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Author: Margaret Weir
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691222002
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 480
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Book Description
This volume places the welfare debates of the 1980s in the context of past patterns of U.S. policy, such as the Social Security Act of 1935, the failure of efforts in the 1940s to extend national social benefits and economic planning, and the backlashes against "big government" that followed reforms of the 1960s and early 1970s. Historical analysis reveals that certain social policies have flourished in the United States: those that have appealed simultaneously to middle-class and lower-income people, while not involving direct bureaucratic interventions into local communities. The editors suggest how new family and employment policies, devised along these lines, might revitalize broad political coalitions and further basic national values. The contributors are Edwin Amenta, Robert Aponte, Mary Jo Bane, Kenneth Finegold, John Myles, Kathryn Neckerman, Gary Orfield, Ann Shola Orloff, Jill Quadagno, Theda Skocpol, Helene Slessarev, Beth Stevens, Margaret Weir, and William Julius Wilson.
Author: Margaret Weir
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691222002
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 480
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Book Description
This volume places the welfare debates of the 1980s in the context of past patterns of U.S. policy, such as the Social Security Act of 1935, the failure of efforts in the 1940s to extend national social benefits and economic planning, and the backlashes against "big government" that followed reforms of the 1960s and early 1970s. Historical analysis reveals that certain social policies have flourished in the United States: those that have appealed simultaneously to middle-class and lower-income people, while not involving direct bureaucratic interventions into local communities. The editors suggest how new family and employment policies, devised along these lines, might revitalize broad political coalitions and further basic national values. The contributors are Edwin Amenta, Robert Aponte, Mary Jo Bane, Kenneth Finegold, John Myles, Kathryn Neckerman, Gary Orfield, Ann Shola Orloff, Jill Quadagno, Theda Skocpol, Helene Slessarev, Beth Stevens, Margaret Weir, and William Julius Wilson.
Author: Theda Skocpol
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674043723
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 737
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Book Description
It is a commonplace that the United States lagged behind the countries of Western Europe in developing modern social policies. But, as Theda Skocpol shows in this startlingly new historical analysis, the United States actually pioneered generous social spending for many of its elderly, disabled, and dependent citizens. During the late nineteenth century, competitive party politics in American democracy led to the rapid expansion of benefits for Union Civil War veterans and their families. Some Americans hoped to expand veterans' benefits into pensions for all of the needy elderly and social insurance for workingmen and their families. But such hopes went against the logic of political reform in the Progressive Era. Generous social spending faded along with the Civil War generation. Instead, the nation nearly became a unique maternalist welfare state as the federal government and more than forty states enacted social spending, labor regulations, and health education programs to assist American mothers and children. Remarkably, as Skocpol shows, many of these policies were enacted even before American women were granted the right to vote. Banned from electoral politics, they turned their energies to creating huge, nation-spanning federations of local women's clubs, which collaborated with reform-minded professional women to spur legislative action across the country. Blending original historical research with political analysis, Skocpol shows how governmental institutions, electoral rules, political parties, and earlier public policies combined to determine both the opportunities and the limits within which social policies were devised and changed by reformers and politically active social groups over the course of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. By examining afresh the institutional, cultural, and organizational forces that have shaped U.S. social policies in the past, Protecting Soldiers and Mothers challenges us to think in new ways about what might be possible in the American future.
Author: Daniel Beland
Publisher: Polity
ISBN: 0745645844
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 210
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Book Description
From housing, pensions and family benefits, to health care, unemployment insurance and social assistance, the welfare state is a key aspect of our lives. This book provides a concise political and sociological introduction to social policy, helping readers to grasp the nature of social programs and the political struggles surrounding them.
Author: Theda Skocpol
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 0691214026
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 338
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Book Description
Health care, welfare, Social Security, employment programs--all are part of ongoing national debates about the future of social policy in the United States. In this wide-ranging collection of essays, Theda Skocpol shows how historical understanding, centered on governmental institutions and political alliances, can illuminate the limits and possibilities of American social policymaking both past and present. Skocpol dispels the myth that Americans are inherently hostile to social spending and suggests why President Clinton's health care agenda was so quickly attacked despite the support of most Americans for his goals.
Author: Jacob S. Hacker
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 9780521013284
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 468
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Book Description
Publisher Description
Author: James Midgley
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 9780761915614
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 570
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Book Description
Comprises 33 papers grouped under five themes: The Nature of social policy; The History of social policy; Social policy and the social services; The Political economy of social policy; and International and future perspectives on social policy.
Author: Nathan Glazer
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674534438
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 246
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Book Description
Many social policies of the 1960s and 1970s, designed to overcome poverty and provide a decent minimum standard of living for all Americans, ran into trouble in the 1980s--with politicians, with social scientists, and with the American people. Nathan Glazer has been a leading analyst and critic of those measures. Here he looks back at what went wrong, arguing that our social policies, although targeted effectively on some problems, ignored others that are equally important and contributed to the weakening of the structures--family, ethnic and neighborhood ties, commitment to work--that form the foundations of a healthy society. What keeps society going, after all, is that most people feel they should work, however well they might do without working, and that they should take care of their families, however attractive it might appear on occasion to desert them. Glazer proposes new kinds of social policies that would strengthen social structures and traditional restraints. Thus, to reinforce the incentive to work, he would attach to low-income jobs the same kind of fringe benefits--health insurance, social security, vacations with pay--that now make higher-paying jobs attractive and that paradoxically are already available in some form to those on welfare. More generally, he would reorient social policy to fit more comfortably with deep and abiding tendencies in American political culture: toward volunteerism, privatization, and decentralization. After a long period of quiescence, social policy and welfare reform are once again becoming salient issues on the national political agenda. Nathan Glazer's deep knowledge and considered judgment, distilled in this book, will be a source of advice, ideas, and inspiration for citizens and policymakers alike.
Author: Sara Niedzwiecki
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1108472044
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 275
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Book Description
Social policies can transform the lives of the poor, yet subnational politics and state capacity often inhibit their success.
Author: Edited by Stefan Svallfors
Publisher: Stanford University Press
ISBN: 9780804768153
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 324
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Book Description
A comparative analysis of the political attitudes, values, aspirations, and identities of citizens in advanced industrial societies, this book focusses on the different ways in which social policies and national politics affect personal opinions on justice, political responsibility, and the overall trustworthiness of politicians.
Author: National Research Council
Publisher: National Academies Press
ISBN: 0309264146
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 421
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Book Description
The United States is among the wealthiest nations in the world, but it is far from the healthiest. Although life expectancy and survival rates in the United States have improved dramatically over the past century, Americans live shorter lives and experience more injuries and illnesses than people in other high-income countries. The U.S. health disadvantage cannot be attributed solely to the adverse health status of racial or ethnic minorities or poor people: even highly advantaged Americans are in worse health than their counterparts in other, "peer" countries. In light of the new and growing evidence about the U.S. health disadvantage, the National Institutes of Health asked the National Research Council (NRC) and the Institute of Medicine (IOM) to convene a panel of experts to study the issue. The Panel on Understanding Cross-National Health Differences Among High-Income Countries examined whether the U.S. health disadvantage exists across the life span, considered potential explanations, and assessed the larger implications of the findings. U.S. Health in International Perspective presents detailed evidence on the issue, explores the possible explanations for the shorter and less healthy lives of Americans than those of people in comparable countries, and recommends actions by both government and nongovernment agencies and organizations to address the U.S. health disadvantage.
