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Urban poverty, along with all of its poignant manifestations, is moving from city centers to working-class and industrial suburbs in contemporary America. Nowhere is this more evident than in East St. Louis, Illinois. Once a thriving manufacturing and transportation center, East St. Louis is now known for its unemployment, crime, and collapsing infrastructure. Abandoned in the Heartland takes us into the lives of East St. Louis’s predominantly African American residents to find out what has happened since industry abandoned the city, and jobs, quality schools, and city services disappeared, leaving people isolated and imperiled. Jennifer Hamer introduces men who search for meaning and opportunity in dead-end jobs, women who often take on caretaking responsibilities until well into old age, and parents who have the impossible task of protecting their children in this dangerous, and literally toxic, environment. Illustrated with historical and contemporary photographs showing how the city has changed over time, this book, full of stories of courage and fortitude, offers a powerful vision of the transformed circumstances of life in one American suburb.
Social Security Policy in a Changing Environment analyzes the changing economic and demographic environment in which social insurance programs that benefit elderly households will operate. It also explores how these ongoing trends will affect future beneficiaries, under both the current social security program and potential reform options. In this volume, an esteemed group of economists probes the challenge posed to Social Security by an aging population. The researchers examine trends in private sector retirement saving and health care costs, as well as the uncertain nature of future demographic, economic, and social trends—including marriage and divorce rates and female participation in the labor force. Recognizing the ambiguity of the environment in which the Social Security system must operate and evolve, this landmark book explores factors that policymakers must consider in designing policies that are resilient enough to survive in an economically and demographically uncertain society.
Poverty among the elderly is sharply gendered—women over sixty-five are twice as likely as men to live below the poverty line. Older women receive smaller Social Security payments and are less likely to have private pensions. They are twice as likely as men to need a caregiver and twice as likely as men to be a caregiver. Recent efforts of some in Washington to reduce and privatize social welfare programs threaten to exacerbate existing gender disparities among older Americans. They also threaten to exacerbate inequality among women by race, class, and marital status. Madonna Harrington Meyer and Pamela Herd explain these disparities and assess how proposed policy reforms would affect ineq...
Provides an analysis of pension reform in all the major countries in the Americas, including successes and failures.
Pensions and retirement saving plans have helped millions of households build financial security. But tens of millions of people have been left behind, without access to these wealth accumulation vehicles. For many others, the plans they have do not ensure financial security in retirement. The problems that underlie these failures can be addressed. This book proposes concrete, practical ways to make dependable retirement income accessible for all Americans—not just those with means. Individual accounts have eclipsed traditional pensions as the primary vehicle for retirement saving in the United States—a shift that underlies many sources of retirement insecurity. The 401(k) plan and simil...
This handbook is a one-stop forum for nonpartisan discussion of the major proposals for addressing Social Security's coming financial crisis. This timely volume details the history and development of the American system of Social Security and examines the serious problems it faces. It covers the "prehistory" of Social Security dating back to the 19th century and projects the program's likely future over the next several generations. Thematically, the book chronicles the origination of the initial Social Security Act of 1935, each major reform to the act through today, the nature and magnitude of the current difficulty facing Social Security, and each major remedy that has been proposed. It also examines programs in other nations and how they have attempted to address similar problems. This handbook is essential reading for anyone trying to understand how this vital program evolved and where it could be going.