Midterm Flashcards
Hull House
Jane Addams established the Hull House in Chicago, IL in 1889. She and other reformers moved into poor neighborhoods to understand the social and economic environment. They believed that poverty was the result of social and economic inequalities inherent in industrial society.
The Hull House was intended to close the gap between the classes and did this through research, reform, and residence. The services provided included: classes, medical services, day cares, art galleries, libraries, and employment offices. The reformers advocacy for child welfare ultimately helped to improve working conditions.
Six Sectors of Helping
Kinship Religion Workplace Marketplace Mutual Assistance Government
Milton Friedman
The father of modern conservative economics. He believed public spending was too high. As an individualist, he believes the role of government is to keep the money supply growing at a steady rate that is consistent with stable prices and long-term economic growth. This is in contrast to what he thought the government was doing, which was pumping money into the economy for social welfare. He believed that this lack of money in circulation caused the Depression.
John Kenneth Galbraith
Galbraith believed public spending is not high enough because of the Dependency Effect, his idea that the majority of spending goes to needs that are contrived due to advertising. He supported tax increases because he believed we could decrease individual spending and increase public spending.
James Buchanan
Buchanan believed public spending was too high due to the public choice theory, which is the idea that public spending doesn’t go where it needs to, but rather is at the whim of politicians. These politicians do not want to lose re-election and thus do not want to say “no” to public interest groups who fund the politicians’ re-election efforts.
Buchanan observed the increasing debt and thought that money should be directed in different ways to prevent it from flowing directly to special interest groups.
Dependence Effect
The idea that production creates the wants it seeks to satisfy through advertising. Consequently, production does not meet the public demands and creates waste.
Goals of the Welfare State
Asa Briggs specified three particular goals for the welfare state and three corresponding forms of policy.
Economic Security
Goals: To buffer people from large drops in their standard of living when their income is interrupted.
Policies: Social security, which is social insurance against illness, unemployment, disability, retirement, and death of a spouse.
Beneficiaries: the working population, retirees, and their dependents
Material Sufficiency
Goals: To guarantee individuals and families a minimum income irrespective of the market value of their property, known as the ‘antipoverty goal’.
Policies: Public assistance, which is delivered in the form of cash relief or social services.
Beneficiaries: The poor and disadvantaged
Basic Services
Goals: To ensure access to critical goods and services
Policies: Education, health care, housing, and nutrition
Beneficiaries: All citizens
Progressive Tax
Proportional to a person’s income, i.e. the income tax.
Regressive Tax
Everyone pays the same amount regardless of income, i.e. sales tax.
Social Security
Social security falls in between progressive and regressive tax.
The payroll tax that finances social security is progressive at the point of allocation in that those earning and contributing the smallest amount receive proportionally more benefits than those earning and contributing more. Retired low-wage workers earn 58% of their former monthly wage, for instance, compared with high-income workers who earn 22%.
The payroll tax that finances social security is regressive at collection because all workers pay the same 4.2% of their earnings up to $106,800, after which earnings are not taxed. So someone making $106,800 is tax the same as someone making $10 million.
Social Security is in a dilemma because around 2041, the annual expenditures will exceed annual revenues and the Trust Fund will be diminished as it is called upon to cover the difference. There have been two major suggestions for reform: privatization and broadening the funding base.
Earned Income Tax Credit
EITC is a tax credit that supplements income for low-middle income wage workers, often described as the working poor. The credit is based on the past year’s earning and number of dependents. The earning celiing in 2009 was about $40,000. It excludes the poor who are unemployed or do not earn enough to file a return.
Housing Mortgage Interest Deduction
This was designed for low-middle income wage workers. like the EITC. This deduction provides a tax break for homeowners, which historically benefits middle and upper class people. This obviously excludes any one who isn’t a homeowner, which is most poor people.
Social Provisions
The nature of social provisions shifted from intangible and limited to concrete and diversified. Casework is considered a limited ‘soft’ service and it was deemphasized in preference for concrete and hard services.
Residual
The traditional (i.e. residual) view is that:
- social welfare itself is not a significant societal institution
- a temporary response only when the ‘normal’ helping channels fail to perform appropriately
- undesirable and expendable.
Institutional
The institutional view is that:
- social welfare is an integral and normal first line function of modern industrial society
- It is a primary means by which everyone fulfills their needs
Allocative Principles
The conditions under which social provisions are made accessible to individuals and groups in society.
Attributed Need: Eligibility is conditional on membership in a group that is deemed as needy by societal norms, i.e. the elderly or unemployed.
Compensation: Eligibility is conditional on membership in groups that have made special social and economic contributions to society (i.e. veterans) or who have suffered unfairly from harm (i.e. victims of racism or sexism).
Diagnostic Differentiation: Eligibility is conditional on professional judgements (diagnosis) of individual cases where special goods or services may be needed, i.e. the mentally or physically impaired.
Means-Tested Need: Eligibility is conditional on an individual’s inability to purchase goods and/or services.
Marxist Perspective
The welfare state is a capitalist form of self-protection because:
- It subdues the revolutionary tendencies
- Moderates class conflicts
- Protects the interests of the elite
- It subsidizes a barely sustainable form of work that exploits the worker
Dimensions of Choice
Social welfare policies can be interpreted as choices among principles determining what benefits are offered, to whom they are offered, how they are delivered, and how they are financed.
- What are the bases of social allocations?
- What are the types of social provisions to be allocated?
- What are the strategies for the delivery of these provisions?
- What are the ways to finance these provisions?
- What are the social values that support them?
- What theories or assumptions underlie these?
Economic Market
Benefits in capitalist society are distributed through the economic market on:
- individual initiative
- ability
- productivity
- desire for profit
Charles Murray
He argues for “The Plan”, in which the full array of health, social, and financial support services would be replaced by cash. Every American adult over 21 would receive $10,000 to be responsible for their own lives. He believed this would cost considerably less, eliminate poverty, and ensure health and retirement security.
SIME/DIME
Seattle Income Maintenance Experiment
Denver Income Maintenance Experiment
The largest and most controlled income maintenance experiment in history. It suggested that guaranteed income provides a perverse incentive because compared to the control group, families receiving income grants worked significantly fewer hours per year. It also questioned the theory that guaranteed income increases marital stability because divorce rates rose.
Proxy Shopping
Used to introduce market competition into purchase-of-service arrangements. Through this method the government contracts only with providers who are able to attract paying customers. They reason that if consumers are willing to pay for the services then cost and quality will be regulated and therefore competitive with the market. The problem is that there isn’t always enough suppliers to form a competitive market.
Elizabethan Poor Law of 1601
This law made individual parishes responsible for their poor. Defined categories of dependents and local parishes were obligated to provide relief.
- Needy children, who were provided apprenticeships so that they could become productive citizens
- Able-bodied poor, who were sent to work
- Worthy poor, who were provided with indoor (almshouses) or outdoor relief
Similar to AFDC because it established a category of worthy poor, people who were eligible to receive cash grants without anything in return.
SSI
Supplemental Security Income
- It provides cash assistance to those who are poor based on mitigating circumstances such as the elderly, blind, and disabled.
- Federally financed and administered through categorical grants. Funding is adjusted annually for inflation and is uniform across states. States do occasionally supplement the payments.
- Assistance is not time-limited, except in cases where recipients are disabled by drug and alcohol addiction. In that case, they are only eligible for 36 months.
GA
General Assistance
- It provides cash and in-kind assistance to meet short-term or ongoing needs of low-income people ineligible or waiting approval for federally funded assistance.Most states limit GA to severely poor, though eligibility benefits vary across states and sometimes counties
- State financed and and locally administered. As a result, some states don’t have GA.
- Nearly all states that provide GA to able-bodied adults, require recipients to work in order to maintain benefits.
Federal Housing
There are two primary forms of federal housing assistance to the poor
Individualists
Individualism is a philosophical orientation most often associated with conservative politics and that emphasizes the the pursuit of individual interests. Other characteristics of this perspective:
- Problems reflect bad choices, personal dysfunction, culture of poverty
- Unregulated markets and private property ensure prosperity and welfare
- Residual perspective, government should be small
- Provide a minimum safety net focused on the poor; rely on market, voluntary, and religious arrangements
Individualists value cost effectiveness, freedom of choice, freedom of dissent, and local autonomy. For these reasons, they are pro-cash and would even support the use of vouchers. In-kind benefits undermine personal responsibility.
Collectivists
Collectivism is a philosophical orientation most often associated with liberal or progressive politics and that emphasizes the importance of common action on behalf of common goals. Other characteristics of this perspective:
- Problems reflect fundamental socioeconomic circumstances, barriers to access, lack of opportunity
- Unregulated markets create dangerous economic cycles, unemployment, urban blight, poverty and inequality, and environmental degradation
- Institutional perspective, government should be large enough to advance social welfare on behalf of the broad community
- Provide broad program coverage to insure full opportunity, economic security, and basic social goods; rely on public leadership
Collectivists value social effectiveness, social control, efficiency, and centralization. For these reasons, they are pro in-kind benefits. In-kind benefits allow for the redistribution of basic social goods. Collectivists are also proponents of vouchers because they allow for the exercise of social control.
Speenhamland Act of 1795
Speenhamland Act was the first wage subsidy. It established a minimum standard of living, which at the time was the amount of earnings needed to buy two loaves of bread. However, it did not mandate a minimum wage. Consequently, employers abused this law and dropped their wages knowing that their employees would receive a subsidy.
It is similar to the EITC because it is an income subsidy for the working poor.
Mechanical Solidarity
Emile Durkheim developed the idea of mechanical solidarity, which refers to the homogenous norms and values in pre-industrial society that resulted from people having similar work, educational, and religious experiences. The social cohesion, a sense of solidarity, was based on these common norms and values.
In industrial society, there was a division of labor and interdependence among community members. New forms of social cohesion formed that were organic rather than mechanical.
Private Safety Net Account
Dennis Snower proposed a radical privatization of social welfare through the development of private safety net accounts, which would be financed through normal tax collection. He believed this would be more advantageous because it provides greater liquidity and flexibility as well as gives responsibility to the individual. This is in contrast to public benefits that only ‘belong’ to a person if they need access in times of dire need (i.e. unemployment).
1662 Law of Settlement
The 1662 Law of Settlement stated that a person had to have a ‘settlement’ in order to obtain relief from a parish. This could be secured by birth in the parish, marriage (in the case of a woman), and working in the parish for a year and a day. The law restricted movement between parishes by requiring people to secure permission from another parish before moving. Furthermore, if a migrant was deemed to not be contributing enough to the new parish, they could be sent back to the old parish. This law addressed the issue of migration to areas that provided higher benefits and forced parishes to take responsibility for their poor.
The issue of immigration continues to plague modern day policy makers in San Francisco County and border states in general.
Reverend Charles Loring Brace
Reverend Charles Loring Brace founded the Children’s Aid Society in 1853 in New York City. He started the program to aid needy children, fight juvenile delinquency, and protect the property of wealthier families. Brace started emigrant parties, also known as orphan trains, which shipped immigrant children from New York City to farms in the Midwest and West.
It was controversial for several reasons:
- Foster families in the Midwest were not screened, which allowed for children to be overworked, abused, and undereducated.
- Biological families often were not consulted or aware that they were permanently terminating parental rights. Some families preferred their children to not be so far.
- Children that ran away yet again became a burden on local welfare systems
- The Catholic Church thought it was a ploy to convert children from Catholicism to Protestantism
Dr. Abraham Flexner
At a conference in 1915, Dr. Flexner stated in a paper that social work is not a profession because it lacked a written body of knowledge and educationally communicable techniques. Social workers also did not have individual responsibility, meaning anyone could do it.
Mary Richmond
She wrote Social Diagnosis in response to Dr. Flexner’s paper that stated social work is not a profession. This book stated social work’s scientific methodology. She used a medial model to describe how social workers investigate, diagnose, and treat. This casework approach sought to reform individuals so that they could become contributing members of society using middle-class values as a guide. Proponents of this view, also known as ‘friendly visitors’, emphasized the social environment and financial distress as the root of the problem. Distinctions were drawn between the worthy and unworthy poor.
Mary Richmond also worked for Charity Organization Societies (COS).
