American welfare strategies: Three programs under the social security act

In the United States, a single piece of legislation, the Social Security Act, is the major vehicle through which the cash assistance to citizens is provided. This act contains many subprograms, programs so different in concept, administration and programmatic implication that many people do not know that the same piece of legislation makes them all possible. In this paper three programs—social security, unemployment compensation, and public assistance—are examined in a sociohistorical, sociocultural context. The roots of these programs are analyzed, their current operations outlined, and the policy problems currently confronting them are detailed. The ways in which the programs relate to the political mythology of the society is seen as important. Because of the continual conflicts arising out of the administration of public assistance, three special cases involving that program are mentioned.Special thanks is due to Mrs. Shirley Roles, who made many useful conceptual and editorial suggestions.     

Do welfare benefits cause the welfare caseload?

Analyses of the welfare system generally examine one of five competing models: (1) The work disincentive model; (2) the human capital model; (3) the macroeconomic model; (4) the public choice model; or (5) the cost-of-job-loss model. This paper employs the Granger causality concept and the multiple-rank F statistic to test the implications of all five of these models simultaneously. The results offer modest support to all but the macroeconomic model. The relationships among welfare benefits, caseloads, and labor market conditions appear to be too complex to be fully captured by a single model.     

Partisan legitimacy across generations

In this paper we argue that parties shape their supporters’ views about the political system via the messages they communicate about the desirability of the political system. Moreover, we contend that the effectiveness of such communication varies considerably across generations. Combining data from election surveys collected in 15 democracies as part of the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems (CSES) project with data on the policy positions of 116 political parties collected by the Comparative Manifestos Project, we find that supporters of parties that express positive positions toward the political system report systematically higher levels of political legitimacy than supporters of parties that communicate negative views. Moreover, this communication is particularly effective among older party identifiers whose partisan identification tends to be more pronounced. Taken together, these findings suggest that political parties play an active role in shaping citizens’ views of the political system but their success in mobilizing consent among citizens in contemporary democracies may weaken with partisan de-alignment and generational change.     

Future generations as rightholders

Many people believe that we have obligations with respect to future generations concerning the state of the environment that we pass on to them. Apart from the practical problem of people not really acting on such beliefs, there are also conceptual or philosophical issues that make these obligations problematic. The so-called non-identity problem is especially difficult: depending on which courses of action we adopt, different people will be born in the future, which means that even future people who due to our behavior will live under fairly poor circumstances might not have any ground for complaint. Had we not behaved as we did, they would not even have existed. It is argued here that, at least within a rights-theoretical approach, the non-identity problem can be solved by moving from considering individual rights to generational rights, rights which future generations hold qua generations.     

Swiss worlds of welfare

Are there different worlds of welfare in Swiss cantons, analogous to different national welfare state regimes? Are the welfare regimes made up of functionally related sub-regimes in the field of employment, education, taxation and social security, as argued in recent analyses of ‘varieties of capitalism’? And can the variations between such cantonal welfare regimes be explained by the same politico-institutional variables that account for the development of national welfare states? These are the guiding questions of this article. We find strong empirical evidence for large inter-cantonal variation in welfare state policies. The sub-regimes are not functionally connected, however. Their variation is related to different sets of variables, indicating a weak functional link between them. Developments and causal structures are specific to the various subregimes. In addition, it is socio-economic and not politicoinstitutional variables that have had the strongest imprint on the overall structure of cantonal welfare regimes.     

Assets and welfare

He is author of Assets and the Poor: A New American Welfare Policy.     

Nonsectarian welfare statements

How can we measure whether national institutions in general, and regulatory institutions in particular, are dysfunctional? A central question is whether they are helping a nation's citizens to live good lives. A full answer to that question would require a great deal of philosophical work, but it should be possible to achieve an incompletely theorized agreement on a kind of nonsectarian welfarism, emphasizing the importance of five variables: subjective well‐being, longevity, health, educational attainment, and per capita income. In principle, it would be valuable to identify the effects of new initiatives (including regulations) on all of these variables. In practice, it is not feasible to do so; assessments of subjective well‐being present particular challenges. In their ideal form, Regulatory Impact Statements should be seen as Nonsectarian Welfare Statements, seeking to identify the consequences of regulatory initiatives for various components of welfare. So understood, they provide reasonable measures of regulatory success or failure, and, hence, a plausible test of dysfunction. There is a pressing need for improved evaluations, including both randomized controlled trials and ex post assessments.     

Comparing welfare states

Comparing Welfare States: Britain in International Context. Edited by ALLAN COCHRANE and JOHN CLARKE. London: Sage in association with the Open University, 1993. Pp.xiv + 274, index. £35 (hardback) ISBN 0–8039–8845–1, £12.95 (paperback) 0–8039–8846‐X.

Women Across Continents: Feminist Comparative Social Policy By LENA DOMINELLI. London: Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991. Pp.x + 351, biblio, index. NP (hardback). ISBN 0–7450–0336–2, £12.95 (paperback), 0–7450–0939–5.

Divisions of Welfare: A Critical Introduction to Comparative Social Policy. By NORMAN GINSBURG. London: Sage, 1992. Pp.xii + 228, appendix, references, index. £30 (hardback) ISBN 0–8039–8440–5, £10.95 (paperback) 0–8039–841–3.

Capitalist Welfare Systems: A Comparison of Japan, Britain and Sweden. By ARTHUR GOULD. London: Longman, 1993. Pp.xi + 276, notes, bibliography, index. NP. ISBN 0–582–08349–4.

New Perspectives on the Welfare State in Europe. Edited by CATHERINE JONES, London: Routledge, 1993. Pp.vii + 251, index. NP. ISBN 0–415–07041–4 (hardback), NP. 0–415–07042–2 (paperback).

Can the Welfare State Compete? A Comparative Study of Five Advanced Capitalist Countries. Edited by ALFRED PFALLER, IAN GOUGH and GORAN THERBORN. London: Macmillan, 1991. Pp.xi + 354, notes, bibliography, index. NP. ISBN 0–333–48755–9.     

Political generations in Northern Ireland

Since the late 1980s, Northern Ireland has seen a radical electoral shift away from the historically dominant parties in the Catholic and Protestant blocs – the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Ulster Unionist Party (UUP), respectively – towards the traditionally more ‘extreme’ parties – Sinn Fein and the Democratic Unionist Party (DUP). This change in aggregate support has been accompanied by increasing differences between generations as older cohorts of UUP and SDLP supporters have been replaced by newer cohorts of DUP and Sinn Fein partisans. This is not a result of increased polarisation in values and attitudes (whether overtly political or simply communal intolerance) among younger cohorts who are, if anything, slightly more moderate than their forbears. Rather, this results from the changing political context in which new generations have been socialised – in particular the expanded choice sets facing voters as they have reached voting age. This in turn has positive implications for the consolidation of devolved democratic governance.     

Explaining welfare spending

Welfare expenditures are difficult to explain within a pure public choice-framework. In this article, I shall argue that the difficulties may be resolved by assuming that the main purpose of welfare schemes is to provide the electorate — in their capacity of different risk categories — with insurance against various social risks, rather than to redistribute economic resources towards weak and destitute groups in society. This solution not only explains the scope of existing welfare arrangements, but may also hold the key to an explanation as to how public welfare policies change and evolve across time.