Widowhood and Ageing in Traditional English Society

1984 ◽  
Vol 4 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-449 ◽  
Author(s):  
James E. Smith
Keyword(s):  
Life Expectancy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Total Population ◽  
Relative Effectiveness ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Economic Support ◽  
English Society ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Welfare State

ABSTRACTThe persistence of greater life expectancy among women than men means that widowhood on a large scale is a feature of both pre-industrial and subsequent societies. This paper examines the changing structure of widowhood along with the familial and economic support afforded to women in this category, in the 17th and 18th centuries by contrast with the present day. It indicates, by drawing on parish data for England, that the incidence of the widowed status is today lower in each age group than two hundred years previously, but higher as a proportion of total population. Current widows are however twice as likely to be over 55 and to be heads of households. Further comparisons over time are used to make observations about the relative effectiveness of the parish, kin, and the Welfare State in providing material support.

Concrete Monsters of the Welfare State: Discussions of Brutalist Architecture on Social Media

2021 ◽  
pp. 120633122110193
Author(s):  
Max Holleran
Keyword(s):  
Social Media ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Eastern European ◽  
Municipal Governments ◽  
Online Social Media ◽  
1960S And 1970S ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
The Aesthetic ◽  
The Welfare State

Brutalist architecture is an object of fascination on social media that has taken on new popularity in recent years. This article, drawing on 3,000 social media posts in Russian and English, argues that the buildings stand out for their arresting scale and their association with the expanding state in the 1960s and 1970s. In both North Atlantic and Eastern European contexts, the aesthetic was employed in publicly financed urban planning projects, creating imposing concrete structures for universities, libraries, and government offices. While some online social media users associate the style with the overreach of both socialist and capitalist governments, others are more nostalgic. They use Brutalist buildings as a means to start conversations about welfare state goals of social housing, free university, and other services. They also lament that many municipal governments no longer have the capacity or vision to take on large-scale projects of reworking the built environment to meet contemporary challenges.

The WPA and the (Short-Lived) Triumph of Nativism

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Cybelle Fox
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
New Deal ◽  
Mexican Americans ◽  
Legal Status ◽  
Works Progress Administration ◽  
Emergency Relief ◽  
Illegal Aliens ◽  
Local Implementation ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Welfare State

This chapter discusses the subsequent battle over citizenship and legal status restrictions in the Works Progress Administration (WPA), and the local implementation of those restrictions. When the WPA was first authorized in 1935, there were no citizenship or legal status restrictions for access to the program. Just as with Federal Emergency Relief Administration (FERA), New Deal officials expressly forbade local WPA administrators from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, or non-citizenship. Because of these non-discrimination provisions, blacks and Mexican Americans gained unprecedented access to WPA employment. Over time, however, Congress imposed successively harsher restrictions against aliens, barring the employment of illegal aliens on WPA projects in 1936 and imposing a full ban for legal non-citizens by 1939. While these citizenship restrictions constituted the greatest challenge to aliens' access to the welfare state during this period, its impact was short-lived and its effects fell disproportionately on Mexican non-citizens.

The Beginnings of the Nordic Welfare States: Similarities and Differences

1978 ◽  
Vol 21 (1_suppl) ◽  
pp. 9-33 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stein Kuhnle
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Nordic Countries ◽  
Present Stage ◽  
Compulsory Insurance ◽  
Similarities And Differences ◽  
The Welfare State

The beginning of our present stage in the development of the welfare state can be traced to Bismarck's large-scale social insurance schemes of the 1880s. The article compares various political and economic macro-characteristics of the Nordic countries at that time, and proposes hypotheses about the timing of legislation in the Nordic nations, and about the likelihood for Nordic imitations of the principle of compulsory insurance. The article discusses why Denmark was expected to become, and in fact became, a forerunner in the Nordic context, and why the principle of compulsory insurance stood a better chance of gaining acceptance in Norway than in Denmark and Sweden.

Introduction

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roger E. Backhouse ◽  
Bradley W. Bateman ◽  
Tamotsu Nishizawa ◽  
Dieter Plehwe
Keyword(s):  
United Kingdom ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Provision ◽  
Economic Argument ◽  
The United Kingdom ◽  
The World ◽  
Recent Origin ◽  
Welfare Discourse ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Welfare State

During the last several decades, the welfare state has come under increasing pressure around the world, with social provision often being cut or privatized. Often the justification for these changes has been made as an economic argument, especially a neoliberal argument that the welfare state diminishes growth or produces disincentives to work. These arguments are of relatively recent origin, however; many types of economists have supported the creation of the welfare state, even liberal economists. The purpose of this book is to examine the economic arguments that have been used in the United Kingdom, Japan, and Germany in support of, and in opposition to, the welfare state. Special attention is paid to the transnational dimensions of recent welfare discourse and to the ways that liberal and neoliberal arguments about the welfare state have changed over time.

Reducing Risk as well as Inequality: Assessing the Welfare State's Insurance Effects

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Jacob S. Hacker ◽  
Philipp Rehm
Keyword(s):  
Panel Data ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Risk Reduction ◽  
Cross Section ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Education Levels ◽  
Risk Spreading ◽  
Broad Cross Section ◽  
Over Time ◽  
The Welfare State

Abstract Leading accounts of the politics of the welfare state focus on societal demands for risk-spreading policies. Yet current measures of the welfare state focus not on risk, but on inequality. To address this gap, this letter describes the development of two new measures, risk incidence and risk reduction, which correspond to the prevalence of large income losses and the degree to which welfare states reduce that prevalence, respectively. Unlike existing indicators, these measures require panel data, which the authors harmonize for twenty-one democracies. The study finds that large losses affect all income and education levels, making the welfare state valuable to a broad cross-section of citizens. It also finds that taxes and transfers greatly reduce the prevalence of such losses, though to varying degrees across countries and over time. Finally, it disaggregates the measures to identify specific ‘triggers’ of large losses, and finds that these triggers are associated with risks on which welfare states focus, such as unemployment and sickness.

Understanding Homelessness in Neoliberal City: A Study from Delhi

2019 ◽  
Vol 55 (2) ◽  
pp. 285-297
Author(s):  
Subhamay Ghosh
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Urban Poverty ◽  
Open Spaces ◽  
Structural Problem ◽  
The World ◽  
The City ◽  
The Welfare State

‘Homelessness’ is the worst form of urban poverty, and in the wake of neoliberalism it has become more pervasive in cities across the world. Taking the case of Delhi, the study focuses on the making of homelessness, the connotation of being homeless, and the nature of responses from a governing institution to homelessness in the neoliberal city. The study reveals that large scale slum demolition in the last three decades has rendered thousands of people homeless. They are denied of basic human rights and human necessities. They are not even allowed to reside in the open spaces of the city. Governing actors have bypassed their duties by setting up only a ‘few’ night-shelters in the city, most of which remained unoccupied because of several adversities. The study also reveals that homelessness is the outcome of governance failure and the failure of the welfare state. But the structural problem of homelessness is completely overlooked both in policy and by ‘other’ sections of society.

Precarity and Ageing

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Life Expectancy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Older People ◽  
Social Inequalities ◽  
Later Life ◽  
Cultural Representations ◽  
Cultural Economic ◽  
Cultural Contexts ◽  
The Life Course ◽  
The Welfare State

This book examines some of the challenges facing older people, given a context of rising life expectancy, cuts to the welfare state, and widening economic and social inequalities. It explores precarity and ageing from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, critical perspectives, and contexts. Although cultural representations and policy discourses depict older people as a group healthier and more prosperous than ever, many older people experience ageing amid insecurities that emerge in later life or are carried forward as a consequence of earlier disadvantage. The collection of chapters develops a distinctive approach to understanding the changing cultural, economic and social circumstances that create precarity for different groups of older people. The aim of the book is to explore what insights the concept of precarity might bring to an understanding of ageing across the life course, especially in the context of the radical socio-political changes affecting the lives of older people. In doing so, it draws attention both to altered forms of ageing, but also to changing social and cultural contexts, and realities that challenge the assumption that older people will be protected by existing social programmes or whatever resources that can be marshalled privately.

How Does Decentralisation Affect the Welfare State? Territorial Politics and the Welfare State in the UK and US

2009 ◽  
Vol 39 (2) ◽  
pp. 181-201 ◽  
Author(s):  
SCOTT L. GREER
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Services ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
Intergovernmental Relations ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Central State ◽  
Veto Points ◽  
The Uk ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThe relationship between political decentralisation and the welfare state is much studied, and large-scale studies have repeatedly found that decentralised states have less generous welfare states. How do we fit that with other studies that emphasise the potential of decentralisation to raise welfare standards? This article argues that decentralisation, as a variable, is too broad and it is more efficient to focus on the structure of veto players in the central state, intergovernmental relations and intergovernmental finance. Those are the actual mechanisms that connect decentralisation to the welfare states, and they can all vary independently of decentralisation. It uses recent changes in the United States and United Kingdom as examples. The fragmentation and average weakness of the US welfare state is mostly due to a federal government riddled with internal veto points that permits considerable interstate variation and low overall average provision, while tight central control on finances in the UK means that most variation is in the organisation, rather than levels, of social services.

scholarly journals Prevalence and Incidence of Patients with Fibromyalgia in Catalonia between 2010 and 2017. A Descriptive Observational Study

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Glòria Sauch Valmaña ◽  
Queralt Miró Catalina ◽  
Josep Vidal-Alaball
Keyword(s):  
Observational Study ◽  
Cumulative Incidence ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Total Population ◽  
Sociodemographic Characteristics ◽  
Age Group ◽  
Upward Trend ◽  
Primary Care Teams ◽  
Prevalent Disease ◽  
Over Time

Abstract Background: To measure the prevalence and cumulative incidence of individuals diagnosed with fibromyalgia (FM) in Catalonia between 2010 and 2017. Methods: A retrospective observational study of the population of Catalonia between 2010 and 2017, both included, was designed to describe the incidence, prevalence and sociodemographic characteristics of individuals diagnosed with fibromyalgia. A total of 56,098 patients were included in the study. The scope of the study were the 283 Primary Care Teams (PCT), all managed by the Instituto Catalán de la Salud [Catalan Institute of Health] (ICS). Results: The diagnosis of FM is higher in females (95.4%) than males (4.55%), with a mean age of 53.0 [45.0-61.0] years. The prevalence of FM in the total population was 0.4% in 2010 and 1.4% in 2017. The highest prevalence was found in the 55-65 age group (1.05% in 2010, and 2.46% in 2017). A relationship was found between the prevalence of FM and the degree of socioeconomic deprivation in urban areas: the greater the deprivation, the greater the prevalence of FM. The cumulative incidence of FM in the population remained constant over time (0.11% in 2010 and 0.10% in 2017), being more prevalent in women than men (0.18% women, 0.01% men in 2017).Conclusions: Our study confirms that FM is a prevalent disease in Catalonia, with an upward trend in recent years and it is more prevalent in women.

scholarly journals Granting immigrants access to social benefits? How self-interest influences support for welfare state restrictiveness

2018 ◽  
Vol 29 (2) ◽  
pp. 148-165 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel Degen ◽  
Theresa Kuhn ◽  
Wouter van der Brug
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
First Generation ◽  
Economic Status ◽  
Large Body ◽  
European Social Survey ◽  
Social Benefits ◽  
Self Interest ◽  
The Impact ◽  
The Welfare State

In the context of large-scale migration within and into Europe, the question of whether and under which conditions immigrants should be granted access to social benefits in the country of destination is of high political relevance. A large body of research has studied natives’ attitudes towards giving immigrants access to the welfare state, while research on attitudes of immigrants themselves is scarce. Focusing on the impact of self-interest, we compare immigrants and native citizens in their attitudes towards granting immigrants access to the welfare state. We identify three mechanisms through which self-interest can influence these attitudes: immigrant origin, socio-economic status and – for first-generation immigrants only – incorporation into the host society. We test our expectations using cross-national data from the European Social Survey round 2008. The findings suggest that self-interest is indeed one of the factors that motivate attitudes towards welfare state restrictiveness among natives and immigrants, but also point at relevant exceptions to this pattern.

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