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Mimi Abramovitz - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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the dynamics of Social Welfare policy
2003Co-Authors: Joel Blau, Mimi AbramovitzAbstract:PART I Introducing Social Welfare Policy 1 Introduction: Social Problems, Social Policy, Social Change How Are Social Problems Constructed? Who Gets to Define a Social Problem? Social Policy and Social Work Theories of Social Change Change and Social Welfare Policy: A Policy Model The Triggers of Social Change: An Overview Conclusion 2 Definition and Functions of Social Welfare Policy: Setting the Stage for Social Change Mimi Abramovitz What Is Social Welfare Policy? Broadening the Definition of Social Welfare Policy Deepening the Definition of Social Welfare Policy Competing Functions of Social Welfare Policy Overview of Major Social Welfare Programs Organizing Principles: Who Benefits from Universal or Selective Provision? PART II The Policy Model 3 The Economy and Social Welfare The Words We Use The Structure of the Economy Microeconomics Measuring the Functioning of the Economy The Terms and Tools of Economic Policy Social Welfare and the Economy in Historical Context Production for Profit versus Production for Need The Economy versus Social Welfare? Downsizing and Outsourcing Trade Unions The Minimum Wage Enron and the Corporate Scandals A New Economic Crisis 4 The Politics of Social Welfare Policy Political Science Theories: Decision Making, Definitions of Democracy, and Majority Rule Definitions of Democracy The American System of Government: Federalism U.S. Government: Its Distinctive Characteristics Divided Government The Political Functions of Social Welfare The Implications for Social Welfare Policy 5 Ideological Perspectives and Conflicts Mimi Abramovitz What Is Ideology? Social Welfare Ideology and Social Change The Ideology of Human Nature The General Welfare: Individuals in Society The Ideology of the Definition of Need The Ideology of the Role of the Government The Ideology of Work and the Work Ethic The Ideology of Family The Ideology of Racial Inequality Ideologies of Professionalism 6 Social Movements and Social Change Mimi Abramovitz Ways of Becoming Active Social Movements, Contradictions, and Social Change Theories of Social Movements From Theory to Practice: Using Ideology When Seeking Social Change 7 Social Welfare History in the United States The Ambiguities of U.S. Social Welfare History What the British Brought Social Welfare in the Colonies (1619-1783) Independence to the End of the Civil War (1783-1865) The End of the Civil War to the Progressive Era (1865-1900) The Progressive Era to the New Deal (1900-1932) The New Deal to World War II (1933-1945) Post-World War II to the Great Society (1946-1968) 1969-2008: The Conservative Response A New, New Deal? 2009-Present The Historical Patterns PART III Policy Analyses: Applying the Policy Model 8 Income Support: Programs and Policies Social Change Triggers Social Security Disability Insurance Supplemental Security Income Unemployment Insurance Benefits Temporary Assistance for Needy Families Workers' Compensation Earned Income Tax Credit General Assistance Programs Individual Development Accounts The Basic Income Grant Economics Politics Ideology Social Movements History 9 Jobs and Job Training: Programs and Policies The Context for Employment Policy Classifying Federal Job Programs Employment Training Programs: What Do We Know? Economics The Politics of Employment Programs Ideology Social Movements History 10 Housing: Programs and Policies The Context for Housing Policy Social Change Triggers The Housing Bubble Housing Programs Economics Politics Ideology Social Movements History Conclusion 11 Health Care: Programs and Policies Social Change Triggers Social Programs The Inadequacies of the U.S. Health Care System Economics Politics Ideology Social Movements History 12 Food and Hunger: Programs and Policies Definition Social Change Triggers Food Programs Classifying Food Programs: Who, What, to Whom, and at Whose Expense Economics Politics Ideology Social Movements History Conclusion PART IV Conclusions 13 If You Want to Analyze a Policy... Notes Figure Credits Index
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everyone is still on Welfare the role of redistribution in Social policy
Social Work, 2001Co-Authors: Mimi AbramovitzAbstract:Most people have an inaccurate assessment of who is "on Welfare." Two decades have passed since Social Work published the original version of this article, which applied Titmuss's framework of a three-tiered Social Welfare system and showed that nearly "everyone is on Welfare." Based on new data and a more in-depth analysis, this article re-examines who benefits from and who pays for Social, fiscal, and corporate Welfare and concludes that all three Welfare systems continue to serve and to favor the middle class, wealthy households, and large corporations. Social workers can work to transform the system from one that rewards power and privilege to one that ensures distributive justice for all. Key words: corporate Welfare; fiscal Welfare; public assistance; Social Welfare; tax redistribution Two decades have passed since Social Work published the original version of "Everyone Is on Welfare" (Abramovitz, 1983). The article appeared just as Ronald Reagan launched a historic shift in Social Welfare policy. Marked by massive Social program cuts, lower income taxes, and higher military spending, his new conservative agenda replaced postwar liberalism with hostility to Social Welfare Programs. To counter the emerging antipathy to the Welfare state, "Everyone Is on Welfare" showed that government spending benefited people from all walks of life as well as major corporations. Several trends suggest that the time is ripe to revisit this question of who is "on Welfare." First, new and improved data is available from think tanks, advocacy groups, and government agencies that regularly report on the flow of government dollars to various sectors of society. Second, if Social work students reflect the norm, few people realize that Social Welfare Programs are not limited to serving poor people. Third, heated public debates over tax cuts, devolution, Welfare reform, the privatization of Social security and Medicare, and how to spend the federal budget surplus suggest that the policies of Presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush also raise fundamental questions about who pays for and who benefits from government spending. Finally, the frequent appearance of the 1983 version of "Everyone Is on Welfare" on course syllabi and in anthologies suggests the importance of this issue to the profession. Three Welfare Systems The 1983 version of this article was based on a framework developed by the well-known British Social policy analyst, Richard M. Titmuss. According to Titmuss (1965), our techniques of Social diagnosis and our conceptual frameworks have been too narrow. We have, he stated: compartmentalized Social Welfare as we have compartmentalized the poor. The analytic model of Social policy that has been fashioned on only the phenomena that are clearly visible, direct and immediately measurable is an inadequate one. It fails to tell us about the realities of redistribution which are being generated by the processes of technological and Social change and by the combined effects of Social Welfare, fiscal Welfare and occupational Welfare. [italics added] (p. 20) Titmuss saw traditional Social Programs as the tip of the Social Welfare iceberg of a three-tiered Social Welfare system. Beneath the surface he found a "fiscal Welfare system" that offers income support to individuals and families through the tax code and an "occupational Welfare system" that offers similar aid to workers through fringe benefits. Table 1 illustrates how each of the three Welfare systems in the United States is "concerned with changing the individual and family pattern of current and future claims on resources set by the market, set by the possession of accumulated past rights and set by the allocation made by Government to provide for national defense and other non-market sectors" (Titmuss, 1965, p. 20). The Social Welfare system is administered by the Departments of Health and Human Services, Education, Housing and Urban Development; the fiscal Welfare system by the Internal Revenue Service, and the occupational Welfare system by individual firms. …
Lael R Keiser - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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state bureaucratic discretion and the administration of Social Welfare Programs the case of Social security disability
Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, 1999Co-Authors: Lael R KeiserAbstract:The impact of the bureaucracy on policy Programs through the use of discretion has been both applauded and bemoaned by scholars. By examining variation in the implementation of the Social Security Disability program in the fifty states, this article explores the impact of state level environmental characteristics on the use of discretion. Specifically this article tests whether streetlevel bureaucracies respond to local economic, political, and task factors. The case of Social Security Disability is particularly interesting because state officials have an incentive to increase the number of disability recipients since the federal government funds the entire program. The findings in the article indicate that variation in the implementation of the Social Security Disability program is a function of levels of need for benefits, the health of the economy, and state partisan politics. Taken together the findings suggest that professional norms play a large role in directing the ways that street-level bureaucrats use their discretion. The implementation of the Social Security program is not, however, apolitical. While the bureaucracy is professional, it is also responsive to local political concerns. Although street-level bureaucracies seem open to influence from political officials, they do not respond to fiscal stress on state governments nor to high levels of Social commitments. This indicates that state governments do not use the disability program strategically, but play a more indirect role by creating an environment that is ideologically more or less generous with regard to Social Welfare Programs.
Robin Kundis Craig - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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designing administrative law for adaptive management
Social Science Research Network, 2014Co-Authors: Robin Kundis Craig, J B RuhlAbstract:Administrative law needs to adapt to adaptive management. Adaptive management is a structured decision-making method the core of which is a multi-step iterative process for adjusting management measures to changing circumstances or new information about the effectiveness of prior measures or the system being managed. It has been identified as a necessary or best practices component of regulation in a broad range of fields, including drug and medical device warnings, financial system regulation, Social Welfare Programs, and natural resources management. Nevertheless, many of the agency decisions advancing these policies remain subject to the requirements of either the federal Administrative Procedure Act or the states’ parallel statutes. Adaptive management theorists have identified several features of such administrative law requirements — especially public participation, judicial review, and finality — as posing barriers to true adaptive management, but they have put forward no reform proposals. This Article represents the first effort in adaptive management theory to go beyond complaining about the handcuffs administrative law puts on adaptive management and to suggest a solution. The Article begins by explaining the theory and limits of adaptive management to emphasize that it is not appropriate for all or even most agency decision making. For its appropriate applications, however, we argue that conventional administrative law has unnecessarily shackled effective use of adaptive management. We show that the core values of administrative law can be implemented in ways that much better allow for adaptive management through a specialized “adaptive management track” of administrative procedures. Going further, we propose and explain draft model legislation that would create such a track for the specific types of agency decision making that could benefit from adaptive management.
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designing administrative law for adaptive management
Vanderbilt Law Review, 2014Co-Authors: J B Ruhl, Robin Kundis CraigAbstract:Administrative law needs to adapt to adaptive management. Adaptive management is a structured decisionmaking method, the core of which is a multistep, iterative process for adjusting management measures to changing circumstances or new information about the effectiveness of prior measures or the system being managed. It has been identified as a necessary or best- practices component of regulation in a broad range of fields, including drug and medical-device warnings, financial system regulation, Social Welfare Programs, and natural resources management. Nevertheless, many of the agency decisions advancing these policies remain subject to the requirements of either the federal Administrative Procedure Act or the states' parallel statutes. Adaptive management theorists have identified several features of such administrative law requirements-especially public participation, judicial review, and finality-as posing barriers to true adaptive management, but they have put forward no proposals for reform.This Article represents the first effort in adaptive management theory to go beyond complaining about the handcuffs administrative law puts on adaptive management and to suggest a solution. The Article begins by explaining the theory and limits of adaptive management to emphasize that it is not appropriate for all, or even most, agency decisionmaking. For appropriate applications, however, we argue that conventional administrative law has unnecessarily shackled effective use of adaptive management. We show that through a specialized "adaptive management track" of administrative procedures, the core values of administrative law can be implemented in ways that much better allow for adaptive management. Going further, we propose and explain draft model legislation that would create such a track for the specific types of agency decisionmaking that could benefit from adaptive management.The administrative style that has characterized American public law from the New Deal to the 1980s has been out of favor in recent years.-Charles Sabel and William Simon1I. INTRODUCTIONIn the never-ending project to build a better regulatory state mousetrap, two of the most seductive reinvention models to emerge over the past few decades have been market-based regulation2 and adaptive management.3 Representative of two broad and opposing thrusts of regulatory reform, one advocating "minimalism"4 and the other "experimentalism,"5 market-based regulation and adaptive management originate from the same premise but move in starkly different directions. This Article examines the path that adaptive management has taken and proposes how to steer it out of a dead end by changing the inner workings of administrative law.The starting point for both regulatory reform models is the depiction of administrative agencies as having become boxed into a decisionmaking process that depends heavily on a culture of comprehensive rational planning and prescriptive regulation.6 The dominant decisionmaking method used to implement this regime relies heavily on two related attributes: (1) the use of "front-end" analytical tools comprehensively conducted and concluded prior to finalizing the decision, and (2) the assumption of a robust capacity to predict and assess the market and nonmarket impacts of any proposed action.7 However, this approach constrains agency flexibility by demanding hyperdetailed predecisional impact assessments, intense public participation during the decisionmaking process, and postdecision hard look judicial review.8 The combined effect of this procedural gauntlet, codified in large part through the federal Administrative Procedure Act ("APA")9 and its state counterparts, has been to channel self-preserving agencies into cramming all that could possibly be thought or dreamed about actions they carry out, fund, or authorize into single-shot, all-encompassing decision extravaganzas. Especially in rulemaking, this impetus toward up-front comprehensiveness strongly encourages agencies to steamroll their decisions through public-comment scrutiny and judicial review litigation and then never look back. …
J B Ruhl - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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designing administrative law for adaptive management
Social Science Research Network, 2014Co-Authors: Robin Kundis Craig, J B RuhlAbstract:Administrative law needs to adapt to adaptive management. Adaptive management is a structured decision-making method the core of which is a multi-step iterative process for adjusting management measures to changing circumstances or new information about the effectiveness of prior measures or the system being managed. It has been identified as a necessary or best practices component of regulation in a broad range of fields, including drug and medical device warnings, financial system regulation, Social Welfare Programs, and natural resources management. Nevertheless, many of the agency decisions advancing these policies remain subject to the requirements of either the federal Administrative Procedure Act or the states’ parallel statutes. Adaptive management theorists have identified several features of such administrative law requirements — especially public participation, judicial review, and finality — as posing barriers to true adaptive management, but they have put forward no reform proposals. This Article represents the first effort in adaptive management theory to go beyond complaining about the handcuffs administrative law puts on adaptive management and to suggest a solution. The Article begins by explaining the theory and limits of adaptive management to emphasize that it is not appropriate for all or even most agency decision making. For its appropriate applications, however, we argue that conventional administrative law has unnecessarily shackled effective use of adaptive management. We show that the core values of administrative law can be implemented in ways that much better allow for adaptive management through a specialized “adaptive management track” of administrative procedures. Going further, we propose and explain draft model legislation that would create such a track for the specific types of agency decision making that could benefit from adaptive management.
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designing administrative law for adaptive management
Vanderbilt Law Review, 2014Co-Authors: J B Ruhl, Robin Kundis CraigAbstract:Administrative law needs to adapt to adaptive management. Adaptive management is a structured decisionmaking method, the core of which is a multistep, iterative process for adjusting management measures to changing circumstances or new information about the effectiveness of prior measures or the system being managed. It has been identified as a necessary or best- practices component of regulation in a broad range of fields, including drug and medical-device warnings, financial system regulation, Social Welfare Programs, and natural resources management. Nevertheless, many of the agency decisions advancing these policies remain subject to the requirements of either the federal Administrative Procedure Act or the states' parallel statutes. Adaptive management theorists have identified several features of such administrative law requirements-especially public participation, judicial review, and finality-as posing barriers to true adaptive management, but they have put forward no proposals for reform.This Article represents the first effort in adaptive management theory to go beyond complaining about the handcuffs administrative law puts on adaptive management and to suggest a solution. The Article begins by explaining the theory and limits of adaptive management to emphasize that it is not appropriate for all, or even most, agency decisionmaking. For appropriate applications, however, we argue that conventional administrative law has unnecessarily shackled effective use of adaptive management. We show that through a specialized "adaptive management track" of administrative procedures, the core values of administrative law can be implemented in ways that much better allow for adaptive management. Going further, we propose and explain draft model legislation that would create such a track for the specific types of agency decisionmaking that could benefit from adaptive management.The administrative style that has characterized American public law from the New Deal to the 1980s has been out of favor in recent years.-Charles Sabel and William Simon1I. INTRODUCTIONIn the never-ending project to build a better regulatory state mousetrap, two of the most seductive reinvention models to emerge over the past few decades have been market-based regulation2 and adaptive management.3 Representative of two broad and opposing thrusts of regulatory reform, one advocating "minimalism"4 and the other "experimentalism,"5 market-based regulation and adaptive management originate from the same premise but move in starkly different directions. This Article examines the path that adaptive management has taken and proposes how to steer it out of a dead end by changing the inner workings of administrative law.The starting point for both regulatory reform models is the depiction of administrative agencies as having become boxed into a decisionmaking process that depends heavily on a culture of comprehensive rational planning and prescriptive regulation.6 The dominant decisionmaking method used to implement this regime relies heavily on two related attributes: (1) the use of "front-end" analytical tools comprehensively conducted and concluded prior to finalizing the decision, and (2) the assumption of a robust capacity to predict and assess the market and nonmarket impacts of any proposed action.7 However, this approach constrains agency flexibility by demanding hyperdetailed predecisional impact assessments, intense public participation during the decisionmaking process, and postdecision hard look judicial review.8 The combined effect of this procedural gauntlet, codified in large part through the federal Administrative Procedure Act ("APA")9 and its state counterparts, has been to channel self-preserving agencies into cramming all that could possibly be thought or dreamed about actions they carry out, fund, or authorize into single-shot, all-encompassing decision extravaganzas. Especially in rulemaking, this impetus toward up-front comprehensiveness strongly encourages agencies to steamroll their decisions through public-comment scrutiny and judicial review litigation and then never look back. …
Evangelos Koutronas - One of the best experts on this subject based on the ideXlab platform.
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the basic manual of Social security theory and evaluation
Social Science Research Network, 2018Co-Authors: Mario Arturo Ruiz Estrada, Evangelos KoutronasAbstract:This monograph is divided into ten chapters. The first chapter presents a general description of each chapter respectively. The second chapter introduces the basic principles of Social security. Its objective is rather to provide a brief outline of the concepts and the principles as well as the description of the established institutional framework. In particular, it presents the institutional structure of Social security as well as its basic blueprint along with its recent developments. The taxonomy of pension arrangements is presented by giving emphasis on its legal status, format, type of arrangement, and type of coverage. The third chapter places the development of Social security in a historical context. A particular emphasis is given to the history of European Social security systems, which shaped Social security systems worldwide. To complement the historical analysis, this chapter introduces the theoretical approaches and concepts have emerged in the Social security field. The traditional classification of Welfare states is being addressed through a path-dependency perspective. Finally, the Welfare states are described briefly under cultural, Social, economic, and political prism, pinpointing their deficiencies and mapping their patterns. The fourth chapter examines the evolution of Social security research from a theoretical and empirical perspective. This is done through an extensive review and analysis of publications from the Journal of International Social Security Review published by Wiley within a 50-year period (1967-2017). It was observed that at a different period in time, the Social security research focused on different national and international issues that invoked different Social Welfare Programs and pension systems approach (public or private) to facilitate the explanation of its final socio-economic impact into different Social groups in the same country or region respectively. The fifth chapter explores the concept of pensionomics as a prospective tool for pension evaluation. This chapter suggests a paradigm shift: a multidisciplinary synthesis of differing perspectives in evaluating pension overall performance based on past work on pension evaluation, incorporating non-economic variables with significant impact on economic growth and Social development. This chapter suggests a new analytical tool called “Pensions Consistency (PC) Index” that identifies the level of consistency as well as the strengths and weaknesses within any pension system. The new conceptual framework focuses on building inter-sectoral and holistic policies able to respond to the new multidimensional dynamic environment. The sixth chapter examines the impact of Welfare reforms on the sustainability of public pension schemes. This chapter reviewed past and current literature and practices of various countries to evaluate the effectiveness of reforms used from the aspect of structural and systemic parameters focusing on sustainability and distributive impartiality. This theoretical review concludes that there is no ideal pension scheme but there are reforms that have shown to be beneficial to the sustainability and distributive impartiality of pension systems and such reforms should be applied in combination to suit the economic dynamism of each individual country. The seventh chapter formulates an analytical framework to analyze whether pension growth can be a determinant of economic growth. The Pension Scheme Performance Evaluation Model (PSPE-Model) intends to study the performance of pension schemes from a macroeconomic perspective. The PSPE-Model tests whether the marginal optimum national pension system coverage critical point based on the national productivity growth performance is simultaneously determined by the efficient coordination of private and public pension system Programs coverage and the national productivity level. The model investigates the marginal optim The eighth chapter explores how inflation and the exchange rate can affect the real value of any pension plan system in the long run. In our case, we focus on the specific pension plan system of the Employees Provident Fund (EPF). Nonetheless, we use a new model that is entitled “The EPF Real Value Box –EPFRV Box”. The EPFRV Box facilitates the graphical visualization of the inflation/exchange rate impact on the Employees Provident Fund (EPF). In essence, the EPFRV Box is applied to the Employees Provident Fund (EPF) of Malaysia to evaluate the impact of inflation and exchange rates on the Malaysian EPF real value from 1980 to 2030. Finally, the main objective is to apply the EPFRV Box to extend the significance of the impact of inflation and the exchange rate on any pension plan system (in this case EPF) beyond mere theory, using them as practical instruments to solve retirement and pensioner’s problems. The ninth chapter formulates a comprehensive pension fund framework for enhancing system capacity to manage economic and Social risks. The National Social Protection Fund (NSPF) attempts to quantify the informal sector, incorporated under a unified national protection scheme. The new protection mechanism consists of two sub-funds: The National Integral Social Security Fund (NISSF) and the National Education Fund (NEF). NISSF encompasses all economically active Malaysian population, including the informal workforce, whereas the NSPF captures the economically inactive young population. Simulation findings indicate that education, health, and income redistribution can improve the livelihood of the vulnerable population groups in Malaysia. Finally, the tenth chapter proposes a new model based on a group of indicators to evaluate the Social security plans performance of ASEAN-members (Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, and the Philippines). The first section presents a general review of all possible indicators applies in the evaluation of Social security plans performance. Secondly, we present a new indicator, “The Social Security Plans Performance Index (SSPP-Index)” is intended to offer policymakers and researchers an additional analytical tool to study the coverage, efficiency, effectiveness, trend, and future of any Social security plan as a whole. The SSPP-Index can be applied to the study of any Social security plan and not constrained by geographical area or development stage of the Social security plan on the study. The SSPP-Index is a simple and flexible indicator. The third section summarizes the results on the ASEAN-Members Social security plans performance under the application of the SSPP-Index.