Social Justice and the City

Summary Welfare states treat different groups of needy people differently. Such differential rationing may reflect various considerations of policymakers, who act in economic, political and cultural contexts. This article aims at contributing to a theoretical and empirical understanding of the popular cultural context of welfare rationing. It examines European public perceptions of the relative deservingness of four needy groups (elderly people, sick and disabled people, unemployed people, and immigrants). Hypotheses, deduced from a literature review, are tested against data from the 1999/2000 European Values Study survey. It is found that Europeans share a common and fundamental deservingness culture: across countries and social categories there is a consistent pattern that elderly people are seen as most deserving, closely followed by sick and disabled people; unemployed people are seen as less deserving still, and immigrants as least deserving of all. Conditionality is greater in poorer countries, in countries with lower unemployment, and in countries where people have less trust in fellow citizens and in state institutions. At the national level there is no relation with welfare regime type or welfare spending. Individual differences in conditionality are determined by several socio-demographic and attitudinal characteristics, as well as by certain features of the country people live in.

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Making the difference in social Europe: deservingness perceptions among citizens of European welfare states

This comprehensive overview of the literature on children and disasters argues that scholars and practitioners should more carefully consider the experiences of children themselves. As the frequency and intensity of disaster events increase around the globe, children are among those most at risk for the negative effects of disaster. Children are psychologically vulnerable and may develop post-traumatic stress disorder or related symptoms; are physically vulnerable to death, injury, illness, and abuse; and often experience disruptions or delays in their educational progress as a result of disasters. Children have special needs and may require different forms of physical, social, mental, and emotional support than adults. However, children also have the capacity to contribute to disaster preparedness, response, and recovery activities. In order to promote children’s resilience to disasters, we must improve their access to resources, empower them by encouraging their participation, offer support, and ensure equitable treatment.

Children and Disasters: Understanding Vulnerability, Developing Capacities, and Promoting Resilience - An Introduction

This article examines the determinants of variations in welfare state attitudes between Germany, Norway, and the United States. Besides the influence of different welfare regime types'as discussed by Esping-Andersen and others, compositional effects of individual variables measuring people's socio-economic interests and socialization experiences and the interaction of aggregate-level (welfare regime) and individual-level (individual variables) determinants of welfare state attitudes are considered. Using data from the International Social Survey Programme (ISSP), results of our analysis show that remarkable between-country differences in welfare state attitudes exist. Our results suggest that these differences have to be explained both in terms of overall country effects and of the influence of country- specific economic interests and socialization experiences.

Four Worlds of Welfare State Attitudes? A Comparison of Germany, Norway, and the United States

We explore the impact of prosocial orientations on a domain of American public opinion that has puzzled many-attitudes toward social welfare policies. We focus on the orientation of humanitarianism, i.e., a sense of obligation to help those in need, and find that this value can explain support for a wide variety of social welfare policies. We argue that humanitarianism is an important element of the American sociopolitical ethos, although it has received little attention in the public opinion literature. We contrast humanitarianism with egalitarianism and show that these dispositions lead people to support distinctive sets of policies that constitute different types of welfare state. While egalitarianism causes people to embrace policies that mandate an extensive economic role for the government, humanitarianism is associated with more modest policies that seek to address the problems of the needy. Support for these more modest policies has generally been much greater in the United States than support for more invasive policies that seek to tinker with the free market. Thus, we argue that humanitarianism provides a better explanation for public opinion toward welfare in the United States than egalitarianism. We discuss the implications of these findings for public opinion research. p ublic support for social welfare programs in the United States has never been easy to understand. On the one hand, Americans are deeply suspicious of an expansive government and strongly committed to the principles of economic self-reliance and laissez-faire capitalism, factors that erode support for a welfare state (Free and Cantril 1968; McClosky and Zaller 1984). On the other hand, public opinion surveys have generally registered considerable support for specific social welfare programs (Cook and Barrett 1992; Free and Cantril 1968, Kluegel and Smith 1986; McClosky and Zaller 1984; Shapiro and Young 1989), even on the eve of the extensive welfare reform of 1996 (Weaver, Shapiro, and Jacobs 1995). We explore here the question of why there is public support for social welfare programs despite Americans' deep misgivings about the idea of welfare. We answer this question through an analysis of Americans' sociopolitical values and their relationship to support for a wide variety of social welfare programs.' Value-based approaches to understanding welfare policy support are not new (Bobo 1991; Feldman 1988; Kluegel and Smith 1986; McClosky and Zaller 1984), but we depart from the past research by

The Humanitarian Foundation of Public Support for Social Welfare

What is the state of the American welfare state? After half a century of growth and development, social welfare programs came under attack during the 1980s, generating widespread uncertainty about their future. Yet the welfare state weathered the assault. Cook and Barrett argue that social welfare in America is firmly rooted and that the American welfare state is here to stay. They attribute this to a strong reservoir of support on the part of both policymakers and the general public. Support for the American Welfare State asks how much support there is, who is most supportive, and why there are differences in levels of support. The authors report the results of a survey of attitudes of both the general public and members of the U.S. House of Representatives about Social Security, Supplemental Security Income, Medicare, Medicaid, Aid to Families with Dependent Children, Food Stamps, and Unemployment Compensation-seven of the largest programs in the American welfare state.

Support for the American Welfare State: The Views of Congress and the Public

Much of the research on African American legislative behavior has focused on men in office, while the literature on female legislators has looked primarily at white women. Far less is known of the growing number of African American female politicians. As the findings of this paper reveal, black women are similar to nonblack women in their strong support for prowomen's policy issues, and they are like black men in their solid support for minority-targeted policies. On the other hand, they are unlike other groups in their near unanimous agreement on the policies that are most important to them and that they are most likely to pursue while in office. Unlike other race and gender groups, black women in state legislatures seem to share a strong consensus on which policy areas should receive priority. To these women, the most pressing issues are education, health care, economic development, and employment.

The Policy Priorities of African American Women in State Legislatures

Support for the American Welfare State: The Views of Congress and the Public.

Women and minorities are now an integral part of state legislatures throughout the country The results from surveying a nationwide sample of 230 state legislators show that women and black legislators differ from their male and white colleagues in their perceptions of the legislative experience Women and blacks believe they must pay close attention to women's and minority concerns while at the same time demonstrating policy breadth Black women legislators are especially keen to the roles of both women and minorities White male legislators see little difference between their own experiences and those of their female and minority colleagues

Gender and race in the state house: The legislative experience

Abstract:When Hurricane Katrina hit, families were disrupted, and many children were left without the steady support of parents or immediate household relatives. This article describes a component of a comprehensive study of the structural, cultural and social conditions that allow youth to adjust to life after a catastrophic event. The purpose of this component of the research is to examine the success of adolescents in coping with the strains of post-Katrina relocation and to discover the sources of support on which they relied to facilitate the transition. In May 2006, 73 middle and high school students who had been evacuated to the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area completed a survey asking about their emotional and physical well-being as well as their new support networks. A comparison sample of non-Katrina students completed a similar survey. The findings indicate that many youth turned to school personnel and other significant adults to help them cope with this catastrophic event. Although the evacuated youth did not differ in many ways from their peers, they exhibited some negative symptoms. More importantly, those youths who built a positive relationship with their new school, and those who had garnered positive support from an adult—especially with their teachers—were managing better than those without a positive resource. The article concludes with implications for school-based policies to help distressed children.

The School as a Source of Support for Katrina-Evacuated Youth

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Edith J. Barrett

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