A Prelude to the Welfare State

by Fishback, Price V.

• ISBN13: 9780226249841
• ISBN10: 0226249840
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2006-06-01
• Publisher: Univ of Chicago Pr

Summary

Workers' compensation was arguably the first widespread social insurance program in the United Statesbefore social security, Medicare, or unemployment insuranceand the most successful form of labor legislation to emerge from the early progressive movement. In A Prelude to the Welfare State, Price V. Fishback and Shawn Everett Kantor challenge widespread historical perceptions by arguing that workers' compensation, rather than being an early progressive victory, succeeded because all relevant partieslabor and management, insurance companies, lawyers, and legislatorsbenefited from the ruling. Rigorous and convincing, A Prelude to the Welfare State is a major reappraisal of the causes and consequences of a movement that ultimately transformed the nature of social insurance and the American workplace. "Substantial, well-written, and compelling. . . . The end result is an in-depth analysis of how workers' compensation was created and initially implemented in the United States at the beginning of the twentieth century"Christopher R. Larrison, Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare

Author Biography

Price V. Fishback is the Frank and Clara Kramer Professor of Economics at the University of Arizona and a research associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research. He is the author of Soft Coal, Hard Choices: The Economic Welfare of Bituminous Coal Miners, 1890–1930.   Shawn Everett Kantor is professor of economics at the University of California, Merced. He is the author of Politics and Property Rights: The Closing of the Open Range in the Postbellum South, also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xi
Introduction: Why Study the Origins of Workers' Compensation?	1	(7)
Framing the Issues	8	(20)
Compensation for Accidents before Workers' Compensation	28	(26)
The Economic Impact of the Switch to Workers' Compensation	54	(34)
The Timing of Workers' Compensation's Enactment in the United States	88	(32)
The Political Process of Adopting Workers' Compensation	120	(28)
The Fractious Disputes over State Insurance	148	(24)
The Battles over Benefit Levels, 1910-1930	172	(25)
Epilogue: Lessons from the Origins of Workers' Compensation	197	(8)
Appendix A: Accident Reporting under the Negligence System	205	(3)
Appendix B: Workers' Compensation Benefits and the Construction of the Expected Benefits Variable	208	(16)
Appendix C: Measuring the Change in Accident Benefits from Negligence Liability to Workers' Compensation	224	(7)
Appendix D: Econometric Analysis Used to Estimate Wage Offsets	231	(7)
Appendix E: A Model of Insurance Consumption and Saving Behavior	238	(5)
Appendix F: An Econometric Analysis of the Effect of Increased Expected Benefits on Saving and Insurance Behavior	243	(8)
Appendix G: Employers' Liability Laws	251	(3)
Appendix H: Discrete-Time Hazard Analysis of the Timing of Adoption across the United States	254	(6)
Appendix I: Data Sources and Descriptions of Quantitative Variables	260	(7)
Appendix J: State versus Private Insurance: An Ordered-Probit Analysis of the State's Choice	267	(4)
Appendix K: A Quantitative Analysis of Workers' Compensation Benefit Levels	271	(16)
References	287	(16)
Index	303