Books

Welfare States and Immigrant Rights: The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion

by Diane Sainsbury (Oxford University Press 2012)

Welfare States and Immigrant Rights deals with the impact of welfare states on  immigrants’ social rights, economic well-being and social inclusion, and it offers the first systematic comparison of immigrants’ social rights across welfare states. To study immigrants’ social rights the author develops an analytical framework that focuses on the interplay between 1) the type of welfare state regime, 2) forms of entry, or entry categories, and 3) the incorporation regime regulating the inclusion or exclusion of immigrants. The book maps out the development of immigrants’ social rights from the early postwar period until around 2010 in six countries representing different welfare state regimes: the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Sweden, and Denmark, and it examines the politics of social rights extension and contraction and changes in the incorporation regime that impinge on immigrant rights.

Paperback | 978-0-19-965478-9 | £22.50

Gendered Tradeoffs: Family, Social Policy, and Economic Inequality in Twenty-One Countries

by Becky Pettit and Jennifer L. Hook (Russell Sage Foundation 2009)

Gender inequality in the workplace persists, even in nations with some of the most progressive laws and generous family support policies. Yet the dimensions on which inequality is measured—levels of women’s employment, number of hours worked, sex segregation by occupations and wages—tell very different stories across industrialized nations. By examining federally guaranteed parental leave, publicly provided child care, and part-time work, and looking across multiple dimensions of inequality, Becky Pettit and Jennifer Hook document the links between specific policies and aggregate outcomes. They disentangle the complex factors, from institutional policies to personal choices that influence economic inequality.

ISBN-13 / ISBN-10: 978-0-87154-661-6

Rich Democracies, Poor People: How Politics Explain Poverty

by David Brady (Oxford University Press 2009)

Poverty is not simply the result of an individual’s characteristics, behaviors or abilities. Rather, as David Brady demonstrates, poverty is the result of politics. In Rich Democracies, Poor People, Brady investigates why poverty is so entrenched in some affluent democracies whereas it is a solvable problem in others. Drawing on over thirty years of data from eighteen countries, Brady argues that cross-national and historical variations in poverty are principally driven by differences in the generosity of the welfare state. An explicit challenge to mainstream views of poverty as an inescapable outcome of individual failings or a society’s labor markets and demography, this book offers institutionalized power relations theory as an alternative explanation. The power of coalitions for egalitarianism, Leftist political groups and parties, and the social policies they are able to institutionalize shape the amount of poverty in society. Where poverty is low, equality has been institutionalized. Where poverty is widespread, exemplified by the U.S., there has been a failure to institutionalize equality. A comprehensive and state-of-the-art study, Rich Democracies, Poor People places the inherently political choices over resources and the political organization of states, markets, and societies at the center of the study of poverty and social inequality.

ISBN-13: 9780195385878 / ISBN-10: 019538587X

Poor Women in Rich Countries: The Feminization of Poverty Over the Life Course

by Gertrude Goldberg (ed.) (Oxford University Press 2009)

The first book to study women’s poverty over the life course, this wide-ranging collection focuses on the economic condition of single mothers and single elderly women–while also considering partnered women and immigrants–in eight wealthy but diverse countries: Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Sweden, the United Kingdom, and the United States.

ISBN-10: 0195314301 / ISBN-13: 9780195314304

Discretionary Time: A New Measure of Freedom

by Robert E. Goodin, James Mahmud Rice, Antti Parpo, and Lina Eriksson (Cambridge University Press 2008)

A healthy work-life balance has become increasingly important to people trying to cope with the pressures of contemporary society. This trend highlights the fallacy of assessing well-being in terms of finance alone; how much time we have matters just as much as how much money. The authors of this book have developed a novel way to measure ‘discretionary time’: time which is free to spend as one pleases. Exploring data from the US, Australia, Germany, France, Sweden and Finland, they show that temporal autonomy varies substantially across different countries and under different living conditions. By calibrating how much control people have over their time, and how much they could have under alternative welfare, gender or household arrangements, this book offers a new perspective for comparative cross-national enquiries into the temporal aspects of human welfare.

ISBN-13: 9780521709514

Jobs with Equality

by Lane Kenworthy (Oxford University Press 2008)

Economic and social shifts have led to rising income inequality in the world’s affluent countries. This is worrisome for reasons of fairness and because inequality has adverse effects on other socioeconomic goods. Redistribution can help, but government revenues are threatened by globalization and population aging. A way out of this impasse is for countries to increase their employment rate. Increasing employment enlarges the tax base, allowing tax revenues to rise without an increase in tax rates; it also reduces welfare state costs by decreasing the amount of government benefits going to individuals and households. The question is: Can egalitarian institutions and policies be coupled with employment growth? For two decades conventional wisdom has held that the answer is no.

ISBN-13: 9780199550609 / ISBN-10: 0199550603

Growing Unequal: Income Distribution and Poverty in OECD Countries

by OECD (OECD Publishing 2008)

This landmark study on inequality and poverty, which covers all 30 OECD countries, includes chapters on the main features and drivers of inequality, characteristics of poverty, and additional dimensions of inequality — such as intergenerational mobility, the impact of publicly-provided services, and the distribution of household wealth. The report draws heavily on the LIS data and, even more so, on the LWS data.

ISBN-13: 9789264044180

Immigration and the Transformation of Europe

by Craig A. Parsons and Timothy M. Smeeding (eds.) (Cambridge University Press 2006)

A new kind of historic transformation is underway in twenty-first-century Europe. Twentieth-century Europeans were no strangers to social, economic and political change, but their major challenges focused mainly on the intra-European construction of stable, prosperous, capitalist democracies. Today, by contrast, one of the major challenges is flows across borders – and particularly in-flows of non-European people. Immigration and minority integration consistently occupy the headlines. The issues which rival immigration – unemployment, crime, terrorism – are often presented by politicians as its negative secondary effects. Immigration is also intimately connected to the profound challenges of demographic change, economic growth and welfare-state reform. Both academic observers and the European public are increasingly convinced that Europe’s future will largely turn on how is admits and integrates non-Europeans. This book is a comprehensive stock-taking of the contemporary situation and its policy implications.

ISBN-13: 9780521861939

Twenty Years of Research on Income Inequality, Poverty and Distribution in the Developed World

by Timothy Smeeding, guest editor (Oxford Journals 2004)

Special Issue of Socio-Economic Review
(Volume 2, Number 2, 2004)

The Future of the Family

by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, Timothy M Smeeding, Lee Rainwater (Russell Sage Foundation Publication 2004)

High rates of divorce, single-parenthood, and nonmarital cohabitation are forcing Americans to reexamine their definition of family. This evolving social reality requires public policy to evolve as well. The Future of the Family brings together the top scholars of family policy—headlined by editors Lee Rainwater, Tim Smeeding, and, in his last published work, the late Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan—to take stock of the state of the family in the United States today and address the ways in which public policy affects the family and vice versa.

ISBN-13 / ISBN-10: 978-0-87154-628-9

Families that Work – Policies for Reconciling Parenthood and Employment

by Janet C. Gornick and Marcia K. Meyers (Russell Sage Foundation Publication 2003)

Parents around the world grapple with the common challenge of balancing work and child care. Despite common problems, the industrialized nations have developed dramatically different social and labor market policies—policies that vary widely in the level of support they provide for parents and the extent to which they encourage an equal division of labor between parents as they balance work and care. In Families That Work, Janet Gornick and Marcia Meyers take a close look at the work-family policies in the United States and abroad and call for a new and expanded role for the U.S. government in order to bring this country up to the standards taken for granted in many other Western nations.

ISBN-13 / ISBN-10: 978-0-87154-359-2

Poor Kids in a Rich Country – America’s Children in Comparative Perspective

by Lee Rainwater and Timothy M. Smeeding (Russell Sage Foundation Publication 2003)

In Poor Kids in a Rich Country, Lee Rainwater and Timothy Smeeding ask what it means to be poor in a prosperous nation – especially for any country’s most vulnerable citizens, its children. In comparing the situation of American children in low-income families with their counterparts in 14 other countries—including Western Europe, Australia, and Canada—they provide a powerful perspective on the dynamics of child poverty in the United States.

ISBN-13 / ISBN-10: 978-0-87154-705-7

Child Well-Being, Child Poverty and Child Policy in Modern Nations: What Do We Know?

by Koen Vleminckx and Timothy Smeeding (The Policy Press 2001)

Child poverty and the well-being of children is an important policy issue throughout the industrialised world. Some 47 million children in ‘rich’ countries live in families so poor that their health and well-being are at risk. The main themes addressed are: the extent and trend of child poverty in industrialised nations; outcomes for children – for example, the relationship between childhood experiences and children’s health; country studies and emerging issues; child and family policies. All the contributions underline the urgent need for a comprehensive policy to reduce child poverty rates and to improve the well-being of children. Findings are clearly presented and key focus points identified for policy makers to consider.

ISBN-13: 9781861342539

The Canberra Group – Expert Group on Household Income Statistics Final Report and Recommendations

by The Canberra Group (2001)

ISBN-10: 0-9688524-0