Time and Poverty in Western Welfare States: United Germany in Perspective

by Lutz Leisering , Stephan Leibfried , Foreword by Ralf Dahrendorf , Translated by John Veit-Wilson

• ISBN13: 9780521003520
• ISBN10: 0521003520
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2001-04-23
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Time and Poverty in Western Welfare States is the English-language adaptation of one of the most important contributions to welfare economics published in recent years. Professors Leibfried and Leisering offer a time-based (dynamic) analysis of the study of poverty, and suggest the need for a radical re-think of conventional theoretical and policy approaches. The core of this study is the empirical analysis of the life course of recipients of 'Social Assistance' in Germany, although the conclusions are put into a wider context of socio-economic and socio-political analysis and comparative observations are made with other countries, notably the USA. Time, Life and Poverty will be of interest to upper-level students, researchers and policy-makers in a wide range of social science disciplines, including: economics, social policy, sociology, psychology and European studies.

Table of Contents

List of figures	vii
List of tables	viii
Foreword	ix
Ralf Dahrendorf
Plan of the book	xiii
Acknowledgements	xv
I The welfare state and the life course: passages through poverty	1	(54)
Poverty in the welfare state: the life-course approach	3	(20)
Life course as politics	23	(32)
II Poverty in the life course: the dynamics of social decline and ascent	55	(114)
Objective time: how long do people claim Social Assistance?	59	(30)
Subjective time: how Social Assistance is perceived and evaluated	89	(20)
Living time: poverty careers between exclusion and integration	109	(35)
Institutional time: does Social Assistance create dependency?	144	(25)
III Poverty and social change: debates and policies	169	(68)
Between denial and dramatisation: images of poverty in post-war Germany	175	(25)
Disruption and continuity in life courses: poverty in unified Germany	200	(24)
Increasingly dynamic? The impact of social change on Social Assistance dynamics	224	(13)
IV Poverty and society: towards a new welfare state?	237	(86)
Time and poverty: towards a new picture of poverty and social exclusion	239	(18)
Paths out of poverty: perspectives on active policy	257	(22)
Social inequality in transition	279	(14)
Individual lives and the welfare state: recasting the German welfare regime	293	(30)
References	323	(36)
Subject index	359	(15)
Index of names	374