US Social Policy in the 21st Century Essau don’t have to be very detail, but it need to have intro with a roadmap, 3 body and conclusion. make sure answer

US Social Policy in the 21st Century Essau don’t have to be very detail, but it need to have intro with a roadmap, 3 body and conclusion. make sure answer all parts of the questions. Around 500 words for each one should be fine. do not cite anything beside materials that i provide. Daguerre and smith is attached. WTP will be share by google drive. https://drive.google.com/open?id=1lYSYRXLr1q-p7-do…1) In judicial review, which is more important: upholding the Constitution’s principles as
they were originally conceived, or to consider how modern challenges might modify
decisions? Consider at least one example of a current legal debate in your answer (your
choice).
2) Do we need to re-examine the standard for clear and present danger under the First
Amendment’s liberties to assemble and protest, or is the current standard sufficient to
guarantee public safety? Review WTP and lecture to help answer this question. 3) Explain the differences between means-tested welfare programs and social insurance
programs in the U.S., with examples. Which groups in U.S. society were meant to be
helped by these two sets of programs? You may want to consider WTP and Daguerre in
your answer. 4) There is currently a case before the U.S. Supreme Court that will decide whether or not
the U.S. Census for 2020 will include a question asking respondents to identify if they are
U.S. citizens. Why is this controversial? Explain, taking the possible consequences for
elections into account; you may want to look at WTP and Smith for this. 4
US Social Policy in the 21st Century: The Difficulties of
Comprehensive Social Reform
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Copyright © 2012. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
Anne Daguerre
Introduction – A Fragmented Social Protection System
Historically there has been a strong link between financial crises, economic
recessions and social policy developments in the USA. Unemployment compensation represents a direct policy response to the massive layoffs that
characterize the American labour market during financial crises. For instance,
the Social Security Act of 1935 created unemployment insurance precisely to
help workers mitigate the impact of employment loss. During the Great
Recession of 2007–09, employers quickly adjusted the size of their workforces
in response to changes in demand (CBO 2010). The flexibility of the US
labour market, with a low degree of employment protection, means that
displaced workers become quickly exposed to social risks, notably a loss of
health care coverage. As a result, Congress has to continuously extend
unemployment insurance beyond the statutory 26 weeks.
There is no comprehensive American welfare state in the European sense
of the word, with universal coverage of social risks such as the loss of employment, old age and poor health. Instead, American social policy is a two-tier
system, with the upper tier being social security, mostly contributory old age
benefits, survivors and disability benefits administered by the federal government. The second lower tier represents the social assistance system. Programmes are built around the needs of poor families with children, practically
excluding childless individuals (Berlin 2007: 17). Such programmes are generally demeaning and deliver extremely meagre benefits.
I distinguish three periods in American social history. The first period
corresponds to the enactment of the modern American welfare state with the
Social Security Act of 1935. The second (1965–75) corresponds to the second
stage of development of American social policies, with a piecemeal expansion
of social security programmes and the creation of additional anti-poverty
schemes. The third entails restructuring and retrenchment for the most vulnerable, notably with the replacement of Aid to Families with Dependant
Children (AFDC) by Temporary Assistance with Needy Families (TANF) in
1996.
The Times They Are Changing? First Edition. Edited by Bent Greve. © 2012 Anne Daguerre. Book compilation
© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
The Times They Are Changing : Crisis and the Welfare State, edited by Bent Greve, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook
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Anne Daguerre
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The Social Security Act (1935)
The Social Security Act of 1935 established a sharp distinction between social
insurance and public assistance programmes. Whereas social security was
viewed as a ‘sacred governmental obligation’, welfare programmes were seen
as a ‘handout to barely deserving people’ (Skocpol 1988: 296). The law
established two social insurance programmes on a national scale to help meet
the risks of old age and unemployment: a federal system of old-age benefits for
retired workers and a federal-state system of unemployment insurance. The
Act also provided federal grants-in-aid to the states for the means-tested
programmes of Old-Age Assistance and Aid to the Blind. These programmes
supplemented the incomes of individuals who were ineligible for social insurance programmes. Aid to Dependent Children (ADC) was the principal
component of the lower tier of the social security system. The basic idea was
that husbandless women should be able to look after their children in the same
way as white married middle-class women did (Skocpol 1992). This programme was modified to Aid to Families with Dependent Children (AFDC) in
1961.
The Age of Expansion (1965–75)
Public assistance programmes were broadened and expanded in an ad hoc
fashion between 1965 and 1975. The period 1960–75 corresponds to the
second stage of the expansion of the American welfare state. The War on
Poverty was launched through the Economic Opportunity Act of 1964 in
order to improve the education and job opportunities of the poor. The
programmes included Neighbourhood Youth Corps to provide local training, Community Action Programmes (CAPs) to promote urban renewal in
deprived areas and Head Start. However, there was no attempt to coordinate anti-poverty programmes with economic policies. As a result, the Great
Society programmes oscillated between the implementation of active labour
market policies such as job-creation and training programmes and an
attempt to change the behaviour of the poor (Russel 2004: 34–9).
In addition, the Social Security Amendments of 1965 created Medicare
and Medicaid. Medicare provided for the medical needs of persons aged 65
or older regardless of income. Medicaid (federal grants to the states for
Medical Assistance Programmes) provided medical assistance for persons
with low income and resources. Finally, the public assistance provisions of
the Social Security Act were broadened in 1972. The cash assistance programmes for the aged, blind and disabled were replaced by the mainly
federally administered Supplemental Security Income (SSI) programme.
The Food Stamps programme was created in 1964 to improve the
nutrition of low-income families. The programme was placed under the
responsibility of the US Department of Agriculture (USDA). The other
nationally uniform programme for low-income individuals is the Earned
Income Tax Credit (EITC). EITC was initiated in 1975 as a means to stimulate employment and combat welfare dependency (Stoker and Wilson 2006:
35).
60
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US Social Policy in the 21st Century
Restructuring and Retrenchment (1980–2008)
From the 1980s onwards, support for working families was considerably
extended, whilst anti-poverty programmes were radically scaled back. In the
1980s, the debate on public assistance was dominated by a moral underclass
discourse with strong racial undertones (Gilens 1999). This discourse proved
extremely pervasive, and progressive democrats lost the battle of ideas in the
1990s (Weaver 2000; Daguerre 2007, 2008).
The fact that the welfare caseload expanded in the 1990s – the number
of AFDC recipients rose from approximately 11 million in 1987 to 14 million
in 1994 – accentuated the public perception according to which the public
assistance system was too generous and unsustainable. By the early 1990s,
AFDC had become the most unpopular social programme in the country
(Weaver 2000). In August 1996, President Bill Clinton signed the Personal
Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act, which replaced
AFDC with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF).
TANF ended entitlement to cash assistance and imposed a five-year limit
on welfare benefits. TANF funding mechanism was a block grant to each
individual state. The block grant was fixed and was based on the level of
expenditure in the mid-1990s under the old AFDC programme. The
primary goal of TANF was to reduce the welfare caseload, which had
reached a peak in 1993–94. The TANF funding mechanism provided a
financial incentive for states to move families off welfare: if their caseload
declined, states could retain the funds that were used to pay benefits. TANF
was rated as a tremendous success on both sides of the political spectrum
(Daguerre 2008). The welfare caseload dropped from 14.4 million recipients
in March 1994 to approximately 6 million recipients in September 2002
(DHHS and TANF 2009). In 2006 TANF was reauthorized for another five
years.
Receipt of Food Stamps was also made increasingly conditional upon
complying with stricter work requirements, although such requirements were
much less draconian than those of the TANF programme. Work requirements apply to all working age individuals between 15 and 60. Individuals
must participate in training and accept employment offers (Stoker and Wilson
2006: 43). Participation in Food Stamps declined dramatically from 1994 to
1995, but steadily increased in 2001, as the result of the recession. The Bush
administration (2001–08) expanded the programme in 2002. The Farm Security and Rural Investment Act of 2002 (FSRIA) relaxed eligibility criteria,
made Food Stamp benefits more accessible, softened sanctions in case of
overpayments to Food Stamp recipients. As a result, and in contrast to TANF,
Food Stamps represents the first most important programme for low income
families in contemporary American society.
The second most important programme for low-income families is the
EITC, the scope and the generosity of which has been steadily increasing
since the late 1980s, in an attempt to promote ‘an alternative to welfare’. Since
1993, EITC benefits have been extended to childless workers, but benefits are
more generous if the individual has a qualifying child, that is, any child under
the age of 19 or under age 24 if a full-time student.
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Anne Daguerre
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In the 1990s, Presidents Bush (senior) and Clinton took several important
steps to provide medical assistance to children and to working families. In
1989, Medicaid coverage was expanded to include children under the age of
six and pregnant women in families with incomes below 133 per cent of the
poverty line. In an attempt to provide heath coverage to previously uninsured
low-income children, the Balanced Budget Act of 1997 created the Children’s
Health Insurance Program (CHIP), a matching federal grant programme to
the states. CHIP does not provide coverage for parents and does not benefit
low-income workers without children. State and federal policies have thus
singled out children in the receipt of various cash assistance and in kind
programmes, but adults are increasingly excluded from this expansion as they
are expected to earn their living through paid work.
American social policy is based on the premise that the main source of
income for working age individuals should be their wages. Social programmes
should focus on helping low income workers as opposed to providing social
assistance recipients with hand outs (Stoker and Wilson 2006: 17). Benefits
should encourage work efforts either directly through in work subsidies such
as the EITC or directly through programmes such as Medicaid, Transitional
Medical Assistance (TMA), and, to a lesser extent, Food Stamps. Out of work
benefits are reduced to a meagre minimum and conditions of access are so
restrictive (as in TANF) that they act as a deterrent, thus coaxing benefit
recipients into taking any kind of paid employment.
Rising Economic Insecurity and the Great Recession – The
Road to Collapse
The social equilibrium is based on the premise of a strong, dynamic labour
market with an abundance of low paid jobs. This equilibrium became
extremely fragile as a result of the continuing deterioration of labour market
conditions, with an increasing fraction of the population being exposed to
income insecurity and volatility (Hacker 2006). This equilibrium was also
based on the availability of cheap credit to sustain individual consumption.
With the rise in unemployment and the drying up of credit, as in the Great
Recession of 2007–09, this equilibrium collapsed.
Deterioration of labour market conditions
One of the most fundamental changes in recent American history is the rising
economic insecurity of the middle class. Such insecurity amounts to a fundamental breach in the American social contract as defined by the Social
Security Act in 1935. This contract is based on the premise that working age
individuals should support themselves and their families through paid employment. The problem is that work no longer provides adequate protection
against social risks in contemporary American society.
According to Hudson (2007: 289), three events increased the level of segmentation in the American labour market: deindustrialization and the decline
of organized labour, a large increase in the relative size of immigrant workforce, and the growing prevalence of non-standard work arrangements.
62
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US Social Policy in the 21st Century
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Secondary labour markets are characterized by poverty level earnings, the
absence of employer provided health insurance, and employment in a job that
is limited or uncertain in its duration (Hudson 2007: 294). There are in fact
three labour markets, with a primary and secondary labour market but also an
intermediary labour market whose workers have no access to pension or
health insurance, or both. The intermediary labour market makes up about 42
per cent of the labour market for wage and salary workers. A little more than
a third of American wage and salary workers have jobs in the primary market
while almost one in five is employed in the secondary labour market. Crucially, ‘between the early 1970s and the late 1990s labour market dualism
increased substantially and there was also a substantial redistribution of jobs
from the primary to the secondary labour markets’ (Hudson 2007: 306).
Since the mid-1970s the earnings of male workers have become more
unstable, with a major effect on overall income stability. Transfer incomes –
cash benefits received by families – have also grown more unstable since the
1970s (Rockefeller Foundation 2010: 17).
Meanwhile, health care costs continued to increase and it was only during
mid-1990s’ job miracle that employers in the retail and hospitality sector
offered generous and affordable health care plans in an effort to lure prospective employees. As soon as the economy started to deteriorate again, in 2001,
employers dropped the comprehensive health care plans which had benefited
low-paid workers. But neither the expansion of EITC nor the piecemeal
broadening in Medicaid coverage could compensate for the decline in wages
and the rise in health care costs respectively. This explains the major increase
in financial insecurity since the mid-1980s.
Rising economic insecurity
The most significant phenomenon in the last 25 years has been the rise of
financial insecurity as measured by the economic security index (Rockefeller
Foundation 2010). This measures the share of Americans who experience at
least a 25 per cent drop in their available family income whether due to a
decline in income or an increase in medical spending or a combination of the
two, and who lack an adequate financial safety net to catch them when they
fall. A higher ESI therefore indicates greater insecurity. According to the ESI,
financial insecurity has increased. Indeed, in 1985, 12.2 per cent of Americans
experienced a major economic loss sufficient to classify them as insecure in the
ESI. During the recession of the early 2000s, this had risen to 17 per cent. In
2007, the picture had improved (13.7 per cent), but measured insecurity
remained higher than in the 1980s. Projections suggest that in 2009, the level
of economic insecurity experienced by Americans was greater than at any
time over the past quarter century, with approximately one in five Americans
(20.4 per cent) experiencing a decline in available household income of 25 per
cent or greater (see figure 1).
By the early 2000s the purchase of the American dream – an education,
a car, a house, combined with regular trips to the mall – had become
increasingly unaffordable, thus squeezing middle-class families, precisely
when labour market rewards reached an all time low (Hacker 2006).
The Times They Are Changing : Crisis and the Welfare State, edited by Bent Greve, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2012. ProQuest Ebook
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63
Anne Daguerre
Figure 1
Risk of financial loss has increased from 1985 to 2007 for all Americans (with 2008–09
projections)
25%
20.4%
(PROJECTED)
20%
17.0%
13.7%
15%
12.2%
10%
ESI
ESI Trend (1985-2007)
5%
0%
85 86 87 88 91 92 93 94 95 97 98 99 02 03 05 06 07 08 09
(PROJECTED)
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Source: Rockefeller 2010: 3.
However, there was no political pressure to expand income transfers partially because of the low salience of inequality-related issues but also because
of easy access to borrowing allowed low and middle-income households to
sustain consumption or to purchase a home (Brandolini 2010: 219–20; Appelbaum 2010). The American dream rested on gigantic levels of personal debt,
with devastating consequences for those households affected by the mortgage
crisis in the summer of 2007, which marked the onset of the Great Recession
(2007–09).
The Great Recession
Because so many Americans rely solely on the labour market and access to
credit to sustain their livelihoods, when these two sources of income dried up
simultaneously, as in 2007–09, American citizens found their lives literally
turned upside down.
Even prior to the Great Recession, there was a gradual increase in national
poverty rates in the previous 10–15 years. While there was a sizeable decline
from 1993 until 2000, poverty rates have increased to almost the same rates
since the early 1980s and 1990s in similar recessionary periods (see figure 2). A
similar trend occurs by age. With the exception of seniors of 65 years and
older, the poverty rate for all other age groups has risen with the highest
64
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US Social Policy in the 21st Century
Figure 2
Number in poverty and poverty rate: 1959–2009
50
Recession
Number in millions, rates in percent
45
43.6 million
Number in poverty
40
35
30
25
20
Poverty rate
15
14.3 percent
10
5
0
1959
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005
2009
Source: US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey 1960 to 2010 Annual Social and
Economic Supplements.
Figure 3
Poverty rates by age: 1959–2009
50
Recession
Percent
45
40
35
65 years and older
Copyright © 2012. John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated. All rights reserved.
30
25
Under 18 years
20
20.7 percent
15
12.9 percent
8.9 percent
10
5
0
1959
18 to 64 years
1965
1970
1975
1980
1985
1990
1995
2000
2005 2009
Source: US Census Bureau, Current Population Survey 1960 to 2010 Annual Social and
Economic Supplements.
increase for individuals under 18 at 20.7 per cent (see figure 3). The rates for
poverty in minors are reaching recessionary levels from the early 1990s and
1980s. Among ethnic groups, Blacks have the highest poverty rate reaching
25.8 per cent, followed by Hispanics with 25.3 per cent; …
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