Social Security Policies in Industrial Countries: A Comparative Analysis

After 25 years of expansion and liberalization in the postwar period, social security policies in industrial countries have been encountering stresses and strains in the 1970s and 1980s. This book focuses on such questions as the relative merits of earnings-related, income-tested, and universal benefits; the bearer of the financial burden; the impact of social security benefits on incentives to work; the role of active labor market policies in combating unemployment; the wide differences among countries in their relative emphasis on rehabilitation and the disabled; and policies toward single-parent families.