Neil Gilbert

Advocacy Research and Social Policy

Advocacy research-empirical investigations of social problems by people who are deeply concerned about those problems-has a long and honorable history, exemplified by the considerable influence of Michael Harringtons The Other America on federal antipoverty policies in the 1960s. Often, however, perhaps for understandable psychological reasons, advocacy has taken precedence to research, and results have been exaggerated or magnified. Claims in the 1980s, later irrefutably debunked, that 50,000 children are kidnapped each year by strangers, are one example. Other recent examples include wildly inflated estimates of the incidence of abuse of the elderly, sexual abuse of children, and rape. Exaggerated claims are eventually exposed but, when they deal with highly emotional subjects, can for a time powerfully shape media coverage and social policy. The trick-easier to say than do, but Harrington did it-is to be cautious and modest in making empirical claims and passionate and personal in expressing policy views.

Capitalism and the welfare state : dilemmas of social benevolence

Capitalism and the welfare state : dilemmas of social benevolence , Capitalism and the welfare state : dilemmas of social benevolence , کتابخانه دانشگاه امام صادق(ع)

Analyzing welfare effort: An appraisal of comparative methods

How do we measure and rate the social welfare efforts of nations? Most people consider the U.S. and Japan welfare laggards when compared with European countries. This view derives from a widely used measure of “welfare effort”-direct government outlays for social programs as the percentage of a nations gross domestic product (GDP). This article challenges several assumptions implicit in the conventional measure and suggests an alternative approach in assessing “welfare effort.” By incorporating indirect tax expenditures and controlling for the differences in tax burdens and social need for welfare spending among countries, the alternative measure (the NET index) not only broadens the conceptual boundaries of welfare effort, but also affords a more meaningful standard for comparative analysis. To illustrate, this study compares the welfare effort levels of ten developed nations measured under several versions of the NET index.

The Least Generous Welfare State? A Case of Blind Empiricism

Abstract Comparative analyses of modern welfare states rely heavily on measures of social expenditure, which have been developed and refined by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. These measures are used to assess the relative degrees of welfare effort, generosity and social protection afforded by welfare states. A critical analysis of the most rigorous and widely used measures of social expenditure reveals three fundamental issues, which involve the assumption of proportionality, indifference to need, and the discounted activity of deficit spending. These issues undermine the conventional social accounting for welfare states, making it virtually incomprehensible to interpret as a comparative measure of welfare effort, generosity, and social protection.

Who Speaks For The Poor

Abstract The citizen participation movement of the 1960s, as embodied in the anti-poverty program, opened new opportunities for the development of working relationships between professional planners and low-income neighborhood residents. A Pittsburgh study on resident assessments of conditions in anti-poverty program neighborhoods suggests that these relationships can offer false assurances of democracy to planners who prefer to operate with popular sanction. On the basis of much supportive evidence, planners and citizen participants in Pittsburghs anti-poverty program were highly critical of existing neighborhood conditions. However, the results of a survey of over 6,000 residents indicate that these views were not shared by the vast majority of the people living in the neighborhoods. This discrepancy between the high level of dissatisfaction expressed by a relatively small number of citizen participants and the apparent contentment of their neighbors highlights the role of activist minorities in the c...

The Transformation of Social Services

Over a relatively short period of fifteen years, there have been significant changes in the clientele, provisions, delivery, financing, and planning of social services in the United States. The collective impact of these changes has brought social services to the threshold of a new era; it is an era in which more consumers from all classes, more types of social service agencies, and more state and local governments have a greater stake than ever before in the establishment of enduring social service networks. This essay explores the basic features of change in five dimensions of social service and the implications of these changes.

Cultural Diversity and Sexual Abuse Prevention

This study addresses the question, How do lessons about touching and privacy frequently taught to children in sexual abuse prevention programs correspond to acceptable patterns of intimacy among families from different ethnic groups? Data on patterns of family intimacy dealing with bathing practices, sleeping arrangements, and physical contact were gathered from a survey of 364 mothers representing six ethnic groups: African Americans, Cambodians, Caucasians, Hispanics, Koreans, and Vietnamese. The findings reveal that (a) there are a number of significant differences among the groups studied in regard to acceptable patterns of intimacy in family life, and (b) the lessons of child sexual abuse prevention training set normative boundaries for parent-child relations that do not take into account the diverse patterns of acceptable behavior in American family life. These findings raise the issue of how to balance the collective obligation to protect children with the wish to respect diversity in family life.

Welfare for profit: moral, empirical and theoretical perspectives.

Since the 1960s there has been an increasing number of proprietary agencies engaged in the delivery of social services in the United States. This development has generally been greeted with disfavour by welfare state advocates. Various arguments have been put forward against welfare for profit on moral, empirical and theoretical grounds. This paper analyzes these arguments and proposes several basic conditions that would seem to have significant bearing on the choice between profit and nonprofit providers for a given service.

US Welfare Reform: Rewriting the Social Contract

This paper analyses recent developments in US welfare policy and their implications for future reforms. The analysis begins by examining how the enactment of the Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF) programme in 1996 changed the essential character of public assistance and the major social forces that accounted for this fundamental shift in US welfare policy. It then shows how the most recent welfare reforms under the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005 broadened and intensified the TANF requirements, leaving four avenues along which issues of conditionality and entitlement are likely to be played out in future welfare reforms. Finally, the discussion highlights how a new social contract is being forged through progressive and conservative proposals, which shift the focus of public assistance from the right to financial support to the right to work and earn a living wage.

The plight of universal social services.

In the early 1960s, the motivating theme of social services in the American welfare state was reduction of economic dependency. At that time services were highly selective, aimed mainly at poor people. Between 1960 and 1980 there was a drift toward univeralism, as the welfare state expanded to serve an increasing number of middle-class groups. This expansion of the welfare state was related to several social and demographic trends, and was accompanied by basic changes in the scope and purpose of social services. As the welfare state has moved toward universal entitlement to social services, a number of contradictions between the theory and practice of universalism in a capitalist society have surfaced. These contradictions lend a degree of support to the resurgence of selectivity which the welfare state is currently experiencing.