Download or read book Germany s 2005 Welfare Reform written by Thomas Walter and published by Springer Science & Business Media. This book was released on 2012-08-28 with total page 269 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In January 2005, the German government enacted a substantial reform of the welfare system, the so-called “Hartz IV reform”. This book evaluates key characteristics of the reform from a microeconometric perspective. It investigates whether a centralized or decentralized organization of welfare administration is more successful to integrate welfare recipients into employment. Moreover, it analyzes the employment effects of an intensified use of benefit sanctions and evaluates the effectiveness and efficiency of the most frequently assigned Active Labor Market Programs. The analyses have a focus on immigrants, who are highly over-represented in the German welfare system.
Download or read book Welfare Reform written by Jeff GROGGER and published by Harvard University Press. This book was released on 2009-06-30 with total page 352 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Welfare Reform, Jeffrey Grogger and Lynn Karoly assemble evidence from numerous studies to assess how welfare reform has affected behavior. To broaden our understanding of this wide-ranging policy reform, the authors evaluate the evidence in relation to an economic model of behavior.
Download or read book Restructuring the German Welfare State Health Care Policy and Reform in Germany written by Christiane Landsiedel and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2005-04-04 with total page 22 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Seminar paper from the year 2005 in the subject Sociology - Politics, Majorities, Minorities, grade: A, University of Dalarna (Political Sociology), course: Restructuring the Welfare State, language: English, abstract: As health care is among the most personal issues, this is one reason why it is also among the most politically discussed as cost containment has become a priority of health care policy. Health care has consumed a large and growing portion of social spending in all advanced industrialised societies, particularly in the last decade. This cost explosion coincided with the global economic slowdown and worries about the fiscal viability of the welfare state. Reasons for escalating health care costs are, although to varying degrees, common to Western countries. The health care sector provides fertile ground for technological innovations that may prolong life but at considerable expense. Moreover, once these discoveries are made, it is extremely difficult for insurers or governments to limit their provision, as patients demand access to these treatments. Furthermore, the aging population of Western countries has direct consequences for health care because older persons are more likely to be in need of cost intensive treatment and/or care due to acute illness or chronic conditions. At the same time, birth rates are no longer balanced with increasing longevity, so that there will be fewer working age persons in the future to bear the financial requirements for elderly care. Governments and employers claimed that health care costs posed immediate and longterm problems and began to search for ways to address them. The ‘new politics of the welfare state’ – Pierson’s (1996) famous concept, which deals with welfare state reform in the face of changing demographic and tougher economic conditions – has also modified the position of diverse welfare state stakeholders. The actions and preferences of payers and the state are determined by the prevailing health care system as well as by the political system and whether it provides them an opportunity to influence health policies.
Download or read book The German Welfare State and Globalisation The Social Construction of Path Dependency written by Matthias Mayer and published by GRIN Verlag. This book was released on 2006-08-13 with total page 48 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Thesis (M.A.) from the year 2005 in the subject Politics - Political Systems - Germany, grade: sehr gut, London School of Economics, language: English, abstract: Economic globalisation seems to have intensified the claims that an extensive national welfare state is no longer sustainable under high exposure to global competition. However, the evidence for significant welfare dismantlement in Germany is missing. In this dissertation, I endeavour to analyse, why globalisation does not seem to have had any significant impact on the German welfare state in terms of serious downwards reform. I contend that the actual impact of economic globalisation on the national welfare state depends a great deal, on how it is interpreted domestically. Hence, I would like to regard the impact of globalisation not only as an exogenous force, but also as a result of what national policy makers, media, electorate, etc. interpret it to entail. In other words, although globalisation really seems to strain existing welfare structures, policy makers still have a considerable scope how to react to these pressures. For my endeavour, I introduce a historical institutionalist framework of path-dependency, which I confront with a social constructivist framework. Prima facie, the path-dependency theorem seems to hold for the German welfare state. However, I claim that a social constructivist angle is able to illuminate how the institutional constraints propagated by the path-dependency thesis can be overcome. Institutional constraints continue to impede welfare reform in German only because the German political elite failed to socially construct the imperative of reform in public discourse, leaving the great majority of the German population unwilling to accept fundamental cutbacks in social benefits. I argue that the Schröder administration attempted to legitimise cutbacks in social services through referring to exogenous pressures of globalisation. In addition, the media discusses the increased need for welfare state reform in the context of globalisation. Although, there seems to be a trend of mounting acceptance of welfare reform among the German population, the general level for support of such measures remains low. I attempt to show that the notion of globalisation on its own appears unable socially construct the public acceptance of serious welfare state reform. Hence, the most likely scenario for the near future of the German welfare state seems the absence of reform until the prolonged economic crisis legitimises significant transformations of the current system.
Download or read book The Politics of Work Family Policy Reforms in Germany and Italy written by Agnes Blome and published by Taylor & Francis. This book was released on 2016-11-25 with total page 270 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One of the fundamental challenges facing modern welfare states is the question of work-family reconciliation. An increasing share of mothers work, but many European welfare states do not adequately support the dual-earner model, especially in southern Europe. After 2005, German policy-makers transformed the nature of Germany’s family policy regime through a number of legislative measures, whilst Italy, a country with many similarities, witnessed little change. Using a multi-methods approach, this book addresses the puzzle of why Germany was able to implement far-reaching reforms in this policy area after a long impasse and Italy was not. As such, it delivers a broad, systematic account of these reforms and sheds light on why similar reforms were not also adopted in other similar welfare states at the same time. More generally, it contributes to understanding the determinants of welfare policy change in modern European welfare states. This text will be of key interest to scholars, students and professionals working on topics linked to European politics, welfare and work-family policies, comparative politics, social policy, and more broadly to political science and gender studies.
Download or read book Institutions Ideas and Learning in Welfare State Change written by T. Fleckenstein and published by Springer. This book was released on 2011-02-18 with total page 247 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Investigates the transformation of German labour market policy, showing that Germany has departed from the conservative-corporatist path of welfare, especially with the Hartz Legislation of the Red-Green government.
Download or read book Ideas and Welfare State Reform in Western Europe written by P. Taylor-Gooby and published by Springer. This book was released on 2005-08-02 with total page 195 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The new welfare settlement in Europe involves a re-direction of policy in the context of a unified market and currency system and of more stringent economic competition. Realignment of the policy assumptions and goals of the key actors is central to this process. This book reviews the main policy paradigms and analyzes the processes whereby they have changed in the most salient policy areas, and is based on recent interviews with more than two hundred and fifty senior policy actors in seven West European countries.
Download or read book The Politics of Welfare State Transformation in Germany written by Christof Schiller and published by Routledge Studies in the Polit. This book was released on 2016 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: 6 From conservatism toward a new work-first model -- Part III Three policy-making episodes in German labor market policy -- 7 Dualization and drift by consensus 1980-1992 -- 8 Symbolic adjustment through institutional layering 1993-2000 -- 9 Conversion and displacement through active policy making 2001-2010 -- 10 Conclusion: the role of the state in welfare state reform (research) -- References -- Index
Download or read book Converging Worlds of Welfare written by Jochen Clasen and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2011-05-26 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This volume reviews and compares welfare policy change in the UK and Germany. It focuses on family policy, pensions, and the labour market, and covers both public provision as well as the role of company-based social protection.
Download or read book Do German Welfare to Work Programmes Reduce Welfare and Increase Work written by Martin Huber and published by . This book was released on 2009 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Many Western economies have reformed their welfare systems with the aim of activating welfare recipients by increasing welfare-to-work programmes and job search enforcement. We evaluate the three most important German welfare-to-work programmes implemented after a major reform in January 2005 (quot;Hartz IVquot;). Our analysis is based on a unique combination of large scale survey and administrative data that is unusually rich with respect to individual, household, agency level, and regional information. We use this richness to allow for a selection-on-observables approach when doing the econometric evaluation. We find that short-term training programmes on average increase their participants' employment perspectives and that all programmes induce further programme participation. We also show that there is considerable effect heterogeneity across different subgroups of participants that could be exploited to improve the allocation of welfare recipients to the specific programmes and thus increase overall programme effectiveness.
Download or read book Macroeconomic Evaluation of Labor Market Reform in Germany written by Mr.Tom Krebs and published by International Monetary Fund. This book was released on 2013-02-13 with total page 42 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 2005 the German government implemented the so-called Hartz IV reform, which amounted to a complete overhaul of the German unemployment insurance system and resulted in a significant reduction in unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed. In this paper, we use an incomplete-market model with search unemployment to evaluate the macro-economic and welfare effects of the Hartz IV reform. We calibrate the model economy to German data before the reform and then use the calibrated model economy to simulate the effects of Hartz IV. In our baseline calibration, we find that the reform has reduced the long-run (noncyclical) unemployment rate in Germany by 1.4 percentage points. We also find that the welfare of employed households increases, but the welfare of unemployed households decreases even with moderate degree of risk aversion.
Download or read book Ideational Leadership in German Welfare State Reform written by Sabina Stiller and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2010 with total page 255 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author of this study argues that key politicians and their policy ideas, through "ideational leadership," have played an important role in the passing of structural reforms in the change-resistant German welfare state.
Download or read book The Politics of Welfare State Reform in Continental Europe written by Silja Häusermann and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2010-03-15 with total page 305 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book demonstrates that political exchange and coalition building have become the key ingredients for continental European pension reform.
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 Reform of Bismarckian Pension Systems written by Martin Schludi and published by Amsterdam University Press. This book was released on 2005 with total page 312 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Offers an analysis of the political process involved in the reform of the pension systems in European countries.
Download or read book Reforming the Welfare State written by Richard B. Freeman and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2010-04-15 with total page 350 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Over the course of the twentieth century, Sweden carried out one of the most ambitious experiments by a capitalist market economy in developing a large and active welfare state. Sweden's generous social programs and the economic equality they fostered became an example for other countries to emulate. Of late, Sweden has also been much discussed as a model of how to deal with financial and economic crisis, due to the country's recovery from a banking crisis in the mid-1990s. At that time economists heatedly debated whether the welfare state caused Sweden's crisis and should be reformed—a debate with clear parallels to current concerns over capitalism. Bringing together leading economists, Reforming the Welfare State examines Sweden's policies in response to the mid-1990s crisis and the implications for the subsequent recovery. Among the issues investigated are the way changes in the labor market, tax and benefit policies, local government policy, industrial structure, and international trade affected Sweden's recovery. The way that Sweden addressed its economic challenges provides valuable insight into the viability of large welfare states, and more broadly, into the way modern economies deal with crisis.
Download or read book Policy Change Public Attitudes and Social Citizenship written by Humpage, Louise and published by Policy Press. This book was released on 2014-11-05 with total page 300 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Neoliberal reforms have seen a radical shift in government thinking about social citizenship rights around the world. But have they had a similarly significant impact on public support for these rights? This unique book traces public views on social citizenship across three decades through attitudinal data from New Zealand, the United Kingdom and Australia. It argues that support for some aspects of social citizenship diminished more significantly under some political regimes than others, and that limited public resistance following the financial crisis of 2008-2009 further suggests the public ‘rolled over’ and accepted these neoliberal values. Yet attitudinal variances across different policy areas challenge the idea of an omnipotent neoliberalism, providing food for thought for academics, students and advocates wishing to galvanise support for social citizenship in the 21st century.
