Reforming the French welfare state: Solidarity,social exclusion and the three crises of citizenship

The article explores recent debates about citizenship and social provision in France. It examines the essential concepts comparable to ‘social citizenship’, as understood in British debates, and the role that they have played in the development of the French welfare state. Its conclusions are threefold. First, social provision in France is founded on the principle of solidarité, which holds that all citizens face a series of social risks (unemployment and illness) that make them dependent on one another. Second, as the traditional insurance principle (the core of the French welfare state) is founded on socio‐economic conditions (concerning the nature of social interdependence and social risk) that no longer exist, the emergence of these social ills has led to not one but three crises of citizenship: a crisis of coverage, of legitimacy and of participation. Third, while it is too early to draw definitive conclusions, recent policy reforms suggest that the difficulties faced by French welfare are encouraging moves towards the British model of tax‐based (rather than insurance‐based) financing of social provision.     

A theory of predatory welfare state and citizen welfare: the French case

Public Choice - In this paper, we argue that the welfare state is an outcome of modern mass (total) warfare. The total war economy requires the participation of all citizens, erasing the...     

Citizenship and preemptive war: The lesson from Iraq

This paper argues that citizens should be wary of a policy of Reformed Preemption such as is found in the National Security Strategy of the United States. This policy is too permissive with regard to the use of force and it suffers from epistemological difficulties. The war in Iraq is examined in an effort to see how the new policy of Reformed Preemption will be employed in practice. This case shows us two risks of the new policy: it permits wars even when the threats are vague and merely potential; and it allows for disproportionate use of force.     

Earned income credit utilization by welfare recipients: A case study of Minnesota's earned income credit program

This paper examines utilization of a state earned income credit by AFDC and TANF recipients. Although utilization percentages are increasing, we find that among TANF recipients in 1999, 45.7 percent of all households and 34.8 percent of eligible households did not receive the state earned income credit. Moreover, we find that utilization may depend upon TANF requirements and incentives, information resources, and barriers to work and filing of income tax returns. Finally, we investigate whether low utilization is because of little or no benefit from the state earned income credit and find this may be true for some with barriers or less incentive to work under TANF. © 2006 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Con a voluntary workfare program change the behavior of welfare recipients? new evidence from washington state's family independence program (FIP)

This article examines a voluntary workfare demonstration program in Washington state—the Family Independence Program (FIP)—designed to encourage longer-term investments in employment and training (E&T) activities, with the ultimate objective of achieving economic self-sufficiency for welfare recipients. A unique longitudinal data set is used to compare E&T enrollment and the labor market and welfare outcomes for a sample of FIP clients and a comparison group of Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) recipients subject to the state's mandatory workfare requirements. Correcting for self-selection, the estimates obtained indicate that FIP's combination of financial incentives, enhanced support services, and a more client-centered environment results in an E&T enrollment rate that is from 9 to 12 percentage points higher during the post-FIP June 1989 to May 1990 period than the rate for respondents subject to the state's workfare program. Relative to the enrollment rate calculated for nonparticipants, FIP net impact estimates in this range represent a 33 to 44 percent increase in E&T enrollment. These results offer a more positive assessment of the potential of a voluntary workfare program to affect the behavior of welfare recipients than does the large-scale FIP evaluation carried out by the Urban Institute. However, both the evidence presented here and the Urban Institute's evaluation suggest that FIP had little impact on employment and earnings but significantly increased welfare receipt and the level of welfare benefits.     

Economic voting and welfare programmes: Evidence from the American states

While scholars have hypothesised that a strong welfare state should reduce voters' incentives to base their votes on economic outcomes, evidence for this proposition remains mixed. This article tests whether differences in welfare protections across American states affect the relationship between economic performance and support for the president's party in 430 state legislative elections from 1970 to 1989. Analysing the results of over 42,000 contests in which an incumbent was running for re‐election, it finds that while unemployment insurance programmes do not affect the importance of economic performance, the electoral fortunes of presidential co‐partisans are less strongly tied to the national economy in states with generous anti‐poverty programmes. Thus by reducing vulnerability to poverty, economic safety‐nets lower the salience of the economy and provide electoral cover for politicians during economic slowdowns.     

Never a dull moment: Pim Fortuyn and the Dutch parliamentary election of 2002

The 2002 parliamentary election in the Netherlands will always be associated with the name of Pim Fortuyn. His murder only nine days before the election was the first political assassination in the Netherlands in more than 300 years. The sudden success of the new party he had founded, coupled with the major losses for the Labour and Liberal parties, made this an historic election. This article attempts to understand the motivations of the voters at this election, in particular the voters of the List Pim Fortuyn (LPF). It is first shown that the conventional wisdom, which assumes voting based on religion and social class, and voting along ideological issue lines, has lost its ability to explain voter behaviour in the Netherlands. An explanation based on retrospective economic voting is also rejected. The success of the LPF is accounted for by the popularity of Fortuyn and his appeal among those who had cynical attitudes towards government or who were dissatisfied with the performance of the incumbent government. The popularity of Fortuyn is shown to have been related to political issues, in particular those relating to asylum seekers and the integration of foreigners in the country.     

Job accessibility and welfare usage: Evidence from Los Angeles

Previous scholars have explored the effects of local labor market conditions on welfare usage. However, none of these studies use direct measures of geographic access to nearby jobs. Responding to this limitation, our research combines data from the 1990 census with three administrative data sets to examine the effect of geographic job access—defined as the relative supply of low-wage jobs located within a three-mile radius of a census tract—on welfare usage rates among the Los Angeles population with a high school degree or less. After controlling for other characteristics likely to affect welfare behavior, we find that welfare usage declines as geographic job access increases. This relationship holds not only among African-Americans, the subject of much of the scholarship on job access and economic opportunity, but also among whites, Asians, and Hispanics.     

The welfare of the elderly: A systems analysis viewpoint

A methodology is offered to analyze for policy purposes the services offered to the elderly. Best policy is defined as that policy which maximizes the benefit to the elderly, given budgetary and other constraints. To measure the benefit to the elderly, a scale is devised, consisting of a set of states describing the degree of dependency of the elderly. This ordinal scale is converted to a cardinal scale by assigning weights to the states, these weights being an expression of the social-value judgments of the administrators. The change in weights over time, induced by the intervention of services, is the benefit of the services. Mathematical techniques are described for relating benefit to cost, modeling the flow of elderly among institutions, making a sensitivity analysis, and deriving the best policy.     

Reforms, lobbies and welfare: A common agency approach

Citizens with heterogeneous tastes delegate to policy makers the authority to choose public policies. They may try to influence legislators in various ways. In this paper we assume that monetary lobbying and direct threats are the only instruments private individuals can use to influence the legislator. We model the relationship between the citizens and a single policy maker as a common agency game. Lobbies offer a policy and a payment according to a truthful contribution schedule, and the government takes the policy decision. In the truthful equilibrium, the government implements the social surplus maximizing policy. Introducing also direct threats, we find that, as far as both groups have an instrument to influence the legislator, the efficiency result is robust. We also show that when the lobby groups have asymmetric interests and political power, not all groups necessarily participate in the auction. In particular it turns out that one-lobby or non-lobby equilibria may arise, and those equilibria are also efficient.     

Morbid obesity and the transition from welfare to work.

This paper utilizes a rich longitudinal data set--the Women's Employment Study (WES)--to investigate whether obesity, which is common among women of low socioeconomic status, is a barrier to employment and earnings for current and former welfare recipients. We find that former welfare recipients who are both White and morbidly obese have been less successful in transitioning from welfare to work. These women are less likely to work at any survey wave, spend a greater percentage of months between waves receiving cash welfare, and have lower monthly earnings at each wave. The magnitude of the difference in labor market outcomes between the morbidly obese and those who are less heavy is in some cases similar in magnitude to the differences in these labor market outcomes between high school dropouts and graduates. In contrast, we find no such labor market differences associated with morbid obesity for African-American respondents. This paper documents the relationship between weight and labor market outcomes for the first time among the welfare population. In addition, it investigates whether the correlation for White females is due to unobserved heterogeneity. We find that after controlling for individual fixed effects, the point estimate of the correlation of morbid obesity and each of the labor market outcomes falls considerably and is no longer statistically significant. These results are consistent with unobserved heterogeneity causing the correlation between morbid obesity and labor market outcomes. Findings are similar after controlling for the respondent's mental and physical health.     

Systems analysis and welfare reform: A case study of the family assistance plan

This paper discusses the impact that systems analysis has had on the welfare reform legislation of the last four years. After a general discussion of welfare reform's objectives and constraints, and their particular application to the family assistance proposal, the state of the art of systems analysis as related to welfare problems is described. The successes and failures of the cost-effectiveness approach in developing and modifying the proposal are outlined in analyses of major issues, including the proposal's impact on state welfare programs, work incentives, the integration of cash assistance with assistance in kind, and alternatives for welfare administration.Presented at the 41st Meeting of the Operations Research Society of America on April 27, 1972.The author participated in the development of the family assistance legislation while an employee of the Office of Management and Budget and the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare (Office of the Secretary).The views expressed in this article are the author's and do not necessarily reflect the views of the members of the Joint Economic Committee.     

How welfare reform affects young children: Experimental findings from Connecticut—A research note

As welfare‐to‐work reforms increase women's labor market attachment, the lives of their young children are likely to change. This note draws on a random‐assignment experiment in Connecticut to ask whether mothers' rising employment levels and program participation are associated with changes in young children's early learning and cognitive growth. Children of mothers who entered Connecticut's Jobs First program, an initiative with strict 21‐month time limits and work incentives, displayed moderate advantages in their early learning, compared with those in a control group. A number of potential mechanisms for this effect are explored, including maternal employment and income, home environment, and child care. Mothers in the new welfare program are more likely to be employed, have higher income, are less likely to be married, have more children's books in their home, and take their children to libraries and museums more frequently. However, these effects explain little of the observed gain in child outcomes. Other parenting practices and the home's social environment do explain early learning, but these remained unaffected by welfare reform. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Rethinking measures of democracy and welfare state universalism: Lessons from subnational research

ABSTRACT

Democracy and the welfare state are two of the most extensively studied concepts and themes in the field of comparative politics. Debate about how to best measure the two concepts has failed to contemplate the extent to which political and social rights are uniformly present across distinct regions of the national territory, despite the presence of substantial subnational research that underscores wide variation inside countries. We argue that this omission hampers our understanding of the two phenomena and we propose a new measure of democracy and healthcare universalism, which we call the Adjusted Measures of Democracy and Welfare Universalism. The new measures integrate territorial inequality into existing national-level indicators, providing a more accurate picture of country performance and opening the door to new, multi-level theory building.     

Party effects on total and disaggregated welfare spending: A mixed-effects approach

Welfare is the largest expenditure category in all advanced democracies. Consequently, much literature has studied partisan effects on total and policy-specific welfare expenditure. Yet, these results cannot be trusted: the methodological standard is to apply time-series cross-section regressions to annual observation data. But governments hardly change annually. Thus, the number of observations is artificially inflated, leading to incorrect estimates. While this problem has recently been acknowledged, it has not been convincingly resolved. This article proposes mixed-effects models (also known as ‘multilevel models’ or ‘hierarchical models’) as a solution, which allows decomposing variance into different levels and permits complex cross-classification data structures. It is argued that mixed-effects models combine the strengths of existing methodological approaches while alleviating their weaknesses. Empirically, partisan effects on total and on disaggregated expenditure in 23 OECD countries in the period 1960–2012 are studied using several measures of party preferences and revealing several substantially relevant findings.     

Legislating from both sides of the aisle: Information and the value of bipartisan consensus

This paper motivates bipartisanship through a formal model in which committee members are assumed to possess policy expertise. Its central findings are: 1) bipartisan support for legislation is more informative than partisan support; 2) bipartisanship is preferred when the uncertainty surrounding outcomes is large and partisan policy differences are small; 3) “minority party gatekeeping” is possible when minority party members refuse to endorse majority party proposals; and 4) legislators with extreme preferences need minority party support to pass legislation. An equilibrium selection criterion is also introduced and applied to the model to predict under what conditions the majority party will seek bipartisan support.