Barbara R. Bergmann (American University, USA)
E-mail: bberg@american.edu
The Still Unsolved Problem of Single Motherhood
|
|
The increasing proportion of mothers without spouses or partners points to the need to aim in the longer run for a sensible and humane public policy that would allow this part of the population and their children to escape deprivation. Society, while continuing to discourage unwise reproductive behavior, should cease allowing lone mothers and their children to have a standard of living markedly lower than that of two-parent families. Support of lone mothers conditional on their refraining from paid work creates resentment against them and tends to be destructive of gender equality. Government provision of aid for lone mothers should be accomplished by programs not exclusive to them,but open to all members of the population, possibly on a means-tested basis. This would involve considerable expansion of already-existing programs that provide certain expensive servicesâ€"health insurance, child care, post-secondary education, housing subsidies. Proposals that have been made for large-scale cash payments to all, such as basic income grants or endowments of capital sums, should be opposed because such programs would not suffice to meet the needs of single mothers and their children for such expensive services and would consume government resources that could finance them.
|
Dana L. Brown (Massachusetts Institute of Technology, United States)
E-mail: dlbrown@mit.edu
What's Left for the Postcommunist Left? Ideological Influences on Unemployment Policies in Central-Eastern Europe
|
Whether the left can any longer offer a distinct and coherent set of social policies is one of the most pressing questions of our time. This question arises from trends related to globalization and post-industrialism that appear to be narrowing the possible paths of welfare reform in modern economies. CEE countries are no less affected by these trends than their counterparts in the west, and have been even more pressured to quickly adjust their welfare policies. This paper argues that CEE countries are most-likely cases for the blurring of ideology in welfare debates, and then asks whether this has indeed occurred.
To examine whether the left has been able to offer a unique vision of welfare in CEE countries, I study debates over and changes to unemployment policy between 1990 and 2002 in the Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland. I argue that in these countries the left has promoted different solutions to labour market issues than the right, relying more on state intervention and less on the market. Although the left has not embraced traditional social democratic agendas or promoted radically distinct visions, its choices provide some lessons about the left's possibilities in contemporary welfare debates.
|
Thomas E. Chamberlain (USA)
E-mail: tomchamb@ix.netcom.com
Does Uneven Expected Risk Promote Poverty and Instability?
|
The present contribution, previously given at the WEAI Pacific Rim Conference (Taipei, 2003 January) and scheduled for the 57th International Atlantic Economics Conference (Lisbon, 2004 March), shows how competitive risks attending free trade and commercial interaction in general cause the relatively disadvantaged to withhold investment in material and human (education/skills) capital, thereby further dividing the world between rich and poor. This conclusion, already recognized in economics (see Stiglitz, 2002) is supported by a derived parametric relationship, using a substantive instant-utility methodology, that relates decreasing capital-intensity to increasing expected investment-risk. Because the instant utility approach and methodology is similar to that of the natural
sciences (physical sciences, in particular), an overall conciliense between the two great branches--human science and natural science-becomes possible. This, in turn, leads to an integration with the theories of justice and ethics, and suggests a new direction for domestic and international economic policies. While the instant utility approach recommends important changes in positive and normative socioeconomics, it is understood that neoclassical economics is accommodated and not "overthrown," and that the "Washington Consensus" for advancing developing nations is refined rather than negated.
|
Geoff Fougere (University of Canterbury, New Zealand)
E-mail: geoff.fougere@canterbury.ac.nz
'Experimentalism' Made Public? Emerging Regimes of Health Sector Governance in New Zealand
|
|
As a rapidly growing body of research attests, innovative forms of governance combining vertical co-ordination with horizontal experimentalism among locales are emerging in a variety of contexts within and among OECD welfare states. If one pressing question is a better understanding of how and why such institutional forms emerge, a second is to explore their varied capacities for policy making. This paper explores one such case - the emergence of a new, 'experimentalist' regime in the New Zealand health sector. It shows how the regime emerges on the back of successive waves of first quasi market and then state centralising reforms. It then outlines a research agenda for exploring how the new and still unfolding regime works in practice together with some preliminary indications of what it may accomplish.
|
Mark Freeland (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, USA)
E-mail: mfreeland@cms.hhs.gov
Longterm Projections of National Health Spending Relative to GDP: Implications from Socio-Economics
|
|
The Medicare Modernization Act of 2003 requires that 75 year projections of Medicare for the Annual Report of Medicare Trustees include comparisons with total national health expenditures, private health costs and GDP. The concepts and analyses of Amitai Etzioni, Richard Thaler, Daniel Kahneman, George Lowenstein, Robert Frank, Thomas Rice, and Uwe Reinhardt, among others, are used to frame longterm projection issues and methodological approaches. An interdisciplinary approach is taken with contributions from actuarial science, economics, and operations research. Alternative scenarios and sensitivity analyses are used extensively. Multiple approaches and models are used including actuarial models, econometric models, input/output models, and dynamic computable general equilibrium models. Professional judgement is used to supplement and complement the technical models for relevant omitted variables in a manner analogous to that used by private sector forecasters of the GDP. Consumption and production of health care are projected within a GDP framework that highlights the tradeoffs with consumption and production of nonhealth goods and services. The roles of new medical technological/biomedial innovations and diffusion are given special attention.
|
Scott L. Greer (University College London, UK)
E-mail: s.greer@ucl.ac.uk
Stealth Europeanisation: Why European Governments Cannot Defend Their Health Systems from Integration
|
It is common to study the development of a "European" welfare state by looking at explicit policy addressing a policy area, and by that standard health policy is one of the least Europeanised aspects of the welfare state. Health has long been defended by national governments against an EU role and to this day health policy debates tend to ignore the importance of the EU. This situation is changing, however, and because of the explicit efforts by national governments to defend their health policy autonomy it forms a case study of how European integration shapes national and subnational welfare states even in the absence of political will.
This paper charts the way that European Union public health legislation and internal markets decisions have shaped the development of health policy in the UK and are slowly changing the options available for the country's health systems. In doing so it both highlights key mechanisms in the growth of a European welfare regime and identifies the mechanisms that link health systems with the broader governance of labor and product markets.
|
Alma Idiart (Universidad Nacional de San Martin, Argentina)
E-mail: aidiart@unsam.edu.ar
Institutional Factors and Neo-Liberal Trends: Maternal Child Health and Nutrition Programs in Argentina and Chile in The Past Two Decades
|
This paper provides a comparative analysis of the characteristics and the most recent transformations of maternal child health and nutrition programs in Argentina and Chile during the past two decades, focusing on long-term institutional features and the central trends organizing social reforms along neo-liberal lines prevailing during the 1980s and the 1990s.
Whereas for the years 1945 to 1949 the average infant-mortality rate (IMR) in Chile more than doubled that in Argentina, in 1998 this rate in Chile represented barely 54 percent of the one of Argentina. How to account for such differences in policy performance in both cases? Are the neo-liberal reforms implemented in Chile since the late 1970s and early 1980s the main reason for such an impressive drop in IMRs? Are long-term coordinated social policy implementations and state institutional capacities the main factors accounting for this improvement? Do these implementation factors merely help realize neo-liberal reforms' potential?
I argue that despite relatively similar overall policy lines being implemented in both cases, the central and contrasting long-term historical and institutional characteristics in Argentina and Chile account for most of the variation in the overall process of reform implementation and in the socioeconomic effects and impact of social policies.
|
Lane Kenworthy and Leslie McCall (Emory University, USA)
E-mail: lkenwor@emory.edu
Who Cares about Inequality?
|
According to Meltzer and Richard's (1981) influential median-voter theory of government redistribution, when market inequality increases, democratic governments respond by increasing redistribution. A higher level of market inequality implies a greater distance between mean and median earnings, with the latter further below the former. The lower the median relative to the mean, the more the median income voter is likely to benefit from government redistribution, in the sense that the benefits she receives will exceed her share of the tax burden. Hence the greater the amount of redistribution she will favor. More market inequality thus leads to political demand for more redistribution.
We use data from the ISSP, LIS, OECD, and other sources to examine the utility of this model for understanding welfare state developments in affluent countries in the 1980s and 1990s. The model has four parts: (1) If market inequality increases, the public will be aware of this. (2) People will respond by favoring increased redistribution. (3) They will express this preference via voting and/or other political or extra-political action. (4) Government will respond by increasing redistribution. We examine each of these parts empirically, focusing particularly on the first and second.
|
Stephanie Moller (University of North Carolina at Charlotte, USA)
E-mail: smoller@email.uncc.edu
The State Policies and Occupational Sex Segregation
|
|
Most research on occupational sex segregation is conducted within the stratification literature. Some researchers argue that individual characteristics, such as women's preferences for flexible part-time employment, help explain the extent of occupational sex segregation. Others argue that structural shifts (such as the rise of the service sector which disproportionately employs women) explain segregation. These researchers, however, ignore the role of the state. Political sociologists have found, in cross-national research, that some state policies help women form and maintain autonomous households. They have also found that policies can help lower gender wage inequality. These researchers, however, have not determined if states' policies alter occupational sex segregation. I contribute to this literature by determining how the welfare state alters levels of occupational sex segregation within a liberal welfare state. More specifically, I examine the association between state policies and occupational segregation across U.S. counties between 1980 and 2000.
|
James Mosher (Ohio University, USA)
E-mail: mosherj@ohio.edu
The Welfare State and Varieties of Capitalism
|
|
A host of researchers have begun to explore how capitalism varies in its institutional organization across countries. Welfare state regimes seem to vary with the type of capitalism, with the liberal variety of capitalism commonly combined with a liberal welfare state regime and more "coordinated" types of capitalism combined with larger welfare states. The causal mechanism behind this apparent correlation is only beginning to be theorized. This paper will explore one possible causal mechanism that explains this relationship. Then, this project will use a new measure of varieties of "capitalism" to explore correlations between welfare state regimes and types of capitalism.
|
Markus Pohlmann (University of Heidelberg, Germany)
E-mail: markus.pohlmann@t-online.de
The Post-Developmental State of the Tigers: Chances and Challenges
|
|
The economic development of almost all Tiger Economies, except Hong Kong, have been guided in the past by strong developmental states. As latecomers, strong states seemed to be a precondition of their economic success. But with the democratization process things changed completely. During the democratization process, the strong states became "disorganized". The contours of a post-developmental state did evolve since the early nineties. A stronger division of political power, less political guidance of economic development, the constraint power of political administration, more autonomy for capital movement , less intense corporatist arrangements and a stronger welfare orientation are said to be important elements of the evolution of a post-developmental state. But after the Asian Financial Crisis, the post-developmental state became a contested terrain. Policies and Politics did oscillate between deregulation and an again expanding role of the state, guiding the restructuring of the economy. Especially in Korea, the strong state seemed to be back, and the neo-liberal phase seemed to be history. The papers in the session will discuss the changing role of the state in East Asia, comparing especially South Korea, Taiwan and Singapore, and the consequences for the economic development of the Asian tigers.
|
Elisabeth Springler (Vienna University of Economics and Business Administration, Austria)
E-mail: elisabeth.springler@wu-wien.ac.at
Me and my pension portfolio: The Privatization of risk in the Austrian welfare system
|
European welfare states faced heavy structural changes in the last decade. Especially health insurances and pension system have been subject to numerous reforms due to demographic changes - the aging of society. The Austrian welfare state, following successfully the Scandinavian model of universal security was changed with the same argument, but having a closer look at the reforms made in the pension system - which consisted of two aims, a shift from a purely statutory insurance system to a multi-pillar system with stronger emphasis on private insurance and additionally a shift from a pay-as-you-go system to a funded system - it seems that not demographic changes where the reason for reforms but the wish to promote the poorly developed national financial market. Therefore these developments can be seen as a promotion of market principles in areas where market failure is well known.
The questions that arise are: Can financial markets provide a secure capital accumulation for our retirement and will we all be able to "play the game" on instable financial markets? The paper will try to find an answer to these questions and will critically compare the outcome and effects on economic development of the new system with the old one.
|
Evelyne Huber/Thomas Mustillo/John D. Stephens (University of North Carolina, USA)
E-Mail jdsteph@unc.edu
The Determinants of Social Expenditure in Latin America and the Caribbean
|
|
We examine the determinants of social expenditure in an unbalanced pooled time series analysis for 27 Latin American and Caribbean countries for the period 1970 to 2000. The data are from a new data set assembled by the co-authors and collaborators. The social spending data are calculated from IMF sources and allow the researchers to separate out education and health spending from social security and welfare spending. The authors extend the Coppedge coding of Latin American parties to a wider set of countries and update the data. Political coloring of both presidents and legislatures are coded. The authors also code constitutions in order to develop an adapted Huber and Stephens (2001) constitutional structure veto points measure. Thus, for the first time, the authors present an analysis of social spending in Latin America and the Caribbean with a full complement of partisanship, state structure, economic, and demographic variables that have been employed in studies of advanced industrial countries.
|
Evelyne Huber/Francois Nielsen/John D. Stephens (University of North Carolina, USA)
E-mail: jdsteph@unc.edu
The Impact of Social Expenditure on Income Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean
|
|
We examine the determinants of inequality in an unbalanced pooled time series analysis for 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries for the period 1970 to 1995. The dependent variable is the Gini index of income equality, and the data were drawn primarily from Deininger and Squire's World Bank data set supplemented by data from Londo?o and Szekeley which meet Deininger and Squire's criteria for "high quality" data. The social spending data are from a new data set assembled by three of the co-authors. Two sets of control variables measuring various aspects of development and dependence form the baseline for the study. We find that health and education spending has a strong negative impact on inequality, which is consistent with the results for OECD countries, while social security and welfare spending (transfers, primarily pensions) has a strong positive impact on inequality, which is the opposite of the findings for OECD countries. We argue that this contrasting finding is due to the fact that, in Latin America and the Caribbean, transfers go almost exclusively to formal sector workers who are concentrated in the upper range of the income distribution.
|
John D. Stephens (University of North Carolina, USA)
E-mail: jdsteph@unc.edu
The Impact of Social Expenditure on Income Inequality in Latin America and the Caribbean
|
|
We examine the determinants of inequality in an unbalanced pooled time series analysis for 20 Latin American and Caribbean countries for the period 1970 to 1995. The dependent variable is the Gini index of income equality, and the data were drawn primarily from Deininger and Squire's World Bank data set supplemented by data from Londo?o and Szekeley which meet Deininger and Squire's criteria for "high quality" data. The social spending data are from a new data set assembled by three of the co-authors. Two sets of control variables measuring various aspects of development and dependence form the baseline for the study. We find that health and education spending has a strong negative impact on inequality, which is consistent with the results for OECD countries, while social security and welfare spending (transfers, primarily pensions) has a strong positive impact on inequality, which is the opposite of the findings for OECD countries. We argue that this contrasting finding is due to the fact that, in Latin America and the Caribbean, transfers go almost exclusively to formal sector workers who are concentrated in the upper range of the income distribution.
|
Theresa Thompson, Heinz Rothgang, Mirella Cacace (Johns Hopkins School of Public Health & University of Bremen's Center for Social Policy Research, USA)
E-mail: tthompso@jhsph.edu
Harnessing Competition, Protecting Solidarity: A Comparison of Health Care Markets in the United States, Germany, and Great Britain
|
|
Over the past decade, policymakers in many countries have increasingly focused on the role of market-based competition as a tool for health system reform. Policymakers who hail the benefits of creating competitive pressures in health care markets argue that it can help rein in health care costs, enhance service quality, stimulate innovation, and make health systems more responsive to consumer demands for timely efficient care and for the freedom to both choose their provider and customize their level of insurance coverage. Many effects of competition in health care markets can be anticipated from economic theory, yet the levels at which policymakers choose to inject competition and the instruments they use largely depend on how policy goals are prioritized. Evaluating the role of competition in health care markets thus necessitates the use of normative standards. Within the context of the ongoing theoretical debate on the role and limits of competition in health care, a normative framework is used to evaluate the role and effects of competition in health care markets. Based on empirical data for the United States, Germany, and Great Britain, this paper addresses the question of how far and under which circumstances competition is generally compatible with such social welfare principles as solidarity and equity, thereby gleaning appropriate lessons for policy learning.
|
Morag Torrance (University of Oxford, UK)
E-mail: morag.torrance@ouce.ox.ac.uk
The confusing state of soft neoliberalism*Soft neoliberal urban policymaking in Chicago and Rotterdam
|
|
This paper provides an insight into the confusing state of soft neoliberal developments. New neoliberal state intervention, so-called soft neoliberalism, has been introduced in some countries to 'soften' the harsh past, or counterbalancing the 'harsh' neoliberal roll back of the 1980s. Soft-neoliberalism, the aim to create pure and rational economic management of 'soft' and social policies in cities and the simultaneous push to convince citizens to empower themselves, is geographically more variegated and as such, attention in this paper is focused on the development and implementation of soft neoliberal urban policies in two cities in the USA and the Netherlands. This paper deals with the recent neoliberal state intervention in public administration, more specifically at the urban scale as the soft neoliberal developments were most needed, pronounced and contentious at the urban scale. The two main interventions were the focus on reinventing government and the shift from redistribution to 'equality of opportunity' via the empowerment of citizens. An unstable institutional order has evolved within cities as the ongoing "hollowing out" of the state and the complimentary downloading of responsibilities to the urban level has led to confusion amongst key players. A critical analysis of the contemporary urban governance arrangements is necessary in order to understand how soft neoliberal strategies play out and how relationships amongst stakeholders evolve. Moreover, the confusion sparked by the recent soft neoliberal developments could set the stage for even more downloading of responsibilities, unfulfilled promises and upset.
|
Ann Vogel (University of Cambridge, UK)
E-mail: av275@cam.ac.uk
Sociology of Redistribution
|
In 1994, Suzanne Shanahan and Nancy Tuma argued in the first edition of the Handbook of Economic Sociology that although the sociological discipline attends to questions of inequality and stratification, allocations of scarce value and re-allocation of market input and outputs, there is no unified sociology of redistribution and distribution.
This paper addresses the fact that since then little seems to have been done to enhance the formation of such sub-discipline, while all the while frameworks and theorizing on both 'the market' and the welfare state crisis and decline have surged on.
This essay takes three modern-day redistributive systems-basic income, philanthropy, and the welfare state-and inquires into the possibilities for a sociology of redistribution within the field of economic sociology.
The paper proceeds from inspecting what a sociological definition of redistribution must encompass to an empirical discussion of these three redistributive systems including their places in sociological theory and, briefly, contemporary reality. It then concludes on the question of whether a new framework for redistribution can be integrated into current sociological thought.
|
|