Welfare as Wrecking Ball: Constructing Public Responsibility in Legal Encounters Over Public Housing Demolition

Scholarship on welfare privatization illustrates how the process often curtails and undermines public responsibility for the poor. In this article, I examine how recipients, policy makers, and judges participate in the legal process as a means of challenging and defending privatization. I look at cases of litigation initiated by public housing tenants between 1985 and 2012 to fight the demolition of their homes to explore the changing meaning of public responsibility within a shrinking public sector. My findings show that as legislative and administrative reforms steered courts toward a more flexible understanding of public responsibility, courts gave increasing attention to the economic hardships experienced by the state itself, while downplaying the plight of low‐income tenants.     

Understanding Income Inequality in China: A Multi-Angle Perspective

Economic reforms have brought about spectacular growth and vast improvements of people’s living standards in China since 1978. In the meantime, unbalanced regional growth and income inequality have become two important concerns of future development. Most available studies on income distribution have either focused on the rural population or on the urban citizens. This paper stresses the importance of adopting a multi-angle approach to fully understand income inequality in China. We first use some top-down information to form a general picture of inequality for the whole country, and then use some bottom-up household survey data to explain in detail the development of inequality over time regarding rural/urban inequality, rural inequality, urban inequality and inter-regional inequality, the relative importance of different income sources to overall inequality.     

政府促进公平分配权力的体系性思考

对社会财富分配规则进行研究,从中提炼能够统辖所有分配规则的抽象的权力范畴,可以提升有关优化收入分配结构、促进收入公平分配的法律问题的理论研究深度。散见于社会财富三次分配中的货币发行权、公共投资收益权、政府采购决定权以及劳动力定价权、征税权、财政补贴决定权、社会保障支出权、税式支出权等一系列权力,可以提炼为公平分配促进权,包括基础性权能和调控性权能的二重结构,各种权力协调运行有助于促进社会财富公平分配。     

The impact of cuts in legal aid funding on charities

This article focusses on the specific impact of the cuts in legal aid funding on the charitable sector. The sector plays a significant role in advice giving. Some charities have the provision of legal advice as their sole purpose, whilst the work of other charities includes the giving of legal advice. Funding comes via a number of sources including legal aid, local authorities and charitable trusts. Whilst this volume highlights the legal aid reforms that will lead to significant cuts in funding, this article notes that charitable providers of legal advice have also suffered major cuts from their other traditional funding sources. Against this background, the article considers the serious and often unforeseen consequences for charities of the legal aid reforms, which go far beyond the impact on the high street law firm and access to justice for claimants.     

The Swedish Legal Services Policy Remix: The Shift from Public Legal Aid to Private Legal Expense Insurance

A number of governments in the 1960s and 1970s pursued the goal of equal access to legal services by establishing publicly funded legal aid schemes. Some societies also promoted Legal Expense Insurance (LEI) to fill some of the gaps in legal aid. The recent trend to small government means many societies are keen to experiment further with legal services policy. This article examines one such experiment in Sweden where reforms included major cuts to public legal aid and requiring most people to rely on private LEI. But how well does this policy mix promote equal access to legal services? And are there lessons for other societies? In this article I describe and assess the policy remix. I argue that the reforms are a bold policy experiment but that they had mixed and some undesirable consequences, and that there are few lessons for other societies.     

The Effects of Domestic Violence on Women's Employment

This article presents some results of a random household survey that examined the effects of domestic violence on the labor force participation of 824 women living in a low‐income neighborhood. It also uses data from twenty‐four long interviews.
Eighteen percent of the respondents reported having experienced physical aggression in the past twelve months, and 11.9% reported more severe physical violence. Women who reported abuse were more likely to have experienced unemployment and held more jobs and to report more health problems. They also had lower personal incomes, and were significantly more likely to receive public assistance. At the same time, women who reported abuse were employed in roughly the same numbers as those who did not. Thus, it appears that domestic violence may depress women's socioeconomic and occupational status attainment over time, but does not affect employment status per se.  The article concludes with comments about the implications of the findings for the redesign of public assistance and job training programs.     

The Extent and Correlates of Public Support for Deterrence Reforms and Hot Spots Policing

As one approach to prison downsizing and criminal justice reform, scholars recommend altering the nature of policing by reallocating resources toward policing and increasing sentinel patrols and hot spots interventions. Public attitudes toward these reforms are unknown. In the current police crisis, shifting policies in ways disfavored by the public can impact police‐community relations, especially among those disproportionately affected. The current study uses survey data from a nationally representative sample of Americans to evaluate whether the public is receptive to the suggested reforms. Our results indicate that the majority of the general public believes policing is more cost‐effective than incarceration and supports a focus on sentinel patrols and crime hot spots, although there is less support for hot spots policing among blacks, Hispanics, and lower income individuals. The hot spots policing strategy most preferred is situational prevention, and the least supported is aggressive order‐maintenance policing.     

Inequality, Opportunity, and Crime Rates in Central Cities

In a recent paper, Cohen and Felson argue that changes in our routine activities since World War 11 have contributed to the increase in predatory crime by creating additional opportunities for it. In particular, they found that a measure of the dispersal of activities away from the home-the household activity ratio-has had a significant effect on crime rate trends since 1947. The aim of the present research is twofold: (1) to determine if this relationship occurs across space as well as over time, and (2) to see i f economic inequality may be an intervening variable between the household activity ratio and the crime rate. The sample consists of 93 nonsouthern cities of over 50,000 population in 1960. Data are drawn from the 1970 Census und the U n i f m Crime Reports. Using path analysis, it is determined that the effects of the household activity ratio cm rates of predatory crime are entirely indirect, and are transmitted by income inequality.     

Differences in health care spending across countries: statistical evidence

The empirical evidence available for OECD countries suggests that economic factors play a major role and that demographic factors play a minor role in explaining differences in health care spending across countries. When countries are grouped on the basis of their health care systems, some significant cross-country differences result: countries with higher transfer rates (a larger share of collective financing) are not generally characterized by higher health care expenditures, and conversely, countries with a larger share of private financing (including higher coinsurance rates) do not have lower expenditures. Rather, the opposite holds true. Similar conclusions apply to the share of public versus private production of health goods. Furthermore, the results do not support the claims of those critics of universal public insurance systems who consider the expansion of the coverage to be a major source of expenditure growth. These findings cast serious doubt on the claim that cost containment can be achieved via market reforms that rely heavily on direct consumer payments and cost sharing as instruments of financing. A comparative analysis of the historic record of the United States, Canada, and the Federal Republic of Germany generally supports these conclusions; it also suggests that a greater degree of public penetration offers a better chance for control of health spending, particularly in periods of austerity. There is a strong presumption that health care systems relying on some overall control of spending generally are more cost-effective than those relying more on decentralized mechanisms of control. Services are more equitably distributed in relation to health and payment for health services is far more progressive in the former type of system.     

Selling Scientific Taxation: The Treasury Department's Campaign for Tax Reform in the 1920s

The received interpretation of the Mellon tax reforms in the 1920s describes a reactionary roll-back of the first, progressive, permanent income tax system in United States history. This essay revises that interpretation in important ways.
The Treasury Department of Secretary Andrew W. Mellon proposed and passed tax reform legislation in the 1920s that radically reduced marginal tax rates on wealthy individuals from World War 1 highs. The Mellon plan was developed by attorneys from the previous Democratic administration. Working with the foremost tax professionals of the day and deeply committed to the principles of progressive income taxation, they intended the establishment of a permanent peacetime tax system for a modern industrial society. They called their taxplan scientific taxation. The Treasury Department policymakers anticipated determined opposition to their program and consciously embarked on an extensive public relations campaign to convince the general public that reducing taxes on wealthy people was good for them because it made the whole society richer and more dynamic.
This essay tells the story of how the Mellon plan took shape, and of the public relations campaign waged to secure its enactment. This essay also suggests that the Treasury Department's campaign to sell scientific tax reform to the general public generated a dialogue that facilitated popular acceptance of modern industrial capitalism.     

Restrictions on legal aid in family law cases in England and Wales: creating a necessary barrier to public funding or simply increasing the burden on the family courts?

The Legal Aid, Sentencing and Punishment of Offenders Act 2012 (LASPO) resulted in significant cuts to the availability and scope of legal aid in family law proceedings. Some four years after the cuts were implemented, there has been a great deal of research about their devastating impact on vulnerable groups and individuals. This paper considers the other victim of the cuts, the family court itself. It is currently bulging under pressure from both an increase in applicants who have been forced to represent themselves in family proceedings and also from a rise in applications for injunctions linked to domestic violence. This paper will draw on case law to demonstrate that the reforms implemented through LASPO have seemingly only succeeded in passing the burden from one publicly funded agency, the Legal Aid Agency, to another, HM Courts and Tribunals Service. The family court system is currently at breaking point and further government review is urgently needed if people are going to be able to continue to use the system effectively.     

Waiting for Godot: wishes and worries in managed care

Managed care has done a better job at reducing expenditure growth than it has in improving quality. Although reduced expenditure growth is not appreciated by many, it has real benefits. For the majority of Americans who are privately insured, it results in greater disposable income for goods and services other than health care (although the illusion of employer-paid health insurance obscures this reality for many). For Medicaid programs, slower growth of expenditures facilitates efforts at expanding coverage. For low-income workers, slower expenditure growth results in larger numbers of people retaining insurance coverage than would have been the case if premiums rose more quickly. While there are some victories to which managed care organizations can point, we cannot credibly argue that overall levels of quality and health outcomes are improving as the health care system is massively disrupted by changes in health care finance and delivery. The disruptions create real hardships for some physicians and other health care workers, and worries for many consumers. These worries fuel the managed care backlash. The danger is that politicians will respond to these worries with policies that inhibit the development of high-quality delivery systems. The opportunity is for relatively modest public policy changes--external review organizations, better public-sector purchasing capabilities, public investment in producing and publicizing information on health plan and medical group performance, and establishment of a public ombudsperson--to respond to consumer worries and lead to improvements in health care quality and outcomes. Finally, I would be remiss without a reminder that the single most effective action politicians could take to improve health care quality and outcomes would be to change the rules of health care financing to assure that all Americans are covered by managed care. Even with all of its inadequacies, managed care is much superior to the patchwork care available to the 43 million Americans who are uninsured. The managed care backlash is concerned with protecting patients who are insured (and their providers). Far more valuable would be to protect those without insurance. Sadly, no politician has yet figured out how to do this. Still waiting.     

Health care in Canada: patterns of funding and regulation

During the 1970s the share of health care expenditure in Canadian GNP remained roughly stable, in the range of 7-71/2 percent of GNP, in marked contrast to its escalation in most other countries (the U.S. in particular) and to previous Canadian experience. The shift to a stable pattern coincided with the completion of the Canadian system of universal comprehensive public hospital and medical care insurance. This paper explores how and why the public insurance system served to contain cost escalation. It then discusses the inadequacy of expenditure experience per se as a basis for health system evaluation--the same data will support claims of both "underfunding" and "spiralling costs." More serious questions involve the influence of alternative patterns of health care funding and delivery on the effectiveness and efficiency of care provision, and the resulting distributional patterns of care and income. A brief sketch is given of the present situation and future possibilities of Canadian health care under these heads.     

Institutional Vulnerablity and Opportunity: Immigration and America's "War on Terror"

New legal realism focuses on the complexity of individual action and the view of law from the "bottom-up." Neoinstitutionalism also suggests that rational-actor models are too simplistic, but spotlights enduring historical effects on individual action and thus tends to view the world from the "top-down." In this article, we seek to marry the two disparate approaches by centering on moments of institutional vulnerability and opportunity when a system can change or be redefined. The terrorist attacks on September 11 provided a unique opportunity for institutional change. Policymakers seized this opportunity to introduce reforms into American immigration law that fundamentally altered how that law is administered. The implications of these legal reforms were to group many migrants into the category of potential "terrorist" and to make it increasingly difficult for any migrant to claim "victim" status. Immigrants responded to these reforms by refraining from public criticism of the United States and by becoming American citizens. We discuss the potential implications of those actions on the institution of citizenship .     

Tax planning and tax policy in China: Case study of the tainted milk scandal

No food safety crisis has ever stirred such a national sensation in China like the tainted milk powder scandal in 2008. A further exploration of the root cause of this crisis, however, reveals something more disturbing—it is the undeveloped tax system that causes the melamine milk crisis. Because of the tension between political logic and governance logic of tax reform in China, the vacuum of public good provision becomes a burning issue since the Agricultural Tax Regulation was abolished and farmers’ economic burden became heavier than before. Thus, in order to prevent any food safety incident in the future, a sound notion of tax and an integrated system of tax planning and expenditure should be established and reinforced in the Chinese tax law.     

The Role of Symmetry between the Revenue and the Expenditure Side of the Government Budget in the Debate about the Potential Negative Effects of Tax Competition

The effects of capital tax competition are reconsidered in this paper incorporating the argument that the expenditure structure of public budget should reflect its revenue structure. The paper offers a small open economy model where capital and labour tax revenues are used exclusively on the provision of public inputs. It is shown that if the revenue side of the government budget exactly matches the expenditure side that is if industrial public goods are financed by both private production factors with the weights reflecting the contributions of public inputs to the private factor productivity then public inputs are provided optimally even in the presence of tax competition.     

法律促进预算平衡之基本原理研究

财政赤字和公债规模失控是现代国家的政府共同面临的难题。与静态的预算平衡相比,对预算为什么不平衡的追问以及使之重新趋于平衡的法律对策更加值得关注。法律控制不同类型的财政赤字的目标,都指向预算平衡:其法律意蕴应当由传统的财政收支平衡转为总体经济平衡,德国经济宪法中有关总体经济平衡的规定可以为我国提供最具参考价值的借鉴。至于通过专门立法促进预算平衡的典型,当属美国联邦的赤字削减型预算平衡规则。尽管其因为试图改变和突破联邦权力的分立制衡原则而经司法审查认定为违宪,然而,对促进型经济法的理论研究而言,仍不失为极佳的制度范例。     

Poor relief and families in nineteenth-century Ireland and Italy

This article examines the extent to which poor relief supported families and households in two contrasting European (and predominantly Roman Catholic) countries, Ireland and Italy, over the long nineteenth century. The main focus of the article is on the poor law in Ireland and the extent to which it provided support to families and households. While nuclear and extended families dominated household structures in late nineteenth-century Ireland (at least in rural areas), we show that by 1900, the majority of persons supported in workhouses were single. However, outdoor relief also formed an important part of the Irish poor law system and data on the household composition of persons supported is not available from official sources. Drawing on a data-matching exercise for one poor law union, this article suggests that the household structure of persons on outdoor relief may have been more complex than the official data would indicate and, in contrast to indoor relief, much more representative of overall household structures. In order to put these findings in context we compare the Irish approach with that adopted in Italy.     

Regional Unemployment in Transitional China: A Theoretical and Empirical Analysis

The purpose of this paper is to explain the pattern of regional unemployment in transitional China. A model is developed to explore how urban unemployment in the provinces is influenced by peasants' wages, formal sector wages, and the size of the formal sector. Evidence from panel data suggests that a significant indicator of high unemployment rates is greater Urban–Rural Income Inequality within the province. The hypothesis is that the urban–rural income gap produces migration, and more rural migrants substitute for urban workers, causing further urban unemployment. Since the economic reforms began in 1978, the non-state owned enterprises have been carrying an increasing weight in the economy, and they have contributed significantly to the rapid economic growth of China. Empirical evidence shows that economic reforms have reduced unemployment. The provinces that are still heavily dependent on the state sector are therefore more likely to experience higher unemployment.