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The reform of social security pensions and healthcare is a key issue for the modern world, and in many ways Latin America has acted as a social laboratory for the reform of these systems. From the reforms that took place in Chile in 1981, most pension and health care systems in the region have seen reform, and been fully or partially privatized. Many other countries considering reform of their own systems have been influenced by the policies implemented in Latin America. Yet despite the importance and influence of these reforms, until now there has not been an integrated and comprehensive analysis of the changes and their effects. This book is the result of four years of painstaking work, data collection, field research and international collaboration, and so fills the vacuum in the literature with a systematic comparison of pension and healthcare reforms in the 20 Latin American countries. It identifies reform models, and elaborates taxonomies to facilitate their understanding and comparison. Some key features of the reforms to emerge are: labour force and population coverage, equity and solidarity, sufficiency and quality of benefits, state regulation, competition and degree of privatization, efficiency and administrative costs, social participation in management, financing sources and long-term sustainability. Effects of the reforms on social security principles are measured based on recent standardized statistics and other information. Goals or assumptions of the reforms are contrasted with actual outcomes, and the pros and cons of private versus private provision assessed. Detailed policy recommendations are offered to correct current problems and improve pension and healthcare systems. This is the first book to comprehensively study these influential reforms in Latin America's pension and health care systems, and as such will be of importance to academics and researchers interested in social security and welfare policy, pensions, health care, and public policy; Social security, pension, and health care policy-makers; And social security, pension, and health care consultants and practitioners. Published in association with PAHO
The reform of social security pensions and healthcare is a key issue for the modern world, and in many ways Latin America has acted as a social laboratory for the reform of these systems. This is the first book to comprehensively study these influential reforms in Latin America's pension and health care systems.
Reassembling the Social is a fundamental challenge from one of the world's leading social theorists to how we understand society and the 'social'. Bruno Latour's contention is that the word 'social', as used by Social Scientists, has become laden with assumptions to the point where it has become misnomer. When the adjective is applied to a phenomenon, it is used to indicate a stablilized state of affairs, a bundle of ties that in due course may be used to account for another phenomenon. But Latour also finds the word used as if it described a type of material, in a comparable way to an adjective such as 'wooden' or 'steely'. Rather than simply indicating what is already assembled together, it is now used in a way that makes assumptions about the nature of what is assembled. It has become a word that designates two distinct things: a process of assembling; and a type of material, distinct from others. Latour shows why 'the social' cannot be thought of as a kind of material or domain, and disputes attempts to provide a 'social explanations' of other states of affairs. While these attempts have been productive (and probably necessary) in the past, the very success of the social sciences mean that they are largely no longer so. At the present stage it is no longer possible to inspect the precise constituents entering the social domain. Latour returns to the original meaning of 'the social' to redefine the notion, and allow it to trace connections again. It will then be possible to resume the traditional goal of the social sciences, but using more refined tools. Drawing on his extensive work examining the 'assemblages' of nature, Latour finds it necessary to scrutinize thoroughly the exact content of what is assembled under the umbrella of Society. This approach, a 'sociology of associations', has become known as Actor-Network-Theory, and this book is an essential introduction both for those seeking to understand Actor-Network Theory, or the ideas of one of its most influential proponents.
A range of perspectives on the complex political, philosophical, and pragmatic implications of opening research and scholarship through digital technologies. The Open Access Movement proposes to remove price and permission barriers for accessing peer-reviewed research work--to use the power of the internet to duplicate material at an infinitesimal cost-per-copy. In this volume, contributors show that open access does not exist in a technological vacuum; there are complex political, philosophical, and pragmatic implications for opening research through digital technologies. The contributors examine open access across spans of colonial legacies, knowledge frameworks, publics and politics, archives and digital preservation, infrastructures and platforms, and global communities.
The word “mother” traditionally meant a woman who bears and nurtures a child. In recent decades, changes in social norms and public policy as well as advances in reproductive technologies and the development of markets for procreation and care have radically expanded definitions of motherhood. But while maternity has become a matter of choice for more women, the freedom to make reproductive decisions is unevenly distributed. Restrictive policies, socioeconomic disadvantages, cultural mores, and discrimination force some women into motherhood and prevent others from caring for their children. Reassembling Motherhood brings together contributors from across the disciplines to consider the transformation of motherhood as both an identity and a role. It examines how the processes of bearing and rearing a child are being restructured as reproductive labor and care work change around the globe. The authors examine issues such as artificial reproductive technologies, surrogacy, fetal ultrasounds, adoption, nonparental care, and the legal status of kinship, showing how complex chains of procreation and childcare have simultaneously generated greater liberty and new forms of constraint. Emphasizing the tension between the liberalization of procreation and care on the one hand, and the limits to their democratization due to race, class, and global inequality on the other, the book highlights debates that have emerged as these multifaceted changes have led to both the fragmentation and reassembling of motherhood.
This study documents that the notion of Social Security as a minimal safety net is consistent with the views of both Adam Smith and Friedrich Hayek and that private social security accounts are inefficient and subject to moral hazard and huge productivity losses. It also introduces a novel approach to long-term investing suitable for perpetual funds consistent with the empirical phenomena of risk premia and mean reversion, including no asset sales and the use of short-term borrowing on a rollover basis to cover negative net inflows.
Despite the international community’s recognition of social protection as a human right, the vast majority of the world’s population still has no access to social protection. In a major effort to address this situation, the International Labour Conference unanimously adopted the Social Protection Floors Recommendation 202 of 2012. However, because of the wide variety of possible schemes (and techniques that can be employed to administer them), there is a genuine risk that important values relating to social protection will be overlooked in implementing the Recommendation. This collection of expert essays contains an in-depth clarification and analysis of the Recommendation and sets forth a clear and practicable set of principles that can be used both as a policy tool and as an assessment framework for the creation, maintenance, and supervision of a national social protection floor. This book pays detailed attention to each of the Recommendation’s key principles, including the following: – state responsibility; – universality of protection; – entitlement based in law; – adequacy and predictability of benefits; – non-discrimination; – financial solidarity; – good governance; – coherence of policies; and – social participation. A special feature of the book is its inclusion of case studies that display innovative social protection schemes focusing on children and families, persons of working age (particularly informal sector workers), and elderly persons. A concluding section offers useful insights on measures that can be taken and lessons learned. As a deeply informed and practical guide to ways in which states can (and do) establish and maintain a social protection floor as a fundamental element of their national social protection systems, this book has no peers. It will be warmly welcomed by jurists concerned with social protection throughout the world, by pertinent government agencies at all levels, by non-governmental organizations, and by academics in the field.
This volume represents the most important work to date on one of the pressing policy issues of the moment: the privatization of social security. Although social security is facing enormous fiscal pressure in the face of an aging population, there has been relatively little published on the fundamentals of essential reform through privatization. Privatizing Social Security fills this void by studying the methods and problems involved in shifting from the current system to one based on mandatory saving in individual accounts. "Timely and important. . . . [Privatizing Social Security] presents a forceful case for a radical shift from the existing unfunded, pay-as-you-go single national program to a mandatory funded program with individual savings accounts. . . . An extensive analysis of how a privatized plan would work in the United States is supplemented with the experiences of five other countries that have privatized plans." —Library Journal "[A] high-powered collection of essays by top experts in the field."—Timothy Taylor, Public Interest
What are the aims of social security and assistance provisions?Are they effective?Why do countries differ in the design and effectiveness of theirsocial security systems?This introductory textbook provides a foundation for the systematicstudy of social security, including means-tested provisionor social assistance.For undergraduate and postgraduate students of social policy,welfare, and economics.
Current estimates suggest that between one and three percent of people living in the United States will receive a diagnosis of mental retardation. Mental retardation, a condition characterized by deficits in intellectual capabilities and adaptive behavior, can be particularly hard to diagnose in the mild range of the disability. The U.S. Social Security Administration (SSA) provides income support and medical benefits to individuals with cognitive limitations who experience significant problems in their ability to perform work and may therefore be in need of governmental support. Addressing the concern that SSA's current procedures are consistent with current scientific and professional practices, this book evaluates the process used by SSA to determine eligibility for these benefits. It examines the adequacy of the SSA definition of mental retardation and its current procedures for assessing intellectual capabilities, discusses adaptive behavior and its assessment, advises on ways to combine intellectual and adaptive assessment to provide a complete profile of an individual's capabilities, and clarifies ways to differentiate mental retardation from other conditions.