The Future Of Social Security Policy

Current debates concerning the future of social security provision in advanced capitalist states have raised the issue of a citizen’s basic income (CBI) as a possible reform package: a proposal based on the principles of individuality, universality and unconditionality which would ensure a minimum income guaranteed for all members of society. Implementing a CBI, would consequently entail radical reform of existing patterns of welfare delivery and would bring into question the institutionalized relationship between work and welfare. Ailsa McKay’s book makes a unique and positive contribution to the CBI literature by examining the proposal from a feminist economics perspective. Gender concerns are central to any debate on the future of social security policy, in that state intervention in the field of income redistribution has differential impacts on men and women. By drawing attention to the potential a CBI has in promoting equal rights of freedom for men and women this book serves to open up the debate to incorporate a more realistic and inclusive vision of the nature of modern socio-economic relationships.

Social protection systems are often still designed for the archetypical full-time dependent employee. Work patterns deviating from this model – be it self-employment or online "gig work" – can lead to gaps in social protection coverage. Globalisation and digitalisation are likely to exacerbate this discrepancy as new technologies make it easier and cheaper to offer and find work online, and online work platforms have experienced spectacular growth in recent years. While new technologies and the new forms of work they create bring the incomplete social protection of non-standard workers to the forefront of the international policy debate, non-standard work and policies to address such workers’ situation are not new: across the OECD on average, one in six workers is self-employed, and a further one in eight employees is on a temporary contract. Thus, there are lessons to be learned from country experiences of providing social protection to non-standard workers. This report presents seven policy examples from OECD countries, including the "artists’ insurance system" in Germany or voluntary unemployment insurance for self-employed workers in Sweden. It draws on these studies to suggest policy options for providing social protection for non-standard workers, and for increasing the income security of on-call workers and those on flexible hours contracts.

A quantitative analysis of the political sustainability of social security reform in France, Germany, Italy, Spain, the UK, and the US, with the suggestion that population aging will lead to more pension spending and that raising the retirement age is the most politically viable reform measure.

What are the possibilities and prospects for Social Security over the decades ahead? The essays in this interdisciplinary study explore what social insurance has meant historically, socially, economically, politically, and legally in the years since the founding of the American social security system in 1935. Questions examined include: Does Social Security have a coherent and defendable ideology? If so, is that ideology adequate to the demands of a contemporary political environment that seems to emphasize the re-privatization of many roles adopted by the modern welfare state? What explains the peculiarly feverish quality of recent Social Security politics--which has been characterized by periodic high anxiety, claims of doom and crisis, and rigid resistance to any alteration, followed by eventual marginal adjustment and continuing uncertainty about the future? Although the authors do not offer answers for all these questions, they convey confidence about the basic structure of American social security and optimism about its future possibilities. Contributors to the work are Robert M. Ball, Robert M. Cover, Michael J. Graetz, Rudolf Klein, Theodore R. Marmor, Jerry L. Mashaw, Michael O'Higgins, Paul Starr, and James Tobin. Originally published in 1988. The Princeton Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the original texts of these important books while presenting them in durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton University Press since its founding in 1905.

This work puts debates about Social Security reform into historical perspective, considers various reform ideas, and elaborates a proposal to ensure that the system can continue to meet the claims of the retired and the disabled. It sets out a plan to change the way Social Security is financed.