Energy Democracy

Energy Democracy PDF Author: Craig Morris
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319318918
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 456

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Book Description
This book outlines how Germans convinced their politicians to pass laws allowing citizens to make their own energy, even when it hurt utility companies to do so. It traces the origins of the Energiewende movement in Germany from the Power Rebels of Schönau to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s shutdown of eight nuclear power plants following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. The authors explore how, by taking ownership of energy efficiency at a local level, community groups are key actors in the bottom-up fight against climate change. Individually, citizens might install solar panels on their roofs, but citizen groups can do much more: community wind farms, local heat supply, walkable cities and more. This book offers evidence that the transition to renewables is a one-time opportunity to strengthen communities and democratize the energy sector – in Germany and around the world.

Energy Democracy

Energy Democracy PDF Author: Craig Morris
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319318918
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 456

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book outlines how Germans convinced their politicians to pass laws allowing citizens to make their own energy, even when it hurt utility companies to do so. It traces the origins of the Energiewende movement in Germany from the Power Rebels of Schönau to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s shutdown of eight nuclear power plants following the 2011 Fukushima nuclear accident. The authors explore how, by taking ownership of energy efficiency at a local level, community groups are key actors in the bottom-up fight against climate change. Individually, citizens might install solar panels on their roofs, but citizen groups can do much more: community wind farms, local heat supply, walkable cities and more. This book offers evidence that the transition to renewables is a one-time opportunity to strengthen communities and democratize the energy sector – in Germany and around the world.

Welfare Reform

Welfare Reform PDF Author: Jeff GROGGER
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674037960
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
In Welfare Reform, Jeffrey Grogger and Lynn Karoly assemble evidence from numerous studies to assess how welfare reform has affected behavior. To broaden our understanding of this wide-ranging policy reform, the authors evaluate the evidence in relation to an economic model of behavior.

Medicaid

Medicaid PDF Author: Daniel Lanford
Publisher: Nova Science Publishers
ISBN: 9781536181333
Category : Health & Fitness
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
"Medicaid is a big deal. It is the U.S. health insurance safety net for low-income pregnant women and children, but it also affects many people above the poverty line, including disabled people in middle-class families and aged adults who, in an unsettlingly common pattern, live working class or middle class lives but lose all assets during extended nursing home stays. Now that the Affordable Care Act of 2010 (ACA) is implemented, Medicaid also covers many low-income, non-elderly, non-parent adults. The complex world of Medicaid is swirling with questions. What does Medicaid do for people? Why do people tend to support or oppose Medicaid policy? What is it like to be a Medicaid beneficiary? Will social divisions or administrative red tape eventually sink the program, or will it grow? This book helps answer these questions. Each chapter contains insights useful for practitioners and researchers alike. This book is also useful for both beginners and specialists. Each chapter introduces a key issue then takes a deep dive into the most important nooks and crannies of the program. This book also raises new questions. For those interested in answering these questions, the following chapters offer a wide range investigative techniques that future Medicaid researchers could employ. Warning: the work will not be easy. Medicaid is complex and constantly changing. Yet whether readers want to understand ongoing changes or create changes of their own, they are likely to find much of the information they need in the chapters that follow"--

How Policies Make Citizens

How Policies Make Citizens PDF Author: Andrea Louise Campbell
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691122504
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 250

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Book Description
Some groups participate in politics more than others. Why? And does it matter for policy outcomes? In this richly detailed and fluidly written book, Andrea Campbell argues that democratic participation and public policy powerfully reinforce each other. Through a case study of senior citizens in the United States and their political activity around Social Security, she shows how highly participatory groups get their policy preferences fulfilled, and how public policy itself helps create political inequality. Using a wealth of unique survey and historical data, Campbell shows how the development of Social Security helped transform seniors from the most beleaguered to the most politically active age group. Thus empowered, seniors actively defend their programs from proposed threats, shaping policy outcomes. The participatory effects are strongest for low-income seniors, who are most dependent on Social Security. The program thus reduces political inequality within the senior population--a laudable effect--while increasing inequality between seniors and younger citizens. A brief look across policies shows that program effects are not always positive. Welfare recipients are even less participatory than their modest socioeconomic backgrounds would imply, because of the demeaning and disenfranchising process of proving eligibility. Campbell concludes that program design profoundly shapes the nature of democratic citizenship. And proposed policies--such as Social Security privatization--must be evaluated for both their economic and political effects, because the very quality of democratic government is influenced by the kinds of policies it chooses.

What Is Health Insurance (Good) For?

What Is Health Insurance (Good) For? PDF Author: Robert D. Lieberthal
Publisher: Springer
ISBN: 3319437968
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 276

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Book Description
This informative volume synthesizes the literatures on health economics, risk management, and health services into a concise guide to the financial and social basics of health insurance with an eye to its wide-scale upgrade. Its scope takes in concepts of health capital, strengths and limitations of insurance models, the effectiveness of coverage and services, and the roles of healthcare providers and government agencies in the equation. Coverage surveys the current state of group and public policies, most notably the effects of the Affordable Care Act on insurers and consumers and the current interest in universal coverage and single-payer plans. Throughout, the author provides systemic reasons to explain why today’s health insurance fails so many consumers, concluding with reality-based recommendations for making insurance more valuable to both today’s market and consumer well-being. Included among the topics: ·Defining health insurance and healthcare finance. ·Consuming and investing in health. ·The scope of health insurance and its constraints. ·Matching health insurance supply and demand. ·The role of government in health insurance. ·Ongoing challenges and the future of health insurance. Bringing a needed degree of objectivity to often highly subjective material, What Is Health Insurance (Good) For? is a call to reform to be read by health insurance researchers (including risk management insurance and health services research), professionals, practitioners, and policymakers.

State Enterprise Zone Programs

State Enterprise Zone Programs PDF Author: Alan H. Peters
Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute
ISBN: 0880992506
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 360

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Book Description
Enterprise zones have been part of American urban policy for over 20 years. In this book, the authors (urban and regional planning, the University of Iowa) use a hypothetical firm methodology to measure the value of enterprise zone incentives to business, involving construction of a set of financial statements for typical firms and application of tax code and incentives to those firms. They briefly discuss this model (with technical information on the model included in an appendix), and look at the results of enterprise zone programs in place in 13 states. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States

Means-Tested Transfer Programs in the United States PDF Author: National Bureau of Economic Research
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 9780226533568
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 224

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Book Description
Few United States government programs are as controversial as those designed to aid the poor. From tax credits to medical assistance, aid to needy families is surrounded by debate—on what benefits should be offered, what forms they should take, and how they should be administered. The past few decades, in fact, have seen this debate lead to broad transformations of aid programs themselves, with Aid to Families with Dependent Children replaced by Temporary Assistance to Needy Families, the Earned Income Tax Credit growing from a minor program to one of the most important for low-income families, and Medicaid greatly expanding its eligibility. This volume provides a remarkable overview of how such programs actually work, offering an impressive wealth of information on the nation's nine largest "means-tested" programs—that is, those in which some test of income forms the basis for participation. For each program, contributors describe origins and goals, summarize policy histories and current rules, and discuss the recipient's characteristics as well as the different types of benefits they receive. Each chapter then provides an overview of scholarly research on each program, bringing together the results of the field's most rigorous statistical examinations. The result is a fascinating portrayal of the evolution and current state of means-tested programs, one that charts a number of shifts in emphasis—the decline of cash assistance, for instance, and the increasing emphasis on work. This exemplary portrait of the nation's safety net will be an invaluable reference for anyone interested in American social policy.

Global Capitalism

Global Capitalism PDF Author: Jeffry A. Frieden
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
ISBN: 1324004207
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 838

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Book Description
"One of the most comprehensive histories of modern capitalism yet written." —Michael Hirsh, New York Times An authoritative, insightful, and highly readable history of the twentieth-century global economy, updated with a new chapter on the early decades of the new century. Global Capitalism guides the reader from the globalization of the early twentieth century and its swift collapse in the crises of 1914–45, to the return to global integration at the end of the century, and the subsequent retreat in the wake of the financial crisis of 2008.

How Schools Really Matter

How Schools Really Matter PDF Author: Douglas B. Downey
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022673336X
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 176

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Book Description
Most of us assume that public schools in America are unequal—that the quality of the education varies with the location of the school and that as a result, children learn more in the schools that serve mostly rich, white kids than in the schools serving mostly poor, black kids. But it turns out that this common assumption is misplaced. As Douglas B. Downey shows in How Schools Really Matter, achievement gaps have very little to do with what goes on in our schools. Not only do schools not exacerbate inequality in skills, they actually help to level the playing field. The real sources of achievement gaps are elsewhere. A close look at the testing data in seasonal patterns bears this out. It turns out that achievement gaps in reading skills between high- and low-income children are nearly entirely formed prior to kindergarten, and schools do more to reduce them than increase them. And when gaps do increase, they tend to do so during summers, not during school periods. So why do both liberal and conservative politicians strongly advocate for school reform, arguing that the poor quality of schools serving disadvantaged children is an important contributor to inequality? It’s because discussing the broader social and economic reforms necessary for really reducing inequality has become too challenging and polarizing—it’s just easier to talk about fixing schools. Of course, there are differences that schools can make, and Downey outlines the kinds of reforms that make sense given what we know about inequality outside of schools, including more school exposure, increased standardization, and better and fairer school and teacher measurements. ? How Schools Really Matter offers a firm rebuke to those who find nothing but fault in our schools, which are doing a much better than job than we give them credit for. It should also be a call to arms for educators and policymakers: the bottom line is that if we are serious about reducing inequality, we are going to have to fight some battles that are bigger than school reform—battles against the social inequality that is reflected within, rather than generated by—our public school system.

Pitfalls of Participatory Programs

Pitfalls of Participatory Programs PDF Author:
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 34

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Book Description
Participation of beneficiaries in the monitoring of public services is increasingly seen as a key to improving their efficiency. In India, the current government flagship program on universal primary education organizes both locally elected leaders and parents of children enrolled in public schools into committees and gives these groups powers over resource allocation, and monitoring and management of school performance. However, in a baseline survey we found that people were not aware of the existence of these committees and their potential for improving education. This paper evaluates three different interventions to encourage beneficiaries' participation through these committees: providing information, training community members in a new testing tool, and training and organizing volunteers to hold remedial reading camps for illiterate children. We find that these interventions had no impact on community involvement in public schools, and no impact on teacher effort or learning outcomes in those schools. However, we do find that the intervention that trained volunteers to teach children to read had a large impact on activity outside public schools -- local youths volunteered to be trained to teach, and children who attended these camps substantially improved their reading skills. These results suggest that citizens face substantial constraints in participating to improve the public education system, even when they care about education and are willing to do something to improve it.