Download or read book Evaluating the Welfare State written by Shimon E. Spiro and published by Elsevier. This book was released on 2013-10-22 with total page 441 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Evaluating the Welfare State: Social and Political Perspectives together with its companion Social Policy Evaluation: An Economic Perspective is the outgrowth of an international and interdisciplinary conference on policy evaluation held at Tel Aviv University in December 1980. The conference brought together scholars from the fields of economics, sociology, political science, social work, and administration. The papers presented at this conference approached the welfare state and social policy evaluation from a number of different theoretical and methodological perspectives. A selection of these papers has been included in this volume. The book is divided into five parts. Part I is devoted to the political antecedents and consequences of the welfare state and to the social and psychological processes that affect the development of social policies and reactions to them. Part II analyzes the discontinuity between policies that are the subject of public debate, and the programs that affect the well-being of populations and the distribution of resources. The chapters in Parts III and IV present current developments in the practice of evaluation and explore the frontiers of this field. Part V focuses on the relationship of evaluation to policymaking. This involves examinations of the culture of political debates, the nature of choices facing policymakers, and the impact of research on policy.
Download or read book Evaluating the Welfare State written by Shimon E. Spiro and published by . This book was released on 1983 with total page 424 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Welfare Experiments written by Robin H. Rogers-Dillon and published by Stanford University Press. This book was released on 2004-04-21 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Welfare experiments conducted at the state level during the 1990s radically restructured the American welfare state and have played a critical—and unexpected—role in the broader policymaking process. Through these experiments, previously unpopular reform ideas, such as welfare time limits, gained wide and enthusiastic support. Ultimately, the institutional legacy of the old welfare system was broken, new ideas took hold, and the welfare experiments generated a new institutional channel in policymaking. In this book, Rogers-Dillon argues that these welfare experiments were not simply scientific experiments, as their supporters frequently contend, but a powerful political tool that created a framework within which few could argue successfully against the welfare policy changes. Legislation proposed in 2002 formalized this channel of policymaking, permitting the executive, as opposed to legislative, branches of federal and state governments to renegotiate social policies—an unprecedented change in American policymaking. This book provides unique insight into how social policy is made in the United States, and how that process is changing.
Download or read book Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 2001-08-10 with total page 267 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reform of welfare is one of the nation's most contentious issues, with debate often driven more by politics than by facts and careful analysis. Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition identifies the key policy questions for measuring whether our changing social welfare programs are working, reviews the available studies and research, and recommends the most effective ways to answer those questions. This book discusses the development of welfare policy, including the landmark 1996 federal law that devolved most of the responsibility for welfare policies and their implementation to the states. A thorough analysis of the available research leads to the identification of gaps in what is currently known about the effects of welfare reform. Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition specifies what-and why-we need to know about the response of individual states to the federal overhaul of welfare and the effects of the many changes in the nation's welfare laws, policies, and practices. With a clear approach to a variety of issues, Evaluating Welfare Reform in an Era of Transition will be important to policy makers, welfare administrators, researchers, journalists, and advocates on all sides of the issue.
Download or read book Evaluating the Welfare State written by James Joseph Heckman and published by . This book was released on 1998 with total page 77 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A variety of criteria are relevant for evaluating alternative policies in democratic societies composed of persons with diverse values and perspectives. In this paper, we consider alternative criteria for evaluating the welfare state, and the data required to operationalize them. We examine sets of identifying assumptions that bound, or exactly produce, these alternative criteria given the availability of various types of data. We consider the economic questions addressed by two widely-used econometric evaluation estimators and relate them to the requirements of a comprehensive cost-benefit analysis. We present evidence on how the inference from the most commonly used econometric evaluation estimator is modified when the direct costs of a program are fully assessed, including the welfare costs of the taxes required to support the program. Finally, we present evidence of the empirical inconsistency of alternative criteria derived from evaluations based on on self-selection and attrition decisions, and on self-reported evaluations from questionnaires when applied to a prototypical job training program
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State written by Francis G. Castles and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 908 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State is the authoritative and definitive guide to the contemporary welfare state. In a volume consisting of nearly fifty newly-written chapters, a broad range of the world's leading scholars offer a comprehensive account of everything one needs to know about the modern welfare state. The book is divided into eight sections. It opens with three chapters that evaluate the philosophical case for (and against) the welfare state. Surveys of the welfare state 's history and of the approaches taken to its study are followed by four extended sections, running to some thirty-five chapters in all, which offer a comprehensive and in-depth survey of our current state of knowledge across the whole range of issues that the welfare state embraces. The first of these sections looks at inputs and actors (including the roles of parties, unions, and employers), the impact of gender and religion, patterns of migration and a changing public opinion, the role of international organisations and the impact of globalisation. The next two sections cover policy inputs (in areas such as pensions, health care, disability, care of the elderly, unemployment, and labour market activation) and their outcomes (in terms of inequality and poverty, macroeconomic performance, and retrenchment). The seventh section consists of seven chapters which survey welfare state experience around the globe (and not just within the OECD). Two final chapters consider questions about the global future of the welfare state. The individual chapters of the Handbook are written in an informed but accessible way by leading researchers in their respective fields giving the reader an excellent and truly up-to-date knowledge of the area under discussion. Taken together, they constitute a comprehensive compendium of all that is best in contemporary welfare state research and a unique guide to what is happening now in this most crucial and contested area of social and political development.
Download or read book Beyond the Welfare State written by Christopher Pierson and published by Penn State Press. This book was released on 1998 with total page 252 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: First published in 1991, Beyond the Welfare State? has been thoroughly revised and updated for this new edition, which draws on the latest theoretical developments and empirical evidence. It remains the most comprehensive and sophisticated guide to the condition of the welfare state in a time of rapid and sometimes bewildering change. The opening chapters offer a scholarly but accessible review of competing interpretations of the historical and contemporary roles of the welfare state. This evaluation, based on the most recent empirical research, gives full weight to feminist, ecological, and "anti-racist" critiques and also develops a clear account of globalization and its contested impact upon existing welfare regimes. The book constructs a distinctive history of the international growth of welfare states and offers a comprehensive account of recent developments from "crisis" to "structural adjustment." The final chapters bring the story right up to date with an assessment of the important changes effected in the 1990s and the prospects for welfare states in the new millennium.
Download or read book Assessing the Structure of Small Welfare States written by Geoffrey Bertram and published by Commonwealth Secretariat. This book was released on 2011 with total page 44 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: SOCIAL POLICIES IN SMALL STATES SERIES The country case studies and thematic papers in this series examine social policy issues facing small states and the implications for economic development. They show how, despite their inherent vulnerability, some small states have been successful in improving their social indicators because of the complementary social and economic policies they have implemented. THEMATIC PAPER - THE WELFARE STATE Historically, the welfare state evolved as the most efficient policy response to caring for a large, homogeneous population. This traditional model, however, loses importance as population size falls below 3-4 million, especially for states where a significant number of the population migrate and send remittances home, and where the country is the recipient of overseas aid. Facilitating the international mobility of people therefore becomes central to social policy and insofar as the welfare state occurs, it tends to be focused on the labour market. This paper examines how the characteristics of small states influence their pursuit of a welfare state. Many of the small states discussed have not previously featured in mainstream thinking about the relationship between country size and the extent of the welfare state.
Download or read book Evaluating Welfare Reform written by National Research Council and published by National Academies Press. This book was released on 1999-11-04 with total page 159 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996 fundamentally changed the nation's social welfare system, replacing a federal entitlement program for low-income families, called Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC), with state-administered block grants, the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) program. PRWORA furthered a trend started earlier in the decade under so called "waiver" programs-state experiments with different types of AFDC rules-toward devolution of design and control of social welfare programs from the federal government to the states. The legislation imposed several new, major requirements on state use of federal welfare funds but otherwise freed states to reconfigure their programs as they want. The underlying goal of the legislation is to decrease dependence on welfare and increase the self-sufficiency of poor families in the United States. In summer 1998, the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation (ASPE) of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) asked the Committee on National Statistics of the National Research Council to convene a Panel on Data and Methods for Measuring the Effects of Changes in Social Welfare Programs. The panel's overall charge is to study and make recommendations on the best strategies for evaluating the effects of PRWORA and other welfare reforms and to make recommendations on data needs for conducting useful evaluations. This interim report presents the panel's initial conclusions and recommendations. Given the short length of time the panel has been in existence, this report necessarily treats many issues in much less depth than they will be treated in the final report. The report has an immediate short-run goal of providing DHHS-ASPE with recommendations regarding some of its current projects, particularly those recently funded to study "welfare leavers"-former welfare recipients who have left the welfare rolls as part of the recent decline in welfare caseloads.
Download or read book Policy Creation and Evaluation written by Richard Hoefer and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012 with total page 230 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Although practitioners do not often identify an explicit focus on social welfare policy, the analysis (what it is) and evaluation (what it does) of policy is basic to social work practice. This unique pocket guide presents a case study on one of the most important domestic policy decisions in the post-WWII era, the passage of the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996. This law ended welfare as we knew it by creating the Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) program and closing the Aid to Families with Dependent Children program.Examining the law through three decision-making models assists readers in understanding TANF's historical antecedents, its political and power implications, and the way in which it meets social and economic goals. Individual chapters demonstrate how programs such as TANF are evaluated and the methods that can be used, such as primarily qualitative, primarily quantitative, and mixed methods evaluation techniques. Illustrating the advantages and disadvantages of each approach for evaluation, Hoefer makes use of the numerous studies undertaken in the thirteen years since welfare reform and its 2006 reauthorization. Part history text, readers will also learn about the details of the TANF legislation creation and evaluation, but will finish with a greater understanding of the policy creation and evaluation processes.This pocket guide will be useful to researchers and students of advanced social policy who seek to understand the two stages of policy-making, to develop policy, or to describe the impact of social policy on social problems.
Download or read book Evaluating Comprehensive State Welfare Reform written by Burt S. Barnow and published by Rockefeller Institute Press. This book was released on 2000-03-01 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The recent delegation of authority for welfare programs from the federal government to the states has stimulated increasingly complex and comprehensive reforms which seek in part to generate social messages that discourage dependency on public assistance, promote work, and influence family formation decisions. The message-sending emphasis of the new reforms and their comprehensiveness often makes them hard to evaluate through conventional experimental designs using treatment and control groups. This book offers a lucid discussion of issues involved in evaluating the new reforms, and applies those issues to the evaluation of welfare reform in one state, Wisconsin, which offers a leading example of comprehensive welfare reform. The book opens with an overview of the different types of program evaluation and summarizes clearly the basic issues that are involved in their conduct. A discussion of general evaluation strategies for the new welfare reforms, such as the selection and use of counterfactuals, is followed by consideration of both implementation and impact evaluations of the Wisconsin program. The final section considers the evaluation of specific impacts of the Wisconsin program on economic well-being, family structure, child care services, child support, child welfare, and children with disabilities.
Download or read book The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State written by Francis G. Castles and published by OUP Oxford. This book was released on 2012-09-06 with total page 907 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Oxford Handbook of the Welfare State is the authoritative and definitive guide to the contemporary welfare state. In a volume consisting of nearly fifty newly-written chapters, a broad range of the world's leading scholars offer a comprehensive account of everything one needs to know about the modern welfare state. The book is divided into eight sections. It opens with three chapters that evaluate the philosophical case for (and against) the welfare state. Surveys of the welfare state 's history and of the approaches taken to its study are followed by four extended sections, running to some thirty-five chapters in all, which offer a comprehensive and in-depth survey of our current state of knowledge across the whole range of issues that the welfare state embraces. The first of these sections looks at inputs and actors (including the roles of parties, unions, and employers), the impact of gender and religion, patterns of migration and a changing public opinion, the role of international organisations and the impact of globalisation. The next two sections cover policy inputs (in areas such as pensions, health care, disability, care of the elderly, unemployment, and labour market activation) and their outcomes (in terms of inequality and poverty, macroeconomic performance, and retrenchment). The seventh section consists of seven chapters which survey welfare state experience around the globe (and not just within the OECD). Two final chapters consider questions about the global future of the welfare state. The individual chapters of the Handbook are written in an informed but accessible way by leading researchers in their respective fields giving the reader an excellent and truly up-to-date knowledge of the area under discussion. Taken together, they constitute a comprehensive compendium of all that is best in contemporary welfare state research and a unique guide to what is happening now in this most crucial and contested area of social and political development.
Download or read book Wealth and Welfare States written by Irwin Garfinkel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2010-01-28 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Including education has profound consequences, undergirding the case for the productivity of welfare state programs and the explanation for why all rich nations have large welfare states, and identifying US welfare state leadership. From 1968 through 2006, the United States swung right politically and lost its lead in education and opportunity, failed to adopt universal health insurance and experienced the most rapid explosion of health care costs and economic inequality in the rich world. The American welfare state faces large challenges. Restoring its historical lead in education is the most important but requires investing large sums in education, beginning with universal pre-school and in complementary programs that aid children's development.
Download or read book Welfare States and the Future written by B. Vivekanandan and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-01-06 with total page 410 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume presents a thought provoking analysis of key welfare state issues engaging policy makers across the globe. It provides a unique and comprehensive evaluation of the state of welfare states- developed and developing. It maps the diversity of welfare regimes across the world and brings to fore the particularities and nuances that characterise them. The book also focuses on the on-going reforms and makes a powerful case for the increased relevance of the welfare state in a globalizing era.
Download or read book The Welfare State written by David Garland and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2016 with total page 177 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Very Short Introduction discusses the necessity of welfare states in modern capitalist societies. Situating social policy in an historical, sociological, and comparative perspective, David Garland brings a new understanding to familiar debates, policies, and institutions.
Download or read book Privatisation and the Welfare State written by Julian Le Grand and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-07-20 with total page 323 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Originally published in 1984, Privatisation and the Welfare State brings together a distinguished set of experts on the Welfare State and its main policy areas of health care, housing, education and transport. Each chapter provides some much-needed analysis of privatisation policies in areas where, too often, political rhetoric is allowed to dominate discussion. The book makes a major contribution to the reader’s understanding of the complex issues involved in this controversial area of social policy. As the first systematic evaluation of a broad range of welfare state privatisation proposals, it is essential reading for economists, social administrators, and political scientists.
Download or read book The Welfare Economics of Public Policy written by Richard E. Just and published by Edward Elgar Publishing. This book was released on 2005-01-01 with total page 706 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Welfare Economics of Public Policy is a great book that should be of interest to all economists interested in applied welfare analysis. It is a good reference book for economists studying the effects of public policy. Finally, it should be a useful textbook for students studying economic policy and applied welfare economics. Jean-Paul Chavas, American Journal of Agricultural Economics . . . a very comprehensive overview of the state of the art in welfare economics. It can be used as a teaching book for advanced students as well as a reference volume for researchers. This duality of possible uses is supported by the fact that very complex issues are presented in an easily readable manner. More technical aspects are then outlined in the appendices of the relevant chapters, offering colleagues the option to study formal considerations in more detail. . . a welcome addition to and expression of the knowledge base of agricultural economics. Stefan Mann, Journal of Agricultural Economics I am absolutely delighted that the authors have revised and republished this text. I have used the previous version for years in my graduate environmental economics course; usually I had to share the one copy I have with students and I felt it was a shame that these students did not have the opportunity to purchase the book since every serious environmental economist should have this volume on their shelf. It has been a continuous reference volume for me over the years and I am sure this is true of many others in the discipline. In the field of applied welfare analysis (spanning environmental economics, international trade, agricultural policy, etc.) there is no need for further elaboration when Just, Hueth and Schmitz is referenced. Everyone knows the book that is being referred to: the bible of applied welfare economics. Catherine Kling, Iowa State University, US For the record, I am one of the people who requested that the authors revise and re-issue their textbook. It is an extremely valuable book for applied economists; as with the previous edition, I will use it extensively in two of my courses and consult it frequently in my own research endeavors. Richard Adams, Oregon State University, US The original book is very well known in our profession and is still used in many classes. It will be wonderful to have a revised edition of this classic book. Colin Carter, University of California, Davis, US This outstanding text, a follow-up to the authors award-winning 1982 text, provides a thorough treatment of economic welfare theory and develops a complete theoretical and empirical framework for applied project and policy evaluation. The authors illustrate how this theory can be used to develop policy analysis from both theory and estimation in a variety of areas including: international trade, the economics of technological change, agricultural economics, the economics of information, environmental economics, and the economics of extractive and renewable natural resources. Building on willingness-to-pay (WTP) measures as the foundation for applied welfare economics, the authors develop measures for firms and households where households are viewed as both consumers and owner/sellers of resources. Possibilities are presented for (1) approximating WTP with consumer surplus, (2) measuring WTP exactly subject to errors in existing econometric work, and (3) using duality theory to specify econometric equations consistent with theory. Later chapters cover specific areas of welfare measurement under imperfect competition, uncertainty, incomplete information, externalities, and dynamic considerations. Applications are considered explicitly for policy issues related to information, international trade, the environment, agriculture, and other natural resource issues. The Welfare Economics of Public Policy is ideal for graduate and undergraduate courses in applied welfare economics, public policy, agricultural policy, and environmental economi
