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Centre for Policy on Ageing | |
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| Age, class, politics and the welfare state | | Author(s) | Fred C Pampel, John B Williamson |
| Corporate Author | American Sociological Association |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1989 |
| Pages | 199 pp (Arnold and Caroline Rose monograph series) |
| Keywords | Services ; Finance [care] ; Demography ; Social welfare ; Economic status [elderly] ; Theory. |
| Annotation | The authors analyse the relative impact of class and status groups versus demographic composition and political structures on the growth of welfare spending. Special attention is given to the role of the aged, as they are representative of the importance of ascription and middle-class groups in welfare reform. Another focus of the study is on income inequality. The authors attempt to organise, compare and evaluate competing theories of the structure of the welfare state and its connection with other aspects of the stratification system. Testing these theories requires comparative data and analysis, for which aggregate cross-national data from the United Nations (UN), the International Labour Organisation (ILO) and the World Bank are analysed. The conclusion is drawn that a large aged population is a direct and crucial influence on welfare spending. A corollary thesis developed is that the primary beneficiaries of welfare benefits are not the poor, but middle income groups, and that inequality is reinforced by welfare spending. (RH). |
| Accession Number | CPA-910702004 B |
| Classmark | I: QC: S8: TY: F:W: 4D |
Data © Centre for Policy on Ageing |
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| ...from the Ageinfo database published by Centre for Policy on Ageing. |
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