State Welfare Provision Research Articles

Costs and Outcomes of an Extra Care Housing Scheme in England

Extra care housing, which provides support and care for people in specially designed accommodations, has now been part of the range of housing and care services available to older people in England for several years. Currently, the United Kingdom evidence base tells us little about the financing, estimation of the costs, or burden to the public purse of housing with care. The United Kingdom has significant state welfare provision in the areas of health and social care. The objective of this in-depth case study was to investigate the cost and outcome consequences for a sample of people who moved into an extra care housing scheme in Bradford, England, and to reflect on the methodological implications for future research in this developing area. The main finding of the study was that the overall cost per person increased after a move to extra care housing, but that this increase was associated with improved social care outcomes and improvements in quality of life.

Timing of first union among second-generation Turks in Europe

This study examines the influence of parents and peers on first union timing among the Turkish second generation in Europe using pooled data from the TIES survey. Cross-national differences in union formation are assessed by comparing countries with different integration policies and welfare regimes. Analyses show that both parents and peers are relevant predictors of entry into union: More modern parental characteristics and contact with non-coethnic peers result in postponement of union entry. Furthermore, parental and peer influences are found to be rather similar in all seven countries despite a variety of integration policies. Actual timing differences between countries may be caused by welfare state provisions directed at young adults.

Voluntary action and the state in historical perspective

New Labour has encouraged the development of a ‘partnership’ between the statutory and voluntary sectors in which both sides are expected to work together to improve welfare provision. However, if the voluntary sector has always sought a partnership with the state, it is important to ask how this partnership has changed over time and may change in the future. This paper examines the relationship between the two sectors over the last two centuries. It begins by discussing the role played by the voluntary sector and the history of statutory–voluntary relations during the 19th century. It then examines the development of the ‘new philanthropy’ in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before considering the voluntary sector’s response to the expansion of state welfare provision after 1945. The final section summarises the paper’s main arguments and compares Labour and Conservative attitudes to the role of voluntary social provision before the 2010 General Election.

Policy Intervention and its Impact: Analysing New Labour's Public Service Reform Model as applied to Local Authority Housing in England

This paper discusses recent experience of public service reform in the UK, in terms of its theoretical underpinning, the mechanisms developed to effect change, and the impacts of change. Crucial aspects of the regime that have evolved under New Labour here include the roles of external inspection and quasi‐markets. Our key claim is that a close study of the enactment of public service reform provides important insights about the conduct of government practices that are often absent in more abstract interpretations of governmentality. The paper first discusses interpretations of UK public sector reform that foreground the significance of neo‐liberal ideology. Second, this discussion of neo‐liberalism is used as a base to explore the distinctiveness of New Labour's reforms against the backdrop of the Conservative policies in the 1980s. While noting the orthodox justification for reshaping state welfare provision we suggest that a more agency focused analysis of these reforms is required if we are to understand their specific impact. Third, to support this argument, we investigate how “reform impacts” may be measured with reference to New Labour's reforms of local authority housing services. Overall, we conclude that while neo‐liberalism is an important influence it is mistaken to assume a necessary causal relationship between ideology and practice. Instead research should seek to foreground the interstices and rival narratives that co‐exist effectively within the institutions of government.

De invloed van Europese verzorgingsstaten op financiële overdrachten binnen families - Een benadering op microniveau

The role of European welfare states in intergenerational monetary transfers: A micro-level perspective .This article integrates sociological and economical theory to provide a comprehensive explanation for why parents send money to particular children, and tests more explicit hypotheses on how differences in welfare state provisions can explain divergent patterns between countries. The spending on various welfare domains as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product is used to determine whether intergenerational solidarity is shaped by welfare state provisions. We use data from the Survey of Health and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to analyse the influence of welfare state provisions on the likelihood of intergenerational transfers in ten European countries. The results indicate that parental resources and reciprocity expectations as well as children’s needs are important determinants of monetary transfers. Although differences between countries are found, they do not seem to justify the distinct division between “the three worlds of welfare” often used in sociological work.

The Reproductive Behavior of the English Landed Gentry in the Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries

Between 1800 and 1939 the average size of the English landed gentry family fell from 5.96 children per married couple to 2.25. Reproductive patterns in gentry society exhibited early signs of demographic behavior that would become the norm for the rest of the population by the mid-twentieth century. The conscious limitation of fertility has been an important component of modern society, having been linked with a series of significant developments, not the least of which is the state provision of universal welfare and education. The evolution of gentry fertility patterns also poses specific implications for understanding the national fertility decline and the history of landed society

Globalisation, Skill Formation and the Varieties of Capitalism Approach

This paper is concerned to evaluate the varieties of capitalism approach to global institutional convergence and divergence as represented by the skill formation and welfare state theory of Margarita Estevez-Abe, Torben Iversen and David Soskice. They argue that the configuration of particular skills and labor markets distinctive of national economies can explain key aspects of welfare state provision. This paper makes the case that the generation and utilization of skills is fundamentally changing as a result of developments within multinational companies (MNCs). The empirical data with respect to the critique of Estevez-Abe et al's theory comes from a three-year study of MNCs' skill strategies. The study comprises 190 interviews with senior managers in 20 MNCs in three sectors -- electronics and information technology, automobiles and finance. Insofar as skill is related to strengthening working-class institutions and power, then the skills capture thesis suggests a weakening of such institutions and the influence they have on welfare state institutions.

‘Doing Deals on the House’ in a ‘Post-welfare’ Society: Evidence of Micro-Market Practices from Britain and the USA

This paper critically examines an observed shift towards a ‘post-welfare’ society, in which the home-as-investment is replacing by stealth the former protection of more comprehensive welfare state provision. Comparing Britain with the USA, the paper draws on biographies and resource inventories for a sample of 100 working families from five high-cost cities (London, Edinburgh, San Francisco, Seattle and Portland). Micro-market practices from this sample are presented in the form of vignettes to highlight the complex ways that housing consumption (such as use of a spare room) intersect with financial assets of the home (equity withdrawn to spend on family care). While some of these reported practices could be adopted by tenants as well as owner occupiers, the suggestion is that buying a first home and climbing the housing ladder (however risky in terms of mortgage finance) now assumes the imperative of future welfare provision. By exposing the multiple ways in which households ‘spend’ their housing assets on needs as well as wants, this paper points to the hidden costs for individual households (in time, money, discomfort, anxiety and ill-health) of a housing-led privatisation of welfare.

Sharing the Burden: The Role of Government and NGOs in Protecting and Providing for Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Japan

This article examines the background to Japan's current refugee recognition and protection regime in the thematic context of burden-sharing. It considers recent legislative reforms and the role of local NGOs with the aim of setting Japan's domestic protection framework against the background of its international legal obligations. The analysis suggests that the policy and practices of the Japanese government have resulted in the exclusion of many who seek to enter the country and that for those in-country there is inadequate state social and welfare provision. The article questions whether Japan's significant financial contribution can adequately discharge its international burden-sharing responsibilities and argues that the government has effectively shifted responsibility for protection and support to local NGOs. It concludes that without further changes burden-shifting and not burden-sharing will remain a predominant feature of Japan's approach to protecting and providing for asylum seekers and refugees in Japan.

Paying the price for reconciling work and family life: Comparing the wage penalty for women's part-time work in Britain, Germany and the United States

A comparison of the institutional context of part-time employment in Britain, Germany and the United States forms the backdrop for this study of women's part-time work and wage penalties in each country. Results using panel data and fixed-effects wage estimates show three distinct “part-time regimes”. Germany has the lowest female labour force participation rates, and the smallest penalties for part-time employment. The United States and Britain each have steep penalties for part-time work, but part-time work is much more prevalent in Britain. We conclude that family policy, welfare state provision and labour market structure behave jointly to determine distinct models of work-family balance and the financial consequences associated with them.

Public and Parliamentary Attitudes to Welfare

One of the core functions of parliament in the United Kingdom is arguably to represent the views of the people. While opinions differ as to the precise nature of this representation, one would expect to find a broad measure of comparability between public opinion and the opinions of those representing the public in parliament. This article examines the extent to which shifts in political attitudes towards the welfare state have been reflected in public opinion, particularly since the election of New Labour in 1997. Using data derived from a series of interviews with MPs from all sides of the House of Commons, and information on public attitudes to welfare collated from the British Social Attitudes survey, it seeks to identify and explain areas of disagreement and consensus in public and parliamentary attitudes to welfare. It focuses in particular on questions regarding commitment to state welfare provision, priorities in welfare spending and attitudes towards funding for welfare services.

Building review Norwich Forum 1998–2001: millennial prospect, coincident detachment

This study of the development of Norwich Forum examines its realisation within the framework of the Millennium Commission. Replacing the Central Library of 1963, destroyed by fire in 1994, Norfolk and Norwich Millennium Library, located within The Forum, is characterised by Michael Hopkins's tempered high-tech architecture and an ambivalent relationship between public and private sector provision. Idealistic claims of a modernising kind, put forward in a provincial context, remain, as they were in the 1960s, responsible for paradoxical aspects of the building sited adjacent to an ‘historic’ city centre. The move from paternalistic postwar welfare state provision to that conditioned by the expectations of a millennial ‘experience economy’ is explored in examining the conceptual agenda for the new building where a contextual propriety is still pervasive. In spite of being underwritten by the rhetoric of regeneration, and the logic of Hopkins's rationale, coincidental qualities condition the presence of the library.

Institutions, Inequality and Social Norms: Explaining Variations in Participation

This article seeks to explain why electoral participation varies over time and space. It develops a hypothesis that one factor is the nature of social citizenship rights, which relates to welfare state provision. The article argues that institutions shape and influence social norms and, in so doing, affect individual behaviour. Rights which are more universal in nature encourage norms of solidarity and participation in ways that more residual systems do not. Therefore, where welfare states are more universalist in nature, we should see higher levels of participation. I use inequality rates as a measure of welfare state outputs to investigate this and find a significant negative relationship between inequality and electoral turnout. This suggests that the nature of welfare state institutions has an effect upon individuals' political behaviour.

Globalization, International Finance, and Political Islam in the Arab World

This article looks at one important aspect of globalization in the Arab World, namely the provision of international finance by the US, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the World Bank in support of economic liberalization programs. This flow of international finance has been partly determined by geopolitical factors and in some countries has resulted in a decline in state provision of social welfare, increased poverty, and increased inequality. Not only has this form of globalization been increasingly challenged by Islamist groups, but many such groups have moved in to provide social capital and fill the welfare gap created by the gradual withdrawal of the state from socio-economic affairs. Globalization has thus strengthened the hand of political Islam and undermined the political legitimacy of incumbent regimes.

Why was there no ‘Old Poor Law’ in Scotland and Ireland?

This article will attempt to explain why England's system of poor relief was not replicated in Scotland and Ireland until well into the nineteenth century. The difference rests on the development of a nation of wage-labourers in England, the result of agrarian capitalism, a process that was complete by the 1790s, at a time when the population of other European countries was overwhelmingly dominated by peasants. The unique class structure in England led from the 1530s onward to the creation of a poor relief system, state-provided welfare funded from taxation, a type of social assistance that was absent elsewhere.

Legal aid in Belgium: the absence of a tradition?

In Belgium, legal aid was and still is mainly the responsibility of the legal profession. It is up to this group to provide legal advice and to represent citizens seeking justice before the court. History has shown that advocates regard themselves as the experts in this particular line of jurisdiction, citing their law degrees combined with a vocational training and the disciplinary rules installed by the Bars as evidence of their suitability. For decades the legal profession would not tolerate any interference in their practices, nor in the organisation of the means of access to justice by the poor. They regarded themselves as the only professional group equipped to handle the legal problems of the poorest rung in society. Such a belief was perhaps understandable in the nineteenth century when social problems were solved by charity. At that time, citizens were favoured by legal aid. There were no formal rights and the organisation of legal aid differed from local bar to local bar. After two world wars, politicians directed liberal society towards a social democracy and as the social security system expanded, more people became entitled to enjoy the advantages of the system. Social problems could be solved by the social security system. Legal problems, often connected with social problems, remained the jurisdiction of the legal profession and the latter did not want to change the manner in which access to justice was organised. No attempts were made by the legal profession to channel legal aid into welfare state provisions. In spite of the attempts made by progressive lawyers and advocates to change the legal aid system, most notably in the 1970s, and in spite of public approval for these efforts, politicians were not willing to alter the system. It is only in the last decade that some changes have been made. In 1993 the Belgian constitution recognised legal aid as a fundamental right and in 1998 an act on legal aid was promulgated. Since the implementation in 2000 of the 1998 Legal Aid Act, people on lower incomes have been entitled to an advocate free of charge. This is a formal right and legal criteria are based on equal eligibility (merits and means tests). This change should have been regarded as a mere formal update of a legal aid system that should in fact have existed for many years. The legal aid act INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF THE LEGAL PROFESSION, VOL. 13, NO. 1, MARCH 2006

Inequality and Instability: An Empirical Investigation into Social Discontent in Urban China

Instability, proxied by individual level data on satisfaction, is measured, its association with inequality is investigated, and the socio-economic determinants of overall satisfaction are modelled. A very recent national representative household survey (2002) with a module designed to serve this purpose has been the statistics source of this study. The results point to the role of income growth in quelling social discontent. Membership of the Communist Party and political participation also play a positive role. By contrast, unemployment exerts a strong depressive effect, as does exclusion from state welfare provision.

Cash Versus Services: ‘Worlds of Welfare’ and the Decommodification of Cash Benefits and Health Care Services

Welfare state models have focused almost exclusively on the study of cash benefits, and typologies established on this limited basis have been used to generalise about all forms of welfare state provision. This ignores the fact that welfare states are also about the actual delivery of services and/or that countries vary in terms of the relative emphasis that they place upon cash benefits and welfare state services. This article explores the cash and services mix in, and between, welfare states with reference to recent welfare state typologies, most notably Esping-Andersen's decommodification-centred ‘worlds of welfare’. It compares the decommodification levels of the main cash benefits with the main area of service provision: health care. The resulting analysis suggests that when services are added into the comparative analysis of welfare state regimes there are five welfare state clusters: Social Democratic, Liberal, Conservative, and sub-groups within both the Liberal and Conservative regimes. The article concludes that, in order to maintain integrity or generalisability, future welfare state typologies need to reflect more adequately the role of services in welfare state provision.

The globalization of crime control—the case of youth and juvenile justice

The concept of globalization has gradually permeated criminology, but more so as applied to transnational organized crime, international terrorism and policing than in addressing processes of criminal justice reform. Based on a wide range of bibliographic and web resources, this article assesses the extent to which a combination of neo-liberal assaults on the social logics of the welfare state and public provision, widespread experimentation with restorative justice and the prospect of rehabilitation through mediation and widely ratified international directives, epitomized by the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child, have now made it possible to talk of a global juvenile/youth justice. Conversely it also reflects on how persistent national and local divergences, together with the contradictions of contemporary reform, may preclude any aspiration for the delivery of a universal and consensual product

Risk, Social Policy and Welfare Hazel Kemshall Risk, Social Policy and Welfare McGraw Hill Education 159pp £16.99 (plus £3.50 p&p) 0 33520 409 0 0335204090.

In this text the author explores theories of risk and argues that the idea of a universal welfare system has been replaced by one in which individual citizens are expected to manage risk and make provision for their future needs. In this process, the author argues, state welfare provision has become marginalised and focused upon those people viewed as vulnerable rather than on their individual needs. Chapters examine public provision, mental health, and health and social services for older people.