Suchergebnisse

Replies to Andrew Polsky's review (see abstract in SA 44:5) of Quadagno's The Color of Welfare: How Racism Undermined the War on Poverty (1994 [see listing in IRPS No. 87]). Polsky raises a valid question about whether the new emphasis in social-welfare history on gender, race, & social control necessarily supplants the earlier emphasis on the timing of industrial development, the organization of the working class, or the influence of national values. In actuality, these two approaches to social-welfare history are more complementary than competitive. By looking at social-welfare history through a new lens, The Color of Welfare demonstrates that race influenced the nature of working-class organization & the structure of national politics & that, during the 1960s, the struggle for racial equality helped redefine the meaning of liberalism. M. Maguire

In the past decade, debates about social security have increasingly been structured around the concept of generational equity, the idea that the elderly are usurping resources that should be spent on the next generation. Here, the origins of the generational equity debate are traced, highlighting policy proposals inherent in generational equity arguments. The impact of a social security system designed around a generational equity model would be to eliminate the universalism that presently characterizes social security & return it to a means tested program of welfare. Reconstituting social security as a poverty program would mean a significant reduction in the social wage, a victory for capital over citizen control of a portion of the national wage bill. AA

In the post-World War II era the apparent success of Keynesian economic principles in evening out the instabilities of the business cycle stimulated rapid growth in public welfare expenditures in Western capitalist democracies. For social science, welfare state expansion was not a puzzle but a given. When the economic crisis of the 1970s undermined faith in permanent and sustained growth in welfare programs, the new agenda for social theory concentrated upon the conditions that hindered or favored development. Ironically, both neo-Marxists and conservative economists reached the same conclusion: Welfare programs undermined profitability. The first half of this paper traces these theoretical developments, both in relation to internal debates among social scientists and in regard to external social and economic conditions that shaped the context of theorizing about the welfare state. Underlying the broader debates about the factors influencing welfare state development has been a more specific concern with the exceptionalism of the American welfare state. Here the central agenda has been to explain why the United States was late in developing national welfare programs and why the programs that did arise contained a bifurcated structure that separated benefits for the poor from those available to all citizens as a right. Three explanations have emerged: the failure of organized labor, the legacy of American politics and the dualism of the American economy. This paper critically assesses the theoretical relevance of these arguments and their implications for recent attacks on benefit programs.

"This book includes all the topics typically covered in a social gerontology text and contains three distinctive chapters. One of these is a separate chapter on the life course Chapter 2, "Life Course Transitions"). The growing emphasis in the field of social gerontology on the relationship between the quality of life in old age and an individual's cumulative experiences, choices, constraints, and opportunities over the life course. Another distinctive chapter focuses on the long term care of the frail elderly (Chapter 12, "Caring for the Frail Elderly"). A substantial body of research on this subject examines the burdens and satisfactions family members experience in caring for their aging kin, the problems associated with nursing home care, and the advantages and disadvantages of various alternative living arrangements"--

Every industrial nation in the world guarantees their citizens access to essential health care services - every country, that is, except the United States. Indeed, one in eight Americans - a shocking 43 million people - the majority in working families, do not have any health care insurance. This title offers a history of America's failed efforts to address the health care needs of its citizens.