scholarly journals Emerging Retirement Crisis: When Social Security Is Not Enough

2020 ◽  
Vol 4 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. 694-695
Author(s):  
David Miller
Keyword(s):  
Older Adults ◽  
Social Security ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
Public Affairs ◽  
Retirement Plans ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Retirement Crisis

Abstract Evidence suggests a growing retirement crisis in the United States among older adults placing many of them at risk of falling into poverty. While Social Security provides income assistance to retirees, the average monthly benefit is $1,300. Among older adults nearing or in retirement, the use of public assistance programs is increasing. Using data collected by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research we examine retirement preparedness, borrowing from retirement plans, and use of social welfare programs. Findings indicate increased borrowing from retirement plans due to debt, significant differences in racial and gender groups accessing and receiving services among those 75 and older. Increasing rates of unpreparedness for retirement exist among older Americans, particularly among adults of color. An increase in the use of safety net services among older adults is occurring concurrently with severe funding reductions in social welfare programming.

The Rise of Block-Granting as a Tool of Conservative Statecraft

The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-247
Author(s):  
Ryan LaRochelle
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Ronald Reagan ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Block Grant ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Block Grants ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Political Weapon ◽  
The Welfare State

AbstractThis article sheds new light on how conservatism has affected American state development by tracing the history of how block-granting transformed from a bipartisan tool to solve problems of public administration in the 1940s into a mechanism to roll back and decentralize the welfare state that had reached its zenith in the 1960s. By the early 1980s, conservative policymakers had coopted the previously bipartisan tool in their efforts to chip away at the increasingly centralized social welfare system that emerged out of the Great Society. In the early 1980s, Ronald Reagan successfully converted numerous categorical grants into a series of block grants, slashing funding for several social safety net programs. Block-granting allows conservative opponents of the postwar welfare state to gradually erode funding and grant more authority to state governments, thus using federalism as a more palatable political weapon to reduce social welfare spending than the full dismantlement of social programs. However, despite a flurry of successes in the early 1980s, block-granting has not proven as successful as conservatives might have hoped, and recent efforts to convert programs such as Medicaid and parts of the Affordable Care Act into block grants have failed. The failure of recent failed block grant efforts highlights the resilience of liberal reforms, even in the face of sustained conservative opposition. However, conservatives still draw upon the tool today in their efforts to erode and retrench social welfare programs. Block-granting has thus transformed from a bipartisan tool to improve bureaucratic effectiveness into a perennial weapon in conservatives’ war on the welfare state.

Social Welfare History in the Age of Diversity

2021 ◽  
Vol 33 (4) ◽  
pp. 429-440
Author(s):  
EDWARD D. BERKOWITZ
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Disability Insurance ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Policy Perspective ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Welfare History ◽  
Social Welfare History ◽  
Social Security Disability ◽  
Over Time

AbstractThis policy perspective discusses three important social welfare programs—Social Security Disability Insurance, Medicare, and Temporary Aid to Needy Families—and offers an explanation of how they have expanded over time.

scholarly journals The Relevance of Ali Hasjmy's Thoughts on Islamic Country of Islamic Sharia Implementation in Aceh

2019 ◽  
Vol 2 (2) ◽  
pp. 228-240
Author(s):  
Arief Muammar ◽  
Amroeni Drajat ◽  
Katimin Katimin
Keyword(s):  
Social Security ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Community Empowerment ◽  
Qualitative Approach ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Islamic Country ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
System 2 ◽  
The Republic ◽  
Descriptive Qualitative

This research deals with the relevance of Ali Hasjmy's thoughts on Islamic country of Islamic sharia implementation in Aceh. This research is conducted by using descriptive qualitative approach. The concept of an Islamic Country which built by Ali Hasjmy was relevant to the implementation of the formalization of Islamic shariah in Aceh at least in four fields. 1) The relevance of the paradigm of the Islamic Country to the republic system, 2) the relevance of the field of staffing in the concept of the Islamic Country with the criteria of the apparatus in the formalization system of Islamic shariah, 3) The relevance of the concept of the Islamic Country concerning the division of power with the structure of the Aceh government, 4) the relevance of definite social security in the concept of the Islamic Country with social welfare programs and community empowerment in Aceh

Conclusion

Getting Tough ◽  
2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julilly Kohler-Hausmann
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Political Rhetoric ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
Social Regulation ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
History Of ◽  
The U.S

This concluding chapter discusses how chronicling the recent history of the U.S. welfare state presents different challenges. Instead of making visible the towering institutions in plain sight, scholars have the challenge of keeping the light on something that much political rhetoric insists has already retreated or will soon retreat into irrelevance. The chapter highlights those sections of the safety net that have attenuated to mere gossamer threads and bring into view the robust state supports obscured by claims of their recipients' deservingness and independence. This is critical because social welfare programs continue to figure prominently in low-income communities. Welfare programs have become more privatized, shifted strategies, and redirected resources but have not abdicated responsibility for social regulation.

Sorting Out the Mixed Economy

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Amy C. Offner
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Latin American ◽  
New Deal ◽  
The United States ◽  
Business Associations ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
The Road ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
The Third World ◽  
The New Deal

In the years after 1945, a flood of U.S. advisors swept into Latin America with dreams of building a new economic order and lifting the Third World out of poverty. These businessmen, economists, community workers, and architects went south with the gospel of the New Deal on their lips, but Latin American realities soon revealed unexpected possibilities within the New Deal itself. In Colombia, Latin Americans and U.S. advisors ended up decentralizing the state, privatizing public functions, and launching austere social welfare programs. By the 1960s, they had remade the country's housing projects, river valleys, and universities. They had also generated new lessons for the United States itself. When the Johnson administration launched the War on Poverty, U.S. social movements, business associations, and government agencies all promised to repatriate the lessons of development, and they did so by multiplying the uses of austerity and for-profit contracting within their own welfare state. A decade later, ascendant right-wing movements seeking to dismantle the midcentury state did not need to reach for entirely new ideas: they redeployed policies already at hand. This book brings readers to Colombia and back, showing the entanglement of American societies and the contradictory promises of midcentury statebuilding. The untold story of how the road from the New Deal to the Great Society ran through Latin America, the book also offers a surprising new account of the origins of neoliberalism.

Remittances and the Politics of Austerity

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Roy Germano
Keyword(s):  
Developing Countries ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Economic Crisis ◽  
Social Welfare Function ◽  
Global Markets ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Social Instability ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Poor Families ◽  
International Migrants

Remittances sent by international migrants have become an increasingly important source of social welfare in the developing world. This chapter explores what remittances are, why migrants send them, and how poor families use them. I argue in this chapter that remittances are more than just gifts from one relative to another. They play a larger social welfare role that complements funds that governments spend on social welfare programs. This social welfare function has become particularly important in recent decades as developing countries have prioritized austerity and integrated into volatile global markets. I argue that by filling a welfare gap in an age of austerity, remittances help to reduce the suffering and anger that so often trigger political and social instability during times of economic crisis.

Trust in a Polarized Age

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Vallier
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Liberal Democracy ◽  
Empirical Data ◽  
Political Trust ◽  
Vital Role ◽  
Welfare Programs ◽  
Social Welfare Programs ◽  
Downward Spiral

Americans today don’t trust each other and their institutions as much as they used to. The collapse of social and political trust arguably has fueled our increasingly ferocious ideological conflicts and hardened partisanship. But is the decline in trust inevitable? Are we caught in a downward spiral that must end in war-like politics, institutional decay, and possibly even civil war? This book argues that American political and economic institutions are capable of creating and maintaining trust, even through polarized times. Combining philosophical arguments and empirical data, the author shows that liberal democracy, markets, and social welfare programs all play a vital role in producing social and political trust. Even more, these institutions can promote trust justly, by recognizing and respecting our basic human rights.

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