coordination among human service professionals and organizations. The text addresses issues related to the educational system, homelessness, poverty, the juvenile justice system, foster care, and adoption. It incorporates the perspectives of parents and children involved in the system, who cite both positive experiences and bureaucratic challenges. Child welfare workers themselves describe the professional and personal realities of their experiences working within the system. Illustrative case examples of abused and neglected children add to the text’s value for BSW and MSW students studying child welfare. Key Features: Provides a comprehensive overview of child welfare issues in the United States today Offers case examples of abused/neglected children and their families Includes the perspectives of parents and children involved with the child welfare system Incorporates the views of child welfare workers Provides examples of innovative practices in child welfare




Social Welfare Policy


Book Description

Social Welfare Policy: Responding to a Changing World is a topical, comprehensive introduction to social welfare policy. It uses a contemporary framework that explicitly addresses three forces that have redefined the social policy arena: the growth of the information economy, the rise of globalization, and our current environmental crisis. This framework is applied to the six traditional arenas of policy--child and family services, health and mental health, poverty and inequality, housing and community development, crime and violence, and aging, and explores how to find solutions to both long enduring and brand new problems. John McNutt and Richard Hoefer's introductory text represents a move forward in social welfare policy thinking that is built on the latest scholarship and teaches students that the time to create social policies for the future is in the present.