州际竞争与美国福利政策的调整(1969-1999年)

美国大多数州曾规定,新迁入者须住满一年才有资格申请福利救济.在1969年的“夏皮罗诉汤普森”案中,此类规定被判违宪.在此之后,各州为避免成为吸引穷人的“福利磁铁”而展开竞争.竞争主要表现在两个方面:一是探底竞赛,二是争取差别对待新迁入者.国会允许各州经批准后进行相关改革实验,并在此基础上通过《个人责任与工作机会协调法》,增加州政府实施福利项目的灵活性和自主权.这使得福利救济领域的州际竞争更趋激烈.随之而起的差别对待新迁入者的风潮被1999年“萨恩斯诉罗”案的判决止住,但各州为进一步降低本州福利的吸引力而进行的探底竞赛还在继续.     

论克林顿社会保障制度改革的历史意义及启示

克林顿政府在上台后,推出了一系列社会保障制度改革的措施,其中包括了医疗计划和福利计划两方面。两者虽遭遇挫折和失败,却在鼓舞美国提高医疗保险可及性,改革整个医疗系统,以及转变美国福利理念,加快美国经济的高速增长,进一步改革美国福利制度上,有着显著的意义。而这其中的成败教训,也为我国的社会保障制度改革提供了参考和启示。     

抗战时期国民政府的儿童福利政策述评

抗日战争爆发后,国民政府和社会慈善机构采取一系列措施急救难童,重视难童的教养工作。尽管在整个抗战时期,国民政府所推行的儿童福利政策存在着很大的局限性,但其制定的“善种、善生、善养、善保、善教”的儿童福利政策,还是初步显现了现代儿童福利观念的某些特征。应该说,抗战时期国民政府在难童救济与教养方面的努力还是值得肯定的。     

新自由主义的兴起及其对各国福利发展的积极影响

20世纪70年代以来,特别是石油危机爆发后,西方发达资本主义国家的经济滞胀现象日益突出。面对这种经济现象,凯恩斯主义经济学束手无策,这时新自由主义经济学应运而生,开始流行起来。资本主义发达国家纷纷进行新自由主义改革并且使资本主义经济得以复兴,资本主义各国的福利政策呈现出许多新特点,福利体系不断完善。本文主要从新自由主义的兴起以及其对世界各国福利发展的积极影响两个方面来加以阐述。     

再谈公务员福利分房

本刊于2009年第5期发表了我写的《住房改革的由来和现状》一文,揭露了在国发1998【27】号文件规定的1998年7月停止福利分房的十多年后,中共中央直属机关和国务院机关的公务员还享受福利分房的情况。此文发表后,收到了大量读者来信,有的十分愤慨,有的不相信有此种事情发生。事情已过一年,公务员福利分房的情况不仅没有遏止,反而愈演愈烈。对此,国内各种媒体十分关注。如果在网上搜索“公务员福利分房”,在0．028秒内,就显示出528000个相关网页。     

英国福利国家的产生与发展(1945—1970)

英国于二战后正式建立福利国家,它的发展与政党政治密切相关。虽然福利制度的健全也产生了一些弊病,乃至70年代末出现了所谓的"英国病",但英国仍不失为一个发达的福利国家,而它背后所蕴藏的民族精神更让我们为之动容。     

论英国新马克思主义学派的福利观

作为英国在福利思想方面的一个重要流派,新马克思主义学派对20世纪英国国家福利的产生和发展、战后国家性质的变化、国家权威的来源、国家与政府的关系、国家福利的功能和目的等问题作了较系统的分析,为战后英国福利国家的发展奠定了一定的理论基础。该学派基于马克思对资本主义国家的分析,在福利思想方面又分为体系决定论和相对自治论。相比较而言,相对自治论更符合战后英国政治、经济和社会发展的现实。     

试论魏玛"福利国家"的早期实践(1918-1920)

一战结束后,德国社会遭遇了政治、经济与社会的多重危机,政府权力亟待合法性认同,社会期稳定。魏玛政府力图把福利国家作为控制与解决危机的一种手段。1918-1920年间,魏玛的福利国家建设曾规范劳动市场、协调劳资关系、改革保险和救济政策、解决住房问题以及调整经济运作模式等方面掀起高潮从短时段看,这些实践活动确立了基本的福利国家原则,维护了政府权威,初步解决了战后德国的社会危机然而从长时段看,这一时期的福利实践存在许多问题,埋下了日后经济危机、社会危机乃至民主危机的隐患。     

有效激励的薪酬福利体系建立之我见

随着经济的发展,现代企业管理制度不断革新和完善。而人力资源的管理一直是企业的一项重要管理内容,作为一项关键的人力管理手段的薪酬福利体系,在不断革新的企业管理制度下,也要与时俱进、不断完善。本文将对薪酬福利的内容,以及建立薪酬福利体系的重要性和必要性进行简要论述,并对建立企业的薪酬福利体系所需要注意的问题与必须坚持的原则,发表自己的浅陋见解。希望可以给公司的薪酬福利体系的建立提供某些参考,助力公司建立能有效激励员工的薪酬福利体系。     

中国社会保障体系的建构浅析--基于福利多元主义理论

利多元主义主张福利来源的多元化,既不能完全依赖市场,也不能完全依赖国家,福利是全社会的产物。文章基于福利多元主义的理论,探索适合中国发展的社会福利体系,通过多元化的福利体系,创新我国社会保障体系。     

The Role of Public Input in State Welfare Policymaking

This article reports findings from a survey of 257 state officials involved in public assistance policymaking in the American states during the early to mid-1990s. Respondents were asked to comment on the impetus for welfare reform, on methods employed to gauge public preferences, and on sources of policy ideas. These officials, including state legislators, social service agency directors, and senior advisors to governors, revealed a variety of forums for gathering public input. Although few respondents affiliated with elective office reported significant direct electoral challenges on welfare issues, they often cited constituent contacts regarding welfare reform.     

Reform and Resistance: A Consideration of Space,Scale and Strategy in Legal Challenges to Welfare Reform

This paper examines the law as a mechanism for resisting neoliberal policy change through a consideration of legal challenges to welfare reform in the United States. The Welfare Reform Act of 1996 marked a sea change in both the content and scale of the American social welfare system. It has entailed a downward shift in policy creation and administration from the national to the state and local level, and conveys a heavy emphasis on the “responsibility” of single mothers to engage in waged labor. In addition to changing the scale at which the social welfare system operates, welfare reform has changed how the more oppressive aspects of this policy might be resisted. While some legal advocates are challenging welfare reform by working within the “policy scale”, others are invoking national level protections by appealing to Civil Rights legislation. By working against the scale imposed by neoliberal social policy, Civil Rights legislation presents the possibility for advocates to “re‐scale responsibility” from that of single mothers to submit to wage labor in order to survive, to the government’s responsibility to protect its citizens against identity‐based discrimination. Herein, I argue both that the law can serve as an important mechanism for re‐focusing the scale of resistance in efforts to challenge oppressive social policy; and that even in the face of policy that imposes a local scale, the national level holds potential as an important terrain of resistance.     

Understanding Public Support for Time Limits and Other Welfare Reforms

This article presents results of a reanalysis of data from a survey of New York residents regarding that state's welfare system and proposed welfare reform. The data danger from most previous studies of public opinion about welfare because questions were asked about a range of specific welfare reform options, such as various time limits, eligibility restrictions, and work requirements, that are key features of the new federal welfare law. Specifically, the analysis explores the extent to which public support for these reforms can be explained by self interest factors, political qualification, and beliefs regarding the poor, social rights, and the welfare system. White these variables have been found to be important in prior research, they provide a somewhat less consistent explanation of support for specific features of the new welfare system in the United States.     

Workfare–Warfare: Neoliberalism, "Active" Welfare and the New American Way of War

Abstract:  In recent decades, welfare reform in the USA has increasingly been based on a political imperative to reduce the number of people on welfare. This has in large part taken place through the establishment of a "workfare" state, in which the receipt of state benefits requires a paid labor input. Designed to reduce expenditure on civil social services, welfare-to-work programs have been introduced. At the same time, the restructuring of US defense provision has seen the "military–industrial complex" emerge as a key beneficiary of state expenditure. Both of these trends can be characterized, this paper argues, as manifestations of neoliberal thinking—whether in the form of the "workfarism" that is undertaken to bolster the US economy, or the "defense transformation" that has been intended to enhance US war-making capacity. While these two aspects have been analyzed in detail independently, the aim of this paper is to probe the similarities, connections and overlaps between the workfare state and the recent American emphasis on high-technology warfare—the so-called "Revolution in Military Affairs"—and "defense transformation". There are, the paper argues, strong homologies to be drawn between the restructuring of the American defense and welfare infrastructures. Furthermore there are also instances where warfare and welfare are being melded together into a hybrid form "workfare–warfare", in which military service is increasingly positioned as a means of gaining welfare and, conversely, traditionally military industries are becoming involved in the area of welfare provision. The result, it is argued, is an emergent form of workfare–warfare state in the USA.     

State Political Culture and Welfare Reform

I investigate the link between the general features of state governments and their ability to reform welfare. The best indicator of governments' characteristics is Elazar's political cultures. I define what successful welfare reform means, drawing on implementation research and experience. My criteria stress process, the avoidance of political and administrative problems. I then test the link between the Elazar cultures and successful reform using recent case studies of state implementation of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families. Elazar's "moralistic" states perform best, and the association holds, even controlling for other influences. Results depend, however, on how welfare reform is defined.     

Interrogating the Limits of Welfare Reforms in Singapore

As population demographics change and economic crises spread and deepen, welfare reform has become an urgent problem in many developed countries. As elsewhere in East Asia, the state in Singapore has in recent years stepped up its efforts to deal with issues of healthcare, education, support for care, retirement and even unemployment. Much of this has been in response to demographic shifts, economic trends and, importantly, political pressures. This article evaluates the possibilities and limits of recent reforms. It looks at some promising aspects of reform, such as increases in spending in certain areas, before examining the limitations of the reforms. These include the fact that most resources have been directed toward supporting businesses, while increases in direct spending on citizens have been limited and conditional rather than universal; furthermore, little or no attention has been paid to the issue of women's underemployment. These features suggest constraints within the logic and principles of welfare, which continue to define citizens as having limited rights and entitlements, and citizenship as entailing regular employment and heavy obligations toward the family. The analysis of reforms sheds light on how the appearance of expansion can mask continuing limitations. The case of Singapore illustrates the importance of looking not just at expenditure but also at the principles and logics in which welfare reforms are embedded, in a variety of national contexts.     

Transforming the Developmental Welfare State in East Asia

This article attempts to explain changes and continuity in the developmental welfare states in Korea and Taiwan within the East Asian context. It first elaborates two strands of welfare developmentalism (selective vs. inclusive), and establishes that the welfare state in both countries fell into the selective category of developmental welfare states before the Asian economic crisis of 1997. The key principles of the selective strand of welfare developmentalism are productivism, selective social investment and authoritarianism; inclusive welfare development is based on productivism, universal social investment and democratic governance. The article then argues that the policy reform toward an inclusive welfare state in Korea and Taiwan was triggered by the need for structural reform in the economy. The need for economic reform, together with democratization, created institutional space in policy‐making for advocacy coalitions, which made successful advances towards greater social rights. Finally, the article argues that the experiences of Korea and Taiwan counter the neo‐liberal assertion that the role of social policy in economic development is minor, and emphasizes that the idea of an inclusive developmental welfare state should be explored in the wider context of economic and social development.     

Beyond the Property Rights Approach: Welfare Policy and the Reform of State‐Owned Enterprises in China

During the pre‐reform era, Chinese state‐owned enterprises (SOEs) operated not only as firms, but also as mini‐welfare states, providing employees with lifetime employment, inexpensive housing, free health care, and pensions. Since China’s market transition began in the late 1970s, however, SOEs have had to bear increasingly heavy burdens for welfare provisions to their employees. The steep increase in welfare spending has not only eroded the base of state revenue, but has also impeded further SOE reforms. To lighten welfare burdens upon SOEs and to remove institutional obstacles to marketization and privatization embedded in the existing welfare system, the Chinese state has imposed many welfare reforms aimed at shifting responsibilities for welfare provision from SOEs to a combination of government, enterprises, communities, and individuals. This article examines the belated welfare reforms in China’s state sector and their impact upon the reform of SOEs. It finds that reform implementation has been sluggish. To achieve the policy goal of welfare reforms, high degrees of state autonomy and capacity are needed.     

The Historical Impact of Welfare Programs on Poverty: Evidence from the American States

Over the years, there has been a spirited debate over the impact of the welfare expansion associated with the War on Poverty. Many analysts have maintained that public assistance expansion during this period decreased poverty by raising the incomes of the poor (an income enhancement effect), while others have contended that welfare expansion increased poverty by discouraging the poor from working (a work disincentive effect). There has been considerable empirical research about the historical effect of welfare on poverty, nearly all of which relies on the poverty rate (i.e., the percentage of persons with income less than the “poverty threshold”) as an indicator of the extent of poverty. However, this work has not employed designs that allow researchers to sort out distinct income enhancement and work disincentive effects. We develop a model of poverty rates in the American states that permits estimation of these distinct effects—based on state‐level time‐series data observed annually for the years 1960–90—and we find that welfare had both effects during our period of analysis. We also calculate the net impact of increases in welfare benefits on the poverty rate—taking into account both work disincentive and income enhancement effects. Our results indicate that this net impact is dependent on three variables: the initial level of cash benefits, wage levels for unskilled workers, and the share of the benefit increase provided through cash rather than in‐kind assistance. Because of historical trends in these variables, since the 1970s welfare spending has become increasingly less effective in reducing the poverty rate. However, the significance of this result for policymakers must be tempered by evidence that flaws in the poverty rate as an indicator of poverty make it so that any finding about the net effect of an increase in welfare benefits on the poverty rate underestimates welfare's ability to lessen the true extent of poverty.     

Welfare Caseload Change: An Alternative Approach

In the last decade, caseloads in AFDC/TANF have shifted dramatically up, then down. Of existing studies based on time series or state panel data, some tend to underplay the role of welfare reform. All say little about what policies drove the decline or about the role of governmental quality. An approach using cross-sectional models explains interstate differences in caseload change rather than the national trend but allows more discussion about the role of policy and government. Results suggest that grant levels, work and child support requirements, and sanctions are important explainers of change, along with some demographic terms and unemployment. These policies in turn are tied to states' political opinion, political culture, and institutional capacity. Moralistic states seem the most capable of transforming welfare in the manner the public wants.