Public and Private Social Welfare

2021 ◽  
pp. 152-172
Author(s):  
Willem Adema ◽  
Peter Whiteford

This chapter contributes to the discussion of public and private social welfare by drawing together recent information on these different ways of providing social benefits. It presents data on public social expenditure for 2015–17 and accounts for the impact of the tax system and private social expenditure to develop indicators on net social expenditure for 2015. The chapter shows that conventional estimates of gross public spending differ significantly from estimates of net public spending and net total social expenditure, leading to an incorrect measurement and ranking of total social welfare effort across countries.Just as importantly, the fact that total social welfare support is incorrectly measured implies that the outcomes of welfare state support may also be incorrectly measured. Thus, the main objectives of the chapter include considering the implications of this more comprehensive definition of welfare state effort for analysis of the distributional impact of the welfare state and for an assessment of the efficiency and incentive effects of different welfare state arrangements.

Author(s):  
Daniel Fernando Carolo ◽  
José António Pereirinha

AbstractThis paper presents a data series on social expenditure in Portugal for the period 1938-2003. The series was built with the aim of identifying and characterizing the most significant phases in the process leading up to the current welfare state system in this country. The establishment of a social insurance (Previdência) in 1935 was one of the founding pillars of the Estado Novo (New State). Reforms to Social Welfare (Previdência Social) in 1962, while in the full throes of the New State, policy measures taken after the revolution of 1974 and a new orientation for social policy following the accession of Portugal to the European Economic Community (EEC) in the mid-1980s brought about significant transformations in the institutional organizational structure that provided welfare and conferred social rights in Portugal. To understand this process, knowledge is needed of the transformations to the institutional structures governing the organizations that provided welfare, welfare coverage in terms of the type of benefit and the population entitled to social risk protection, the magnitude of spending on benefits associated with these risks, as well as how benefits were allocated between the institutions. We built a data series for the period 1938-1980, which can then be matched to data already published in the OECD Social Expenditure Database from 1980 onwards. As a result, a consistent series for social expenditure from 1938 to 2003 was obtained. The methodology used to create the series enabled us to measure the impact of the variation in population coverage for social risks and the average generosity of benefits on the relative share of social expenditure in GDP. We present an interpretive reading for the full period, covering the New State and the Democracy from 1974, of the process of building the welfare state in Portugal.


1971 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-43 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Moore

Many historians have written about the impressive social achievement of the last Liberal Government which sat in Britain from 1905 to 1916. Prominent among them is Bentley Gilbert whose Evolution of National Insurance in Great Britain importantly expands. Maurice Bruce's excellent survey The Coming of the Welfare State. Much of this work has emphasized the political maneuverings for legislation which increased the economic security of millions of British citizens. This paper takes a different, supplementary approach. It is an attempt to understand the impact of the Liberals' social reform program on a part of the philanthropic community which had asssumed an important role in meeting the problems of poverty. The focus is on the provisions for social welfare made by voluntary and statutory agencies in order to clarify the beginnings of their successful partnership which today operates in the Welfare State. David Owen, in his monumental study of English philanthropy, has rightly characterized the modern role for voluntary agencies as “Junior Partner(s) in the Welfare Firm,” but he has wrongly stated that this role was recognized only after the First World War. The voluntary-statutory partnership in social welfare was formed during the Liberals' legislative revolution from 1906 to 1911: voluntarists who were affected by it understood its signficance for their work.The welfare measures of the post-Second World War Labour Government gave final recognition to the fact that in Britain social development was no longer to be the by-product of economic development, and that the State must plan comprehensively to meet social needs rather than filling in the gaps left by private effort. In a very real sense the proposals of the Fabians, Sidney and Beatrice Webb, given shape in this new age by a Fabian disciple, William Beveridge, became the foundation of British policy. But the social legislation enacted by the Labour Government was implanted in ground haphazardly prepared by previous measures which provided for specific needs, but often with little reference to related questions.


2021 ◽  
pp. 452-472
Author(s):  
Herbert Obinger

This chapter focuses on both the expenditures and the revenues of the welfare state. Using the latest data available, it depicts and analyses major developments in social spending and public revenues in twenty-one advanced Western democracies since 1980. The entry discusses measurement issues, depicts the determinants of cross-national differences in spending and revenue levels identified in the literature, and sheds light on the impact of social spending and taxation on social outcomes, such as income inequality. It is argued that spending and revenue figures, irrespective of several shortcomings, provide important indicators of both the logic and pattern of welfare state development.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Georgina Brewis ◽  
Angela Ellis Paine ◽  
Irene Hardill ◽  
Rose Lindsey ◽  
Rob Macmillan

ePDF and ePUB available Open Access under CC-BY-NC licence. During the consolidation of the welfare state in the 1940s, and its reshaping in the 2010s, the boundaries between the state, voluntary action, the family and the market were called into question. This interdisciplinary book explores the impact of these ‘transformational moments’ on the role, position and contribution of voluntary action to social welfare. It considers how different narratives have been constructed, articulated and contested by public, political and voluntary sector actors, making comparisons within and across the 1940s and 2010s. With a unique analysis of recent and historical material, this important book illuminates contemporary debates about voluntary action and welfare.


1987 ◽  
Vol 16 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-18 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael O'Higgins

ABSTRACTThe focus of this paper is on the nature of the egalitarian policy objectives of the welfare state, and on the evaluation and assessment of social policies in the light of those objectives. This focus reflects the pervasive but often ill-defined presence of equality as an objective for social policy, without asserting that it is either unique or uncontested as an objective. The paper does not offer an evaluation of the success or failure of the welfare state in relation to equality; rather it is concerned with exploring what might be and is meant by equality as a target for social policy, with presenting some contrasting conceptions of equality, and with discussing the implications of the multiple meanings of equality for the way in which we think about issues in social policy and, in particular, about the impact of social welfare programmes.


2008 ◽  
Vol 89 (1) ◽  
pp. 129-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
Idit Weiss-Gal ◽  
John Gal

Seeking to understand the impact of race and nationality on the attitudes of social workers towards social welfare policy, this study compares the attitudes of Arab and Jewish social workers in Israel. This analysis seeks to determine whether the attitudes of the two groups of social workers diverge and, if so, in what direction. Based on a sample of 110 social workers, evenly divided between Arabs and Jews, the findings revealed both similarities and differences in the social welfare policy references of the two groups of social workers. Although both supported the welfare state, they also expressed a lack of enthusiasm to finance it and a degree of skepticism regarding its impact. In contrast to their Jewish counterparts, Arab social workers were more supportive of the welfare state but did not support policies that were perceived as unsupportive of Arabs.


The Forum ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 18 (2) ◽  
pp. 223-247
Author(s):  
Ryan LaRochelle

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.


2011 ◽  
Vol 15 (4) ◽  
pp. 315-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Nollert ◽  
Sebastian Schief

Most welfare state typologies still characterize Switzerland as a liberal welfare regime. However, recent research shows that its welfare state did not retrench but instead moved towards the conservative type. Nevertheless, higher social expenditure has not been accompanied by increases in taxation. Moreover, Switzerland managed to overcome the so-called trilemma of the service economy. After analyzing the shift of the Swiss welfare state from a liberal to a conservative welfare regime, we argue that the Swiss economic success story of the twentieth century is based on a favourable policy mix (tax system, labour market, financial sector) used to compete successfully in the world market for protection. We conclude that, as a political entrepreneur, Switzerland has the capability to receive taxes and investments from foreign individuals and enterprises, wealthy residents and high-skilled and well-paid immigrants to finance the welfare state and to overcome the trilemma of the service economy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nagihan Ozkanca Andic ◽  
Ekrem Karayilmazlar

The Public Expenditure/GDP ratio is one of the most significant metrics that measure the state's share of the economy. It can be said that there is an interventionist state type in countries where this rate is high, or it can be argued that the share of the public sector in the economy is low in countries where this rate is low. It is also possible to argue that the countries' economic, sociological, and political factors play an essential role in determining this ratio. Regulations, which are the most important tools of the welfare state, may arise through economic controls as well as through social policies. This study aims to find an answer to the question of whether this situation is possible for a developing country such as Turkey while Nordic countries, which determine a system different from other welfare models, succeed in raising social welfare without giving up the principles such as equality and justice that they have despite the globalization effect. The data obtained by various methods were subjected to comparison using the Data Envelopment Analysis method in order to achieve this purpose. <p> </p><p><strong> Article visualizations:</strong></p><p><img src="/-counters-/edu_01/0777/a.php" alt="Hit counter" /></p>


Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document