1 / 9

Social Policy

Social Policy. Programs to cushion risk, provide citizens with security from market Social insurance: largest part of welfare state Age, ill health, unemployment, death of spouse Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment insurance, Worker’s compensation

posy
Télécharger la présentation

Social Policy

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Social Policy • Programs to cushion risk, provide citizens with security from market • Social insurance: largest part of welfare state • Age, ill health, unemployment, death of spouse • Social Security, Medicare, Unemployment insurance, Worker’s compensation • Benefits working middle class; contributions workers make in form of payroll taxes; “deserving”; benefits keep up with cost of living (indexed) • Public assistance programs • Selective and means-tested; eligible to those whose income/wealth below set limit; not indexed; more controversial • Food stamps, housing assistance, child welfare • Education • Private welfare state; relatively large • Health insurance, pensions from employer • Government subsidizes through tax code, exemptions • More inequitable than government programs in who benefits and by how much • Spending on social insurance, public assistance programs, and state-subsidized private welfare has expanded dramatically since WWII • Still comparatively small (Figure 10.1) • Americans enjoy fewer and less general social rights (e.g., right to health care)

  2. Historical Welfare State • Early American welfare state extended social protection to veteran soldiers and mothers (following Civil War) • (1880-1910) ¼ of federal budget spent on pensions for Civil War veterans and dependents • Later “maternalist” welfare state developed aimed at promoting motherhood • Product of Progressive Era • Provided income assistance to single, poor mothers who had to prove “worthiness”; contingent on behavior of mothers • Price of accepting mothers’ pensions was state regulation over lives of women to ensure they conformed to traditional gender roles (i.e., full-time child-centered domesticity) • Unwed mothers often excluded • Many states and localities excluded black mothers (especially in South) • Example of how roles (gender and race) inscribed in social policy

  3. New Deal and Beyond • Most dramatic expansion of welfare state (Great Depression) • Staggering unemployment (1/4 workforce jobless); Unemployment  poverty and despair; political action prompted FDR administration to offer federally funded jobs and social welfare • Social reform to address unrest and keep market economy (capitalism) functioning; resisted by corporate community • Social Security Act (1935) • Pensions and unemployment compensation for workers; public assistance to elderly and blind; for poor, single mothers -- Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) • Reinforced conservative nature of welfare state • Continued tradition of localism (states set benefit levels and eligibility requirements) • Benefits set quite low • Institutionalized distinction between “deserving” and “undeserving”; social assistance programs (financed through payroll taxes) vs. public assistance programs (financed through general fund) • Reinforced gender inequalities (men more likely to qualify for social insurance) • Profound racial content (advantaged whites and excluded African Americans); clear example, GI Bill • Fair Labor Standards Act (1938) established minimum wage and 40 hour work week

  4. New Deal and Beyond, cont. • WWII halted social reform • After war, resurgent business community and conservative Congress resisted new initiatives; supporters put on defensive • (1946) Full employment policy, (1949) National Health Insurance bill, Truman’s Fair Deal (extending New Deal) all defeated • Unions, liberals used collective bargaining to gain pensions, health insurance, unemployment protection  private welfare system • Employer-based benefits made workers dependent for social protection (health insurance, pensions) on firms; tied workers to employers • Divided workers from each other = workers in corporate sector had less stake in improving, expanding programs for other workers and poor • Businesses offered tax incentives to subsidize employer-based welfare plans • Limited public benefits encouraged reliance on private, corporate welfare plans • Private plans act as brake on further extension of public welfare state • New Deal did not go forward under Truman or back under Eisenhower

  5. New Poverty • (1960s) Increasing numbers living in poverty despite booming economy • Poor African Americans in urban ghettos • Faced greater discrimination than earlier groups of immigrants • Postindustrial economy  increasing importance of education, skills; factories relocated to suburbs; service sector jobs don’t pay living wage • Women • (present) 1/3 of all female-headed households in poverty; ½ of all families in poverty • Women earn lower wages; some need to stay home to care for children • Children • (present) poverty rate among children around 20%; 3x’s higher than in Europe • Welfare state generationally skewed (most benefits flow to elderly through expensive programs like Medicare and Social Security) • Poverty today • Good and bad jobs growing in postindustrial economy at expense of blue collar jobs in middle • Service sector characterized by low wages, no benefits, irregular employment • Value of federal minimum wage has declined (Table 10.1) • See page 331, Responsibility for Poverty: What Do You Think?

  6. Great Society Program • Last serious effort to address poverty, Johnson (1964) •  democratic electoral victory overcame conservative coalition (Republicans and Southern Democrats) and mobilized protests of civil rights movement • Johnson declared a War on Poverty (Great Society, free of hunger and privation, in State of the Union, 1964) • Government assumed new responsibilities • Federally funded health insurance (Medicare and Medicaid) for aged and poor; New educational opportunities for disadvantaged (Head Start, Upward Bound); Job-training programs (Job Corps); Housing and urban development programs (Model Cities) • Goal  enhance opportunities for poor; federal welfare expenditures nearly doubled (1965-1975) • Short-lived reform period; undermined by unrest and war in Vietnam • Many conservatives thought War on Poverty failed, harmful • Great Society created backlash = polarized electorate along social insurance/ public assistance and race lines • Politicians exploited tensions using “welfare” as code word to appeal to some voters’ fears over crime, taxes, morality, and race; recoil reached peak during Reagan administration (1981-89) • War on poverty: successes • Reduced poverty rate from 19% (1964) to 12% (1979); number living below poverty line declined until Reagan • Government income-support programs biggest factor in decline  reduced malnutrition, increased access to medical care, improved housing, opened educational opportunities

  7. Reagan to Clinton • Reagan partially successful in reducing size, scope of welfare state • Slowed spending; slashed Great Society programs • Left New Deal social insurance programs intact • Put welfare state on defensive; conservatives now set terms of debate over social policy • Problem of poverty = increasing poor’s resources  changing the poor’s behavior; blaming circumstances on inadequacies of economy  perverse incentives of welfare state • Clinton’s social policy turned on large federal deficit and conservative definition of welfare problem (public assistance undermined character of the poor) • Abandoned campaign promise to invest in domestic programs to reassure financial markets he was serious about cutting federal deficit • Supported welfare “reform” with Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) (1996) • Replaced AFDC with Temporary Assistance to Needy Families (TANF) • States got fixed sums in form of block grants; Two year limits; lifetime limit of 5 years • Welfare rolls declined starting in 1993 with resurgent economy • Grew again in wake of 2008 Great Recession

  8. Bush to Obama • Expanded federal role in public education • No Child Left Behind (NCLB) (2002) enacted with aim of closing achievement gap between economically and racially advantaged and disadvantaged schoolchildren; increasingly controversial due to lack of funding • Bush supported Medicare Part D (Medicare Prescription Drug, Improvement, and Modernization Act, 2004); provides prescription drug coverage to all Medicare recipients • Supported by pharmaceutical manufacturers (who lobbied for no price controls, price regulation, and government negotiation with drug manufacturers to secure lower prices) • Increased spending on children’s health (started by Clinton, expanded by Obama) • State Children’s Health Insurance Plan (SCHIP) expanded federal Medicaid spending so states could provide health insurance to children whose families met income requirements • Obama signed Children’s Health Insurance Program Reauthorization Act (2009) • With Medicare Part D, SCHIP, increases in Medicare and Medicaid, health became fastest growing are of welfare state • US at top in expenditures on health (Figure 10.2) • Obama supported Affordable Health Care Act (AHCA) (2010) • Employers (more than 50 workers) must provide affordable insurance; individuals required to carry health insurance (low income eligible for Medicaid; subsidies on sliding scale); state-based insurance marketplaces called exchanges; insurers no longer able to deny applicants coverage based on health status, impose lifetime limits; improved medicare prescription drug benefit; children can remain on parent’s policies until 26 • Hugely controversial; prompted massive lobbying campaign by pharmaceutical industry and health insurance companies; successfully blocked public insurance option

  9. Conclusion • Conservative = stabilizes corporate capitalist system; alleviates but does not correct basic structural inequalities; reinforces market by making inequalities and insecurities tolerable • Egalitarian = offers more egalitarian alternative to market; can improve workers’ standards of living making them less dependent on wages, thus reducing power of employers; can spread to other activities, progressively infringing on areas operated on market principles and ability to pay • US welfare system exhibits both = extended protections to vulnerable groups, but in ways that reinforce divisions between workers and the poor, whites and blacks, men and women • Uncertain future; parts under strain (including Medicare, Social Security) • Question of poverty: economic growth alone cannot reduce poverty; only government programs in tandem with successful economy • Goals of welfare state(?): support private economy to increase economic growth; compensate for inequalities generated by political economy; provide security against inevitable and probable hazards; enhance and equalize opportunities; ensure that income and wealth gaps are reduced…what do you think?

More Related