The U.S. Welfare State Is Minimal

2021 ◽  
pp. 99-105
Author(s):  
Mark Robert Rank ◽  
Lawrence M. Eppard ◽  
Heather E. Bullock
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Welfare Benefits ◽  
The Social ◽  
Welfare Expenditures ◽  
The U.S

Chapter 13 examines the size of the social safety net in the United States. Compared with European and other OECD countries, the United States has a fairly small safety net. The amount spent is approximately 2 percent of our GDP. In particular, programs aimed at protecting children from poverty are minimal. These programs have also been reduced over time, especially since the 1996 welfare reform changes. Challenging the myth of the bloated welfare state requires tackling multiple intersecting misperceptions, including erroneous portrayals of U.S. welfare expenditures as exorbitant and low-income programs as driving up the national debt. It will also require shattering myths that legitimize keeping welfare benefits low.

scholarly journals OLD AND FORGOTTEN? CARE FOR ELDERS IN MEXICO AND THE U.S.

2019 ◽  
Vol 3 (Supplement_1) ◽  
pp. S64-S65
Author(s):  
Emma Aguila ◽  
Jaqueline L Angel ◽  
Kyriakos Markides
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Old Age ◽  
Low Income ◽  
Health Care Financing ◽  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
The Government ◽  
The U.S

Abstract The United States and Mexico differ greatly in the organization and financing of their old-age welfare states. They also differ politically and organizationally in government response at all levels to the needs of low-income and frail citizens. While both countries are aging rapidly, Mexico faces more serious challenges in old-age support that arise from a less developed old-age welfare state and economy. For Mexico, financial support and medical care for older low-income citizens are universal rights, however, limited fiscal resources for a large low-income population create inevitable competition among the old and the young alike. Although the United States has a more developed economy and well-developed Social Security and health care financing systems for the elderly, older Mexican-origin individuals in the U.S. do not necessarily benefit fully from these programs. These institutional and financial problems to aging are compounded in both countries by longer life spans, smaller families, as well as changing gender roles and cultural norms. In this interdisciplinary panel, the authors of five papers deal with the following topics: (1) an analysis of old age health and dependency conditions, the supply of aging and disability services, and related norms and policies, including the role of the government and the private sector; (2) a binational comparison of federal safety net programs for low-income elderly in U.S. and Mexico; (3) when strangers become family: the role of civil society in addressing the needs of aging populations; and (4) unmet needs for dementia care for Latinos in the Hispanic-EPESE.

scholarly journals Amnesty or Abolition?

2011 ◽  
Vol 1 (4) ◽  
pp. 54-68 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kelly Lytle Hernández
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Criminal Justice ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Welfare ◽  
Control Systems ◽  
Undocumented Immigrants ◽  
Mass Incarceration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Immigration Control ◽  
The Social

Convicts and undocumented immigrants are similarly excluded from full social and political membership in the United States. Disfranchised, denied core protections of the social welfare state and subject to forced removal from their homes, families, and communities, convicts and undocumented immigrants, together, occupy the caste of outsiders living within the United States. This essay explores the rise of the criminal justice and immigration control systems that frame the caste of outsiders. Reaching back to the forgotten origins of immigration control during the era of black emancipation, this essay highlights the deep and allied inequities rooted in the rise of immigration control and mass incarceration.

Taking the Long View: COVID-19 Priorities for the Biden Administration

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sandro Galea ◽  
Catherine K. Ettman ◽  
Nason Maani ◽  
Salma M. Abdalla
Keyword(s):  
Safety Net ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social Safety Net ◽  
Health Decision Making ◽  
Political Landscape ◽  
National Conversation ◽  
The Social ◽  
National Response ◽  
Health Decision ◽  
Policy Priority

Abstract The COVID-19 pandemic transformed the American political landscape, influencing the course of the 2020 election and creating an urgent policy priority for the new administration. “The Biden-Harris plan to beat COVID-19” represents a practicable, technically competent, plan to contain the pandemic, one that will serve the country well in the months ahead. We suggest that the United States would also benefit from an even bolder set of aspirations—reframing of the national conversation on COVID-19, embedding equity in all health decision making, strengthening the social safety net, and changing how we talk about health—as part of the national response to COVID-19. This would represent a genuine step forward in our approach to health, informed by the systemic flaws COVID-19 exposed, and realize benefits from the pandemic moment that would propel national health forward for the rest of the century.

Social work academia and policy in the United States

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Arati Maleku ◽  
Richard Hoefer
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Social Work ◽  
Social Policy ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Policy Process ◽  
Institutional Support ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Social ◽  
Work Education ◽  
Policy Engagement

This chapter examines the engagement of social work academics in the policy process in the United States. It begins by presenting an overview of social policy and the welfare state in the United States and by discussing the emergence of the social work profession in that country. The development of social work education in the United States and its contemporary features are then depicted. Following these, the methodology and the findings of a study of the policy engagement of American social work academics are presented. The findings relate to the levels of engagement in policy and the forms that this takes. The study also offers insights into various factors that are associated with these, such as perceptions, capabilities, institutional support and the accessibility of the policy process. The chapter concludes with an analysis of the findings and their implications.

APPLICATION THE SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES PRINCIPLE OF SOCIAL STATE

10.12737/903 ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 77-81
Author(s):  
Владимир Сафонов ◽  
Vladimir Safonov
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Supreme Court ◽  
The United States ◽  
Social State ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Supreme Court ◽  
The U.S

The article reveals the problem of applying the principle of the social state in the practice of the U.S. Supreme Court.

A Cross-National Perspective on the American Welfare State

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Julia Lynch
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Health Care ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
The United States ◽  
State Regulation ◽  
Eligibility Criterion ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
Social Goods ◽  
The U.S ◽  
The Welfare State

The welfare system in the United States is not simply “small,”“residualist,” or “laggard.” It is true that protection against standard social risks is generally less comprehensive and less generous in the United States than in other rich democracies, but there are other important differences as well: The U. S. welfare state is unusual in its extensive reliance on private markets to produce public social goods; its geographic variability; its insistence on deservingness as an eligibility criterion; and its orientation toward benefits for the elderly rather than children and working-age adults. Nevertheless, the U.S. welfare state is not sui generis. The actors involved in the construction of the U.S. welfare state, the institutions created in response to social problems, and the contemporary pressures confronting the welfare state all have parallels in other countries. The markets that provide so many social goods in the United States are the products of state action and state regulation, and hence should really be thought of as part of the welfare “state.” Even recent expansions to the welfare state in the United States have, with the partial exception of health-care reform, reinforced old patterns of elderly oriented spending and benefits for worthy (working) adults. In order for the U.S. welfare state to adjust successfully to ensure against new social risks, it must focus more on underdeveloped program areas like health care, child care, early childhood education, and vocational training.

Gender and the Origins of Modern Social Policies in Britain and the United States

1991 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 36-93 ◽  
Author(s):  
Theda Skocpol ◽  
Gretchen Ritter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Working Women ◽  
The United States ◽  
Welfare States ◽  
Social Policies ◽  
The Social ◽  
Social Security Act ◽  
Modern Welfare State

Comparative research on the origins of modern welfare states typically asks why certain European nations, including Great Britain, enacted pensions and social insurance between the 1880s and the 1920s, while the United States “lagged behind,” that is did not establish such policies for the entire nation until the Social Security Act of 1935. To put the question this way overlooks the social policies that were distinctive to the early twentieth-century United States. During the period when major European nations, including Britain, were launching paternalist versions of the modern welfare state, the United States was tentatively experimenting with what might be called a maternalist welfare state. In Britain, male bureaucrats and party leaders designed policies “for the good” of male wage-workers and their dependents. Meanwhile, in the United States, early social policies were championed by elite and middle-class women “for the good” of less privileged women. Adult American women were helped as mothers, or as working women who deserved special protection because they were potential mothers.

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