Welfare Policy and the Construction of Legitimate Authority: The Case of Puerto Rico

ABSTRACT

This article investigates the role of the welfare state in maintaining state authority by testing the relationship between participation in state social programs and the espousal of ideals that reject the sovereignty of the existing state. We use the case of Puerto Rico, drawing on surveys of residents of Puerto Rico regarding their participation in social welfare programs and their views on the legitimacy of the U.S. state, distinguishing between means-tested and universal social programs. The research demonstrates that the form and extent of social citizenship programs affect the continued acceptance of authority of the U.S. federal government over the island’s territory and population. Specifically, the use of means-tested social benefits predicts a greater acceptance of the authority of the sovereign state. These findings may be considered broadly informative to the power of social welfare programs in garnering quiescence among minority populations, expanding the existing literature to illustrate differences in opinion of state legitimacy based on the type of social benefits one receives.     

Assessing Public Support for State Government Social Welfare Expenditures

Abstract

This study compared two different approaches to assessing the level of public support for social welfare spending at the state government level. The first approach focuses on the degree to which the public supports state government's involvement in public welfare spending. The second approach identifies the importance the public places on social welfare spending when compared to other possible functions of state government. Using Alabama data, the paper examined changes in general and comparative public support for state budget expenditures from 1980 to 2000 in Alabama. In addition, we examined the effectiveness of sociodemographic and attitudinal characteristics of respondents as predictors of both general and comparative support for three social welfare functions of state government. Support for “benefits for poor people” grew both generally and comparatively in the 20-year period; support for programs for older people remained steady; and support for mental health services declined. Sociodemographic predictors of general and comparative sup port were generally consistent with a self-interest model     

Interpersonal Helping Skills,by Eldon K. Marshall,P. David Kurtz,and Associates. Jossey-Bass Publishers,San Francisco, 1982. $35.00. 682 Pp.

Abstract

Courses in international or comparative social welfare have many benefits, but require a framework for systematic comparisons between countries. This article presents an institutional political process model for studying social welfare policy comparatively. The principal elements of the model include each country's societal values, government institutions (operationalized as the role of interest groups), policy goals, and system implementation (type of welfare system). The model is demonstrated through a comparison of the dissimilar social welfare systems of Sweden and the U.S.     

The uneven patterning of welfare benefits at the twilight of AFDC: assessing the influence of institutions, race, and citizen preferences

Scholars have been slow to test welfare state theories on the extensive subnational variation in the United States during the recent period of retrenchment. We assess institutional politics theories, literature on race and social policy, and public opinion arguments relative to levels of support in states' Aid to Families Dependent Children programs from 1982 until its elimination in 1996. Pooled time-series results demonstrate that the determinants of spending during retrenchment are mostly similar to those driving development and expansion. Pro-spending actors and professionalized state institutions limit benefit curtailment, while jurisdictions with larger African- American populations have lower benefits. Additionally, liberal citizens positively impact support and strengthen the effects of state institutions, but this effect is attenuated in states with larger African-American populations.     

Welfare state and infant mortality

This article seeks to understand the effects of welfare-state spending on infant mortality rates. Infant mortality was chosen for its importance as a social indicator and its putative sensitivity to state action over a short time span. Country fixed-effects models are used to determine that public health spending does have a significant impact in lowering infant mortality rates, net of other factors, such as economic development, and that this effect is cumulative over a five-year time span. A net effect of health spending is also found, even when controlling for the level of spending in the year after which the outcome is measured (to account for spurious effects or reverse causation). State spending effects infant mortality both through social mechanisms and through medical ones. This article also shows that the impact of state spending may vary by the institutional structure of the welfare state. Finally, this study tests for structural breaks in the relationship between health spending and infant mortality and finds none over this time period.     

The flight from universalism

Up to the beginning of the 1990s Sweden had been considered a paragon welfare state in its realisation of universalist principles and an institutional welfare model. This seems to be changing rapidly. Mass unemployment, welfare expenditure cuts and institutional transformation have introduced several selective mechanisms into the Swedish welfare system, adding up to a retreat from universalism. New forms of selectivity can be seen in all layers of the welfare system, both transfer benefits and social security, public personal social services and the relation between state and voluntary organisations. The shifting of burdens from universal social security and insurance-based welfare onto local means tested systems has already meant a restigmatisation of unemployment, as the unemployed lose eligibility for the insurance-based systems, and an increase in the proportion of people who have to rely on poor relief instead of rights-based welfare, and when unemployment has gone up, so have work requirements for benefits. A rising proportion of labour market programmes are now municipally organised obligations instead of state administered rights. Conditioning the right to day care, appraising needs-tested services for the elderly, like home help and care, make personal social services change in the same directions. This may endanger the classical alliance between women and the welfare state.     

A Cross‐National Look at How Welfare States Reduce Inequality

A major shift in welfare state research occurred at the turn of the century as researchers moved from explaining the development of welfare states and variations in spending across welfare states to a focus on welfare state outcomes. One of the key outcomes examined in the literature is inequality. While much of the early literature examined overall spending, followed by analysis of specific taxes and transfers related to old age, unemployment, disability, health, and families, more recent research has included a broader range of welfare state policies including work‐family policies and flexicurity. This essay highlights some important developments in the research on welfare states and inequality.     

The economic safety net for low-income families with children

Following the passage of welfare reform in the mid-1990s and the end of entitlement benefits under Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the U.S. economic safety net has become increasingly individualized. In fact, it is no longer clear whether low-income families tend to rely on particular types of public benefits, or whether there are characteristics that differentiate benefit “packaging”.This study examines the combinations of various income sources comprising economic safety nets for low-income families participating in the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing Study. The income sources we explore include earnings, child support, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF), Supplemental Nutritional Assistance Program (SNAP) benefits, childcare subsidies, unemployment insurance (UI) benefits, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), the Earned Income Tax Credit (EITC), housing subsidies, and Medicaid. We use cluster analysis to determine the most common patterns of income and benefit sources, and identify four distinct clusters of income and benefits that are associated with different family demographic characteristics. The findings from this investigation may be useful to social service programs as they attempt to identify relevant safety net resources for economically struggling families, and to policymakers attempting to reconcile requirements associated with programs and benefits that are regularly combined by beneficiaries.     

The paradox of child poverty in israel

Data on the levels of child poverty in Israel indicate that it has remained consistently high and indeed is higher than that in most welfare states. This finding is paradoxical given the fact that, since its establishment fifty years ago, Israel has emphasized its commitment to the well-being of its children and to their welfare. Indeed, this approach has been reflected in a wide variety of social programmes aimed at bettering the living standards of children and of families with children. The reasons for the failure of the Israeli welfare state to deal more effectively with child poverty and deprivation over the last two decades can be linked to economic developments, such as high unemployment and inflation levels and wide wage disparities, to demographic trends such as the concentration of large, single income families among the Arab and orthodox Jewish sectors, and to policies that have encouraged privatization and have discriminated against Arab children. Social workers can play a major role in dealing with these developments by seeking more universal and equitable social policies for children in Israel.     

The concept of social care and the analysis of contemporary welfare states

Care is now a widely-used concept in welfare state research, firmly established in the literature by feminist analysis. We believe that the concept as it has been used and developed to date has limitations that have hampered its development as a general category of welfare state analysis. In essence we argue that the political economy aspects of the concept have remained underdeveloped. The main purpose of this article is to elaborate a care-centered concept--which we name social care--that countenances and develops care as an activity and set of relations lying at the intersection of state, market and family (and voluntary sector) relations. We are especially concerned to examine what the concept of social care can tell us about welfare state variation and welfare state change and development. The article works systematically through these themes, beginning with a brief historical sketch of the concept of care and then moving on to elaborate the analytic potential of the concept of social care. In the latter regard we make the case that it can lead to a more encompassing analysis, helping to overcome especially the fragmentation in existing scholarship between the cash and service dimensions of the welfare state and the relative neglect of the latter. The concept of social care serves to shift the centre of analysis from specific policy domains so that instead of focusing on cash benefits or services in isolation it becomes possible to consider them as part of a broader set of inter-relating elements. In this and other regards, the concept has the potential to say something new about welfare states.     

Family policy in Korea

In Korea, family policy as a public policy gained interest in the 1980s, when the Ministry of Health and Social Affairs (since January 1995 the Ministry of Health and Welfare) renamed the Maternal and Child Bureau the Family Welfare Bureau. This paper first presents a brief overview of the traditional family system and values in Korea and examines changes in economic and social indicators, changes in family functions and roles, and changes in attitudes toward family that have occurred following industrialization and urbanization. The paper then briefly explains some of the problems Korean families face today. It next examines the Family Planning Program and its results. Finally, it turns to an examination and critique of the policies and programs administered by the Family Welfare Bureau.Yeonoak Baik is a Family Advocacy Therapist for the 8th U.S. Army c/o Commander, 43rd Surgical Hospital (MA), ATTN: EAMC-SH-FAP, Room D-108, Unit #15190, APO AP, 96271-0126. She works in Korea with U.S. military soldiers and their dependents. Her research interests include child welfare, single-parent families, and domestic violence. Her MSW was received from the School of Social Work, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor.Her research interests include children of divorced families, social welfare policy, and social work administration in Korea. She received her Ph.D. in Social Welfare at Seoul National University in Korea.     

Transforming child welfare: from explicit to implicit control of families

Through a historical review of child welfare laws and policies between 1896 and 1992 in Norway, this article investigates the state control of families. The central questions in this article relate to the transformations in the forms of state control of families. The research on which this article is based has relied on a genealogical approach. The sources are comprised of previous studies focusing on the historical development of child welfare in Norway. This article argues that state control, from having been explicit in the late nineteenth century, has today become increasingly implicit and hidden. Indeed, the value granted to children's rights and equality has made opposition to state interventions in families difficult. I relate the transformations in state control of families to the affirmation of the norms of ‘egalitarian individualism’. As Norway is amongst the first European countries to make child-centrism a hallmark of its social policies, these findings have implications for EU countries that may follow its path.     

The relationship between child welfare financing,screening, and substantiation

This study examines the relationship between state-level child welfare spending and two important decision points in the child welfare system: the decision to screen out a referral and the decision to substantiate. The model is estimated using a pooled fractional probit estimator that controls for year effects and state-level clustering. The findings suggest that decreases in state-level child welfare expenditures predict increases in the proportion of referrals that are screened out and decreases in the proportion of maltreatment claims that are substantiated. The results are robust to the inclusion of caseload and federal spending as control variables, to the exclusion of states known to have changed their screening or funding practices during the sample period, and to the use of combined state and local child welfare expenditures as an explanatory variable in lieu of state-level child welfare expenditures. The findings imply that the amount of money a state spends on child welfare may influence important decisions in the child welfare process.     

Social justice,care and developmental welfare in South Africa: a capabilities perspective

One of the paradoxes of the democratic project in South Africa is that the combination of political empowerment, organised constituencies of poor people and increasing social sector spending has made minimal impact on increasing equality. Despite an overall macroeconomic framework that emphasises fiscal restraint, social welfare spending has increased in the past 14 years, and dramatically so since 2003. Almost one in four South Africans receives some or other form of grant, and the majority of recipients are women. Indeed, South Africa is regularly described as the developing world’s largest and most generous welfare state. I address the extent to which gender inequalities are reduced through public sector spending, asking the question: what is the optimal relationship between social policy and the intrinsic democratic goals of equality, social justice and citizenship? Drawing on Amartya Sen’s capabilities approach, the article argues that a focus on social sector spending alone is inadequate to address questions of social justice. Instead, I draw attention to the normative assumptions, discursive environment and institutional context in which social policy is elaborated and implemented. I argue that, in a context in which there is relatively poor infrastructural capacity in the state to ensure that service delivery takes place in fair, consistent and egalitarian ways, households and communities act as shock absorbers of state failures and women’s gendered burdens increase, despite formal commitments to gender equality. While women appear to have gained from political empowerment, women politicians did not effectively leverage their position in the state to promote pro‐poor policies or to build coalitions to challenge the watering down of early commitments to reducing gender inequalities.     

Challenging implicit bias: preparing students to practice with African American families

ABSTRACT

The disparity of African American families in the foster care system is a concern in the field of child welfare services and the social work profession. African American families experience unique challenges related to discriminatory practices and implicit biases in the child welfare system and by mandated reporters. To address these inequalities, state and local agencies have implemented prevention and intervention services to support minority families. Additionally, child welfare agencies have invested in professional development training for their workers to alleviate possible intolerant practices. This article describes implicit biases and considers how they could contribute to the disparity of African American families involved in the child welfare system. Furthermore, the article presents approaches to help social work students to identify and challenge their implicit biases to support culturally sensitive practices while working with African American families. It concludes with implications for social work education.     

#FamiliesBelongTogether: Facts and Fictions of Race and Family in U.S. Immigration Policy

Family reunification is widely seen as a relatively stable feature of the contemporary U.S. immigration regime protected by the nation’s liberal democratic institutions and humanitarian values. Drawing on critical scholarship that situates immigration policies in racial nation‐building projects, this article explores the development of U.S. family‐based admission policies from 1965 to the early 2000s. I bring attention to the role of racial family logics in the changing character and meaning of these policies. Racial family logics reflect the emergent and contested ways in which families are both idealized and institutionally organized in relation to the state, the economy, and other social institutions to support racial projects. A normative conception of “the family” as a white, heterosexual, male wage earner, nuclear household unit informed the 1965 U.S. Immigration and Nationality Act and its emphasis on family‐based admissions. However, by the 1990s, the landscape of immigration, race, and family in the United States had shifted quite dramatically. The family‐based admissions system was now associated with immigrants from Asia and Latin America rather than Europe. The “browning” of the system was accompanied by its incorporation into racialized projects of state discipline, surveillance, and control over those deemed “undeserving” in relation to neoliberal values of self‐reliant and self‐regulating families.     

Practising social work in a context of austerity: experiences of public sector social workers in Greece

Since the 1980s and within a context of neoliberal globalization, the welfare state provision in many countries has been affected adversely by austerity and social spending cuts that have intensified since the last global financial crisis of 2008. A country that has been particularly harshly affected is Greece. This paper draws on interviews with public sector social workers in Greece and presents their perceptions of the consequences of austerity/social spending cuts on their work. The research findings of this study suggest that, within the context of austerity, social workers are facing a number of challenges and tensions. The paper argues that these tensions and challenges are local manifestations of the global conditions of neoliberal globalization and as such they have relevance for other countries. Furthermore, it argues that this understanding needs to inform the actions of social workers. It is important for these tensions and challenges to be contextualized within the socio-economic conditions in which they arise in order for austerity and social spending cuts to become a locus of intervention.     

Fragile families in the American welfare state

The proportion of children born out of wedlock is now over 40%. At birth, about half of these parents are co-habiting. This paper examines data from the Fragile Families and Child Wellbeing study (N = 4271) to describe for the first time the role of welfare state benefits in the economic lives of married, cohabiting, and single parent families with young children. Surprisingly, total welfare state benefits received by the three family types are relatively similar. Nearly half of the full incomes of fragile families come from welfare state transfers. For single parent families the proportion is slightly more than two thirds. Though aggregate welfare state transfers are approximately equal across family type and thus change very little as marital status changes, these transfers and the taxes required to finance them cushion family status changes and substantially narrow the gap in full income between married and fragile families.     

Shadow Welfare II

Abstract

Tax expenditures are any exemption, credit, deduction, or exclusion from the payment of taxes. At the state level, such expenditures often remain unaccounted for, create little economic development, and leave state and local governments with reduced resources for funding basic services such as fire, police, schools, and other general welfare spending. This paper illustrates methods state and local governments use to grant large tax breaks, the resulting financial problems legislators typically solve by raising individual taxes or cutting spending, and the implications for social welfare practitioners.