A Safety Net That Works

A Safety Net That Works PDF Author: Robert Doar
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0844750069
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

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Book Description
This is an edited volume reviewing the major means-tested social programs in the United States. Each author addresses a major program or area, reviewing each area’s successes and recommending how to address shortcomings through policy change. In general, our means-tested programs do many things well, but some adjustments to each could make the system much more effective. This book provides policymakers with a broad overview of the issues at hand in each program and how to address them.

A Safety Net That Works

A Safety Net That Works PDF Author: Robert Doar
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 0844750069
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 262

Get Book Here

Book Description
This is an edited volume reviewing the major means-tested social programs in the United States. Each author addresses a major program or area, reviewing each area’s successes and recommending how to address shortcomings through policy change. In general, our means-tested programs do many things well, but some adjustments to each could make the system much more effective. This book provides policymakers with a broad overview of the issues at hand in each program and how to address them.

The State of Social Safety Nets 2018

The State of Social Safety Nets 2018 PDF Author: The World Bank
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464812551
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 264

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Book Description
The State of Social Safety Nets 2018 Report examines global trends in the social safety net/social assistance coverage, spending, and program performance based on the World Bank Atlas of Social Protection Indicators of Resilience and Equity (ASPIRE) updated database. The report documents the main social safety net programs that exist globally and their use to alleviate poverty and to build shared prosperity. The 2018 report expands on the 2015 edition, both in administrative and household survey data coverage. A distinct mark of this report is that, for the first time, it tells the story of what happens with SSN/SA programs spending and coverage over time, when the data allow us to do so. This 2018 edition also features two special themes †“ Social Assistance and Ageing, focusing on the role of old-age social pensions, and Adaptive Social Protection, focusing on what makes SSN systems/programs adaptive to various shocks.

Strengths of the Social Safety Net in the Great Recession

Strengths of the Social Safety Net in the Great Recession PDF Author: Christopher J. O'Leary
Publisher: W.E. Upjohn Institute
ISBN: 0880996633
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 429

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Book Description
The contributors in this book use administrative data from six states from before, during, and after the Great Recession to gauge the degree to which Supplemental Nutrition Assistance (SNAP) and Unemployment Insurance (UI) interacted. They also recommend ways that the program policies could be altered to better serve those suffering hardship as a result of future economic downturns.

The Invisible Safety Net

The Invisible Safety Net PDF Author: Janet Currie
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 1400826993
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 214

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Book Description
In one of the most provocative books ever published on America's social welfare system, economist Janet Currie argues that the modern social safety net is under attack. Unlike most books about antipoverty programs, Currie trains her focus not on cash welfare, which accounts for a small and shrinking share of federal expenditures on poor families with children, but on the staples of today's American welfare system: Medicaid, Food Stamps, Head Start, WIC, and public housing. These programs, Currie maintains, form an effective, if largely invisible and haphazard safety net, and yet they are the very programs most vulnerable to political attack and misunderstanding. This book highlights both the importance and the fragility of this safety net, arguing that, while not perfect, it is essential to fighting poverty. Currie demonstrates how America's safety net is threatened by growing budget deficits and by an erroneous public belief that antipoverty programs for children do not work and are riddled with fraud. By unearthing new empirical data, Currie makes the case that social programs for families with children are actually remarkably effective. She takes her argument one step further by offering specific reforms--detailed in each chapter--for improving these programs even more. The book concludes with an overview of an integrated safety net that would fight poverty more effectively and prevent children from slipping through holes in the net. (For example, Currie recommends the implementation of a benefit "debit card" that would provide benefits with less administrative burden on the recipient.) A complement to books such as Barbara Ehrenreich's bestselling Nickel and Dimed, which document the personal struggles of the working poor, The Invisible Safety Net provides a big-picture look at the kind of programs and solutions that would help ease those struggles. Comprehensive and authoritative, it will prompt a major reexamination of the current thinking on improving the lives of needy Americans.

Realizing the Full Potential of Social Safety Nets in Africa

Realizing the Full Potential of Social Safety Nets in Africa PDF Author: Kathleen Beegle
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 1464811660
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 337

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Book Description
Poverty remains a pervasive and complex phenomenon in Sub-Saharan Africa. Part of the agenda in recent years to tackle poverty in Africa has been the launching of social safety nets programs. All countries have now deployed safety net interventions as part of their core development programs. The number of programs has skyrocketed since the mid-2000s though many programs remain limited in size. This shift in social policy reflects the progressive evolution in the understanding of the role that social safety nets can play in the fight against poverty and vulnerability, and more generally in the human capital and growth agenda. Evidence on their impacts on equity, resilience, and opportunity is growing, and makes a foundational case for investments in safety nets as a major component of national development plans. For this potential to be realized, however, safety net programs need to be significantly scaled-up. Such scaling up will involve a series of technical considerations to identify the parameters, tools, and processes that can deliver maximum benefits to the poor and vulnerable. However, in addition to technical considerations, and at least as importantly, this report argues that a series of decisive shifts need to occur in three other critical spheres: political, institutional, and fiscal. First, the political processes that shape the extent and nature of social policy need to be recognized, by stimulating political appetite for safety nets, choosing politically smart parameters, and harnessing the political impacts of safety nets to promote their sustainability. Second, the anchoring of safety net programs in institutional arrangements †“ related to the overarching policy framework for safety nets, the functions of policy and coordination, as well as program management and implementation †“ is particularly important as programs expand and are increasingly implemented through national channels. And third, in most countries, the level and predictability of resources devoted to the sector needs to increase for safety nets to reach the desired scale, through increased efficiency, increased volumes and new sources of financing, and greater ability to effectively respond to shocks. This report highlights the implications which political, institutional, and fiscal aspects have for the choice and design of programs. Fundamentally, it argues that these considerations are critical to ensure the successful scaling-up of social safety nets in Africa, and that ignoring them could lead to technically-sound, but practically impossible, choices and designs.

Repairing the U.S. Social Safety Net

Repairing the U.S. Social Safety Net PDF Author: Martha R. Burt
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
ISBN:
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description
The rising poverty and unemployment rates triggered by the recession are stark reminders of the need for a secure social safety net. Such programs should provide economic security, protect vulnerable families, and promote equality--but the United States falls behind other countries in accomplishing these goals. In Repairing the U.S. Social Safety Net, Martha R. Burt and Demetra Smith Nightingale encourage strengthening the safety net and making a national commitment to end poverty.

A Well-Tailored Safety Net

A Well-Tailored Safety Net PDF Author: Jed Graham
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing USA
ISBN: 0313381704
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 217

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Book Description
This intriguing book introduces the first Social Security reform proposal tailored to meet the nation's fiscal challenges and care for an aging population. Tackling one of the most difficult and divisive issues facing America today, A Well-Tailored Safety Net: The Only Fair and Sensible Way to Save Social Security seeks to transform the political debate over Social Security reform by introducing the first proposal tailored to meet both the nation's fiscal challenges and the responsibility of caring for an aging population. As the first batch of 77 million baby boomers begins to collect its social security benefits in the midst of the explosion of national debt from economic recovery expenditures, Social Security reform becomes increasingly urgent. Jed Graham takes apart each of the current leading proposals and shows how all of them fall short by the key criteria of affordability, effectiveness, and fairness. Graham proposes a bold new approach that would erase more debt than any other proposal, yet avoid benefit cuts in very old age, when people can least afford them. Short on actuary speak and long on common sense, A Well-Tailored Safety Net makes the Social Security debate accessible to general readers. At the same time, it advances innovative solutions with such command of analytic detail and ideological impartiality as to merit serious study by legislators and policymakers.

Family Policy and the American Safety Net

Family Policy and the American Safety Net PDF Author: Janet Zollinger Giele
Publisher: SAGE
ISBN: 1412998948
Category : Family & Relationships
Languages : en
Pages : 409

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Book Description
Family Policy and the American Safety Net shows how families adapt to economic and demographic change. Government programs provide a safety net against the new risks of modern life. Family policy includes any public program that helps families perform their four universal obligations of caregiving, income provision, shelter, and transmission of citizenship. In America, this means that child care, health care, Social Security, unemployment insurance, housing, the quality of neighborhood schools, and anti-discrimination and immigration measures are all key elements of a de facto family policy. Yet many students and citizens are unaware of the history and importance of these programs. This book argues that family policy is as important as economic and defense policy to the future of the nation, a message that is relevant to students in the social sciences, social policy, and social work as well as to the public at large. .

Public Works as a Safety Net

Public Works as a Safety Net PDF Author: Kalanidhi Subbarao
Publisher: World Bank Publications
ISBN: 0821394614
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 430

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Book Description
A review of the conceptual underpinnings and operational elements of public works programs around the world., drawing from a rich evidence base and analyzing previously unassimilated data, to fill a gap in knowledge related to public works programs, now so popular.

Disability Rights and the American Social Safety Net

Disability Rights and the American Social Safety Net PDF Author: Jennifer L. Erkulwater
Publisher: Cornell University Press
ISBN: 150172715X
Category : Political Science
Languages : en
Pages : 268

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Book Description
The recent history of the American welfare state has been viewed with dismay by those on the left because of the steady contraction of benefits under both Republican and Democratic administrations. In contrast, Jennifer L. Erkulwater describes the remarkable success of advocacy for the disabled at a time when the federal government was seemingly impervious to liberal policy innovations.Since the War on Poverty the American public's support for social-welfare policies has gradually eroded as conservative politicians have gained power and demographic changes and uncertain economic growth have enhanced pressures for fiscal retrenchment. Yet, the past thirty years have also seen a dramatic expansion of disability benefits. This book is the first to examine how entitlements for the disabled have fared in the wake of the disability-rights movement. This movement initially fought to end the institutionalization of the severely disabled and moved on to claim that antidiscrimination laws would allow the disabled to work and become less dependent on welfare. It also had a profound impact on entitlements.Erkulwater demonstrates that the Disability Insurance and Supplemental Security Income programs enacted between 1972 and 2000 succeeded because policy elites switched from welfare-based approaches to the civil-rights rhetoric used by the disability-rights movement. The work of liberal advocates who sought to end the segregation of the disabled in custodial institutions and integrate them into their home communities contributed to the growth of programs providing financial assistance to disabled citizens and to the recent controversies surrounding the future direction of disability policy.