Suchergebnisse

Interest in the subject of privatisation in Australia has increased markedly over recent years, although references to it have been made in the literature intermittently over a longer period. The original purpose of this bibliography was to record items dealing with the privatisation of welfare services. However, as work on collecting material for the entries proceeded, it became obvious that it is extremely difficult to separate privatisation of welfare services from the effects on welfare of the privatisation of enterprises not directly concerned with those services. Privatisation of enterprises such as the water supply and communication services, has direct or indirect effects on the well-being of the population. It introduces the question of 'community service obligations' (CSOs), or the non-commercial objectives of government business organisations, which are often lost when these organisations are privatised. This bibliography has therefore widened its scope to include works which refer to the effects on the well-being of the population of the privatisation of enterprises not directly in the welfare area. Another issue which has affected the choice of entries has been that of what constitutes privatisation. A number of works cited here are concerned with definition and with detailing the nature of the changes which are entailed in different forms of privatisation: deregulation, the introduction of user-pays practices, asset sales etc. Among these may be included an expanded role for the voluntary or non-profit sector in the provision of community and welfare services. These entries are found under the keyword 'Forms'.

'CRISIS? WHAT CRISIS?', THE CHANCELLOR OF THE EXCHEQUER was reported to have replied to a question concerning the alleged crisis in sterling. In the case of the welfare state it might seem that the appropriate response would be 'Which crisis? ' since there are several on the menu - fiscal crisis, legitimacy crisis, crisis of ungovernability . Left, Right and Centre have become convinced that there is a crisis. This is after a period of history which had seen an unprecedented rise in the standard of living of the vast majority of the population living in what are normally regarded as welfare states.

With welfare reform soundly launched and its effects already praised, it is time to examine its impact on former welfare recipients. A typology of adaptation to welfare—comprising dependency, supplementation, self-reliance, and autonomy—was developed based on former welfare recipients' financial status and employment status. An examination was also made of ways in which welfare recipients changed from more independent modes of adaptation (autonomy and self-reliance) to less independent modes (supplementation and dependency). Using longitudinal data extracted from a U. S. Department of Labor survey, event history analysis was applied to investigate changes in adaptation mode and factors contributing to these changes, among former welfare recipients across a period of 1 8 years. The investigation found that return to welfare was uncommon. Furthermore, the results show that nonpoor former recipients most often joined the ranks of the working poor because of welfare reform, ethnicity, education level, occupational skills, family income, housing subsidy, child care, and prior experience in welfare use. Some nonpoor former recipients who spent long spells in welfare returned to welfare because they suffered income reductions and needed food stamps. Working poor former recipients were likely to become nonpoor if they were married and had no need for child care or food stamps. Working poor White, single mothers with little work experience and little child support were likely to return to welfare and become further dependent on it.

Abstract.We present a different approach to appraising welfare regimes, stressing different dimensions, variables and techniques to those used by Esping‐Andersen in his path‐breaking work entitledThe Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. First, instead of focusing on social rights, we construct an alternative path to identifying welfare regimes starting from the welfare mix. Second, we incorporate active labour market policies (ALMP) as a key variable of the welfare mix. Third, we use hierarchical and k‐means cluster analysis to identify welfare regimes in the data. Fourth, we compare regimes over time. Nevertheless, despite these different approaches, we conclude, like Esping‐Andersen, that there are three clusters or worlds of welfare capitalism. We also find that the clustering of welfare regimes was sharper in the mid‐1990s as compared to the mid‐1980s, but that comparing welfare regimes in the 1980s with the 1990s indicates strong path‐dependence. Faced with high and persistent levels of unemployment in the 1990s, OECD countries have adopted policies, including ALMP, which reinforce their welfare mix.

This article links together three themes in recent discussion of welfare. First, the extent to which current patterns of state welfare provision are likely to continue has been called into question. Disillusion with the traditional model derives in part from government response to economic pressures, in part from the likelihood that changes in demography, employment and popular expectations will increase demands on the state, and in part from the tendency of theorists to advocate pluralist, decentralized, mixed economy and civil society-based solutions to problems. Secondly, traditional notions of welfare citizenship have been challenged because they fail to take into account the wide variety of paths which different systems have pursued in their development and because they fail to include the impact of state policy on the private sphere of home and family in their analysis. Thirdly, vigorous controversy about the categorization of welfare states surrounds the work of Esping-Andersen (1990). The claim that state welfare cannot be sustained is found to be unconvincing. However, the arguments do focus attention on issues of social care and the impact of policy on women. This has strong implications for the way in which theories of welfare citizenship discuss the relation between state policy and the public and private spheres of social life. Esping-Andersen's model uses the extent of decommodification in relation to formal wage-labour to distinguish the ideal types of liberal, social democratic and conservative/corporatist regimes. State intervention is limited in the liberal model, extensive in the social democratic model and substantial but directed at maintaining the stratification order of the market in the conservative model. An analysis that includes both uncommodified care work in the home and the position of women in the formal labour market implies that different struggles will develop in the various regime types in response to current pressures on the welfare state. In liberal regimes, equal opportunities have been pursued through law rather than direct state intervention: the result is that gender conflicts become increasingly subsumed to the class conflicts of the market. In social democracy a substantial state sector provides both opportunities for women's advancement in employment and socialized care facilities that help to make this possible; pressure on spending leads to conflicts between public and private sector workers (who see the former as parasitic) which increasingly involve gender conflicts. Under conservative/corporatism, where women's opportunities to enter paid employment have been relatively limited, gender conflicts increasingly concern access to paid work. These predictions offer opportunities for the empirical testing of the model.

This article examines the impact of the 1996 welfare reform legislation on welfare use in immigrant households. Although the data indicate that the welfare participation rate of immigrants declined relative to that of natives at the national level, this national trend is entirely attributable to the trends in welfare participation in California. Immigrants living in California experienced a precipitous drop in their welfare participation rate (relative to natives). Immigrants living outside California experienced roughly the same decline in participation rates as natives. The potential impact of welfare reform on immigrants residing outside California was neutralized because many state governments responded to the federal legislation by offering state-funded programs to their immigrant populations and because the immigrants themselves responded by becoming naturalized citizens. The very steep decline of immigrant welfare participation in California is harder to understand, but could be a by-product of the changed political and social environment following the enactment of Proposition 187.

Aboriginal lawyer, activist and social commentator Noel Pearson has recently argued that the current mode of delivery of welfare services to Aboriginal people is deeply antithetical to their interests and wellbeing. Central to his scheme for policy change and improved welfare outcomes are two core propositions. The first is that the 'passive welfare' policies instituted in Aboriginal communities over the past three decades, with no demands for reciprocity and responsibility on the part of welfare recipients, have promoted detrimental relations of passivity and dependence which are now deeply embedded within Aboriginal societies. Pearson's second key proposition is that addressing the dysfunctional consequences of the welfare system for Aboriginal people will require structural change. In particular, new institutions for Aboriginal governance, both formal and informal, will need to be developed. It is through reform of the existing institutional arrangements between government and Aboriginal communities, and through these formal and informal Aboriginal institutions, Pearson argues, that the principles of reciprocity and individual responsibility necessary to leach the 'poison' from welfare resources can be instituted and implemented. Pearson's arguments should be seen as a welcome and politically innovative contribution to a policy debate of fundamental importance. The status quo in welfare policy, at least for remote Aboriginal Australia, is not sustainable. However, on the basis of ethnographic evidence from Cape York and other north Queensland Aboriginal communities-the region on which Pearson's policy proposals are centred-this Discussion Paper suggests that certain of Pearson's underlying assumptions need careful re-examination and further development, and that the evidence poses certain difficulties for the practical implementation of his proposals. In particular, the ethnography from Cape York and elsewhere suggests that certain widespread Aboriginal values and practices may be inimical to the kinds of social and attitudinal changes which Pearson is advocating and, further, that these values and practices have not simply arisen as the consequence of the experience of colonialism or the introduction of welfare. This then raises the question of the sources of the moral suasion and authority necessary to demand and implement social change in Aboriginal societies. Pearson proposes that these lie variously within 'families' and other local groups and 'communities'. This view is challenged here, with the argument that such contemporary groupings do not have the requisite moral and political authority over individuals. If this is the case, it creates a dilemma for Pearson's scheme, for if social and attitudinal changes are necessary, whence can they be driven? The answer may lie in the new forms of Indigenous governance and leadership which Pearson proposes. However, these would involve significant changes within the Indigenous polity, which may be beyond the capacity of Indigenous groups themselves to institute. Facilitation and support from external sources, including government, may be required. However, the involvement of government in social change would carry its own risks, since despite rhetorical support for Indigenous self-determination, government is inherently incapable of moving beyond its own dominating rationale.