Synopses & Reviews
The early twenty-first century is witnessing a concerted effort to privatize risk-to shift responsibility for the management or mitigation of key risks onto private-sector organizations or directly onto individuals. Proposals to reform Social Security through the creation of private accounts are perhaps the leading example, but in a wide range of areas, similar trends are now playing out. Yet, ironically, pensions and other private systems for responding to risk also face severe challenges-and often for the same reason that public systems do: the risks that characterize our society and economy have changed more rapidly than the institutions designed to deal with them. From the burdens on pension funds caused by population aging to the pressures on corporate and government health programs created by rapidly rising medical costs, the institutions of risk management are increasingly buffeted by new and intensified pressures that are reshaping how all of us experience and deal with risk.
Broader questions about the future of the public sphere-in many different senses of the term-concern which public goods will be provided by governments through taxation; which will be provided by private philanthropy or organizations in civil society; which will be provided by market actors; and which will not be provided at all. These are basic questions for social science, and they are questions for a larger public discussion that needs to be informed by social science.
This series brings social science research to bear on these issues, cutting through the confusion and bias common to many policy discussions. Each volume, ranging from 80 to 100 pages, presents a concise review of the issues underconsideration and offers empirical, evidence-based opinion from leading scholars in the fields of economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, and law. In general, the five books in this series tackle the relationship between the privatization of risk, but specifically they focus on, respectively: health care and health insurance; employment insecurity and labor markets; pensions, assets, and social security; the pharmaceuticals industry; and natural disasters and homeland security.
Synopsis
The Early Twenty-first century is witnessing a concerted effort to privatize risk--to shift responsibility for the management or mitigation of key risks onto private-sector organizations or directly onto individuals. Proposals to reform Social Security through the creation of private accounts are perhaps the leading example, but in a wide range of areas, similar trends are now playing out. Yet, ironically, pensions and other private systems for responding to risk also face severe challenges--and often for the same reason that public systems do: the risks that characterize our society and economy have changed more rapidly than the institutions designed to deal with them. From the burdens on pension funds caused by population aging to the pressures on corporate and government health programs created by rapidly rising medical costs, the institutions of risk management are increasingly buffeted by new and intensified pressures that are reshaping how all of us experience and deal with risk. This series brings social science research to bear on these issues. Each volume presents a concise review of the issues under consideration and offers empirical, evidence-based opinion from leading scholars in the fields of economics, political science, sociology, anthropology, and law. The books in this series tackle the relationship between the privatization of risk and health care and health insurance; employment insecurity and labor markets; pensions, assets, and social security; the pharmaceuticals industry; and natural disasters and homeland security.
Synopsis
Laid Off, Laid Low provides a sobering portrait of the ailing American labor system and the social and political consequences of increasing job insecurity. It proves that the health of the labor market is not a transitory issue brought low by the factors of recession, but a serious concern reflecting deep structural problems in American society. In this book, economists, sociologists, and public policy and political scientists reveal how the American labor market has grown particularly problematic for new job-seekers, trends that are not obvious when averaging the entire population. The contributors to this volume focus instead on changing job patterns between generations, which show that the job prospects for young Americans are more short-term than their predecessors, and that white-collar managers, once members of the most privileged sector, are now experiencing a faster negative rate of change. As this book makes clear, Americans will soon face epic job losses, irreversible trends in downward mobility, and long-lasting economic insecurity-politically polarizing outcomes that will cause even more anxiety among families. Encompassing a number of different disciplines, the prominent scholars of Laid Off, Laid Low provide a full analysis of today's most pressing economic issues.
Contributors: Sheldon Danziger and Ben Keys: Unemployment Risk among Low Wage Workers: 1970-2000; Hank Farber: Employment Insecurity: The Decline in Worker-Firm Attachment in the United States; Elizabeth Jacobs and Katherine Newman: Rising Angst? Change and Stability in Perceptions of Insecurity; Philipp Rehm: Partisan Politics and Labor Market Risks; Ann Huff Stevens: Holding Firm: The Stability of Long-Term Employment in the US, 1969-2004