Public Aid

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En provenance du cours de Columbia University

What Is the Welfare State? A Cross-National Comparison

2 notes

Columbia University

What Is the Welfare State? A Cross-National Comparison

2 notes

Cours 1 sur 5 dans Specialization Social Policy for Social Services & Health Practitioners

In all nations, social policy is a very large public investment. Course 1 will explore the size, structure, and outcomes of U.S. social policy and compare this policy to those of similar developed countries. The course will also probe the values this policy represents and the values debate regarding about how big our welfare state should be— in other words, how much of our education, housing, health, income support, and social services the government should supply and how much individuals should supply for themselves. This course addresses issues of power, oppression, and white supremacy. The course is part of a sequence in social policy that has an HONORS TRACK. This track will prepare the learner for masters-level work in policy, which involves reading the literature, writing concise summaries and probing critiques. Over the sequence the learner will develop a policy analysis that will create a foundation for professional policy analyst assignments.

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Social Policy Structure

In this module, you will explore the domains of the US welfare state and differentiate the floor, platform and safety net components

Social Services5:29

Platforms and Floors by Professor Garfinkel2:39

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John Robertson
Policy Lecturer
School of Social Work, Columbia University in New York City

In the last video, I talked about income transfers in the form of social insurance.

Transfers that are money from one generation to another,

from people that are healthy to people who are struggling with illness or

disability, and for people that are unemployed.

And these systems are usually based on work people have paid in,

and this we call a social insurance system.

Today, in this lecture, I want to talk about the public aid system.

So the public aid system is public aid for the poor.

And it's often called welfare, this is the program that many people associate

with social welfare, in social policy entirely that we think of it as welfare.

So public aid programs are means tested.

So we measure how much income you have and

how much wealth you have to determine if you are poor.

And so that would be something that's in common of all public aids programs.

We have public aid programs for families and children, and

the largest of which is called TANF, Transitional Assistance to Needy Families.

And we'll talk more about that in section four in course four.

But there's also families that have children that have different levels

of ability get support and there are other smaller programs.

And then we have programs for poor adults,

this sometimes is called general assistance or public aid,

and so this is cash that's given to people that are poor.

Now this often interacts with people who are disabled.

So people who are poor and have significant issues of disability.

These can be mental or physical, they can be substance abuse connected,

but they're people who do not have the capacity to support themselves.

So another part of the public aid system is the food and nutrition part,

it includes SNAP, the Food Stamp system, and then the school lunch system.

All of which are for people that are means tested and found to be poor.

We provide housing subsidies to people that are poor through section eight,

vouchers and other voucher programs and through public housing.

And so, again, you have to establish that your income and

your wealth is below certain levels.

And then we provide student aid, and that includes loans that are income tested.

The federal Pell Grants and other programs as well,

where you have to demonstrate that your income is below a certain level.

So public aid programs are controversial, they get us involved in a value debate.

Are people being honest?

Are people doing the best what they can to support themselves?

Are they creating dependency?

Is there fraud in the programs?

We will take these topics up in much more detail in course number four, but

it's one of the major debates in the social welfare system.

It turns out that public aid is much smaller than the first three

sections that we're talking about, healthcare, education, and

social insurance, but there's strong feelings about this.

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