Anchored in a new theoretical framework that combines the insights of a variety of sociological and political science approaches, this study offers an understanding of the changes in the Mainstream Right’s family policy preferences and their drivers over time and across countries.

Anchored in a new theoretical framework that combines the insights of a variety of sociological and political science approaches, this study offers an understanding of the changes in the Mainstream Right’s family policy preferences and their drivers over time and across countries.

Why was the discourse of family values so pivotal to the conservative and free-market revolution of the 1980s and why has it continued to exert such a profound influence on American political life? Why have free-market neoliberals so often made common cause with social conservatives on the question of family, despite their differences on all other issues? In this book, Melinda Cooper challenges the idea that neoliberalism privileges atomized individualism over familial solidarities, and contractual freedom over inherited status. Delving into the history of the American poor laws, she shows how the liberal ethos of personal responsibility was always undergirded by a wider imperative of family responsibility and how this investment in kinship obligations recurrently facilitated the working relationship between free-market liberals and social conservatives. Neoliberalism, she argues, must be understood as an effort to revive and extend the poor law tradition in the contemporary idiom of household debt. As neoliberal policymakers imposed cuts to health, education, and welfare budgets, they simultaneously identified the family as a wholesale alternative to the twentieth-century welfare state. And as the responsibility for deficit spending shifted from the state to the household, the private debt obligations of family were defined as foundational to socio-economic order. Despite their differences, neoliberals and social conservatives were in agreement that the bonds of family needed to be encouraged — and at the limit enforced — as a necessary counterpart to market freedom. In a series of case studies ranging from Clinton’s welfare reform to the AIDS epidemic, and from same-sex marriage to the student loan crisis, Cooper explores the key policy contributions made by neoliberal economists and legal theorists. Only by restoring the question of family to its central place in the neoliberal project, she argues, can we make sense of the defining political alliance of our times, that between free-market economics and social conservatism.

Based on an original analysis of qualitative and quantitative material from twenty-two industrialized countries, this book traces the development of state support for families since the turn of the century. Assembling elements from demography, sociology, and economics, it argues that demographic changes have been a major force in bringing population and family issues on to the political agenda. The decline in fertility, the increase in divorce rates and lone-parenthood, and the entry of women into the labour force have all reduced the relevance of systems of state support aimed at traditional male breadwinner-housewife families, and in so doing have forced governments to reform the existing measures of family support. However, the exact nature of these reforms, and the ways family policy has evolved over time, differ considerably across countries.

Two-thirds of UK government spending now goes on the welfare state and where the money is spent – healthcare, education, pensions, benefits – is the centre of political and public debate. Much of that debate is dominated by the myth that the population divides into those who benefit from the welfare state and those who pay into it – 'skivers' and 'strivers', 'them' and 'us'. This ground-breaking book, written by one of the UK’s leading social policy experts, uses extensive research and survey evidence to challenge that view. It shows that our complex and ever-changing lives mean that all of us rely on the welfare state throughout our lifetimes, not just a small ‘welfare-dependent’ minority. Using everyday life stories and engaging graphics, Hills clearly demonstrates how the facts are far removed from the myths. This revised edition contains fully updated data, discusses key policy changes and a new preface reflecting on the changed context after the 2015 election and Brexit vote.

Looks at the three main components of work-family policy packages - childcare services, flexible working patterns and entitlements to leave from work in order to care - across EU15 Member States, with comparative reference to the US. This work also provides an examination of developments in the UK.

This book investigates the gender revolution in urban planning and public policy. Building on feminist urban studies, it introduces the concept of genderfication as a means of understanding the consequences of post-Fordist gender notions for the city. It traces the changes in western urban gender relations, arguing that in the post-Fordist urban landscape gender is used for urban planning and public policy – both to rebrand a city’s image and to produce space for gender-equal ideals, often at the cost of precarious urban populations. This is a topic that remains largely unexplored in critical urban studies and radical geography. Chapters cover how Jane Jacobs’ perspectives provide an alternative to the patriarchal modernist city for contemporary planners and using Rotterdam as a case study Van Den Berg discusses why new urban planning methods focus on attracting women and children as new urbanites. Topics include: forms of place marketing, gender as a repertoire for contemporary urban Imagineering and the concept of urban re-generation. The final chapter investigates how cities aiming to redefine themselves imagine future populations and how they design social policies that explicitly and particularly target women as mothers. Scholars in all fields of urban studies will find this work thought-provoking, instructive and informative.

Evelyne Huber and John D. Stephens offer the most systematic examination to date of the origins, character, effects, and prospects of generous welfare states in advanced industrial democracies in the post—World War II era. They demonstrate that prolonged government by different parties results in markedly different welfare states, with strong differences in levels of poverty and inequality. Combining quantitative studies with historical qualitative research, the authors look closely at nine countries that achieved high degrees of social protection through different types of welfare regimes: social democratic states, Christian democratic states, and "wage earner" states. In their analysis, the authors emphasize the distribution of influence between political parties and labor movements, and also focus on the underestimated importance of gender as a basis for mobilization. Building on their previous research, Huber and Stephens show how high wages and generous welfare states are still possible in an age of globalization and trade competition.

'Globalization', institutions and welfare regimes -- The challenge of globalization -- Globalization and welfare regime change -- Towards workfare? : changing labour market policies -- Labour market policies in social democratic and continental regimes -- Population ageing, GEPs and changing pensions systems -- Pensions policies in continental and social regimes -- Conclusion : welfare regimes in a liberalizing world.

The Problem with Work develops a Marxist feminist critique of the structures and ethics of work, as well as a perspective for imagining a life no longer subordinated to them.