"Williamson and Pampel make an obvious contribution to the academic literature...."--Journal of Sociology and Social Welfare
"Williamson and Pampel are to be congratulated for achieving simultaneous breakthroughs in the comparative study of modern social policies. Creatively synthesizing quantitative and comparative historical methodologies, they also bring Third World and advanced-industrial nations into a common framework of analysis. An extraordinary achievement--because recent comparative histories have focused only on highly industrial nations. This book is also theoretically creative, building upon and synthesizing theoretical ideas from several schools of thought. I expect Old-Ave Security in Comparative Perspective to attract wide interest among scholars, students, and public policy analysts."--Theda Skocpol, Harvard University
"A major accomplishment! Old Age Security in Comparative Perspective is tightly argued, scholarly in its detail, but always lucid and clear to read. The analytical structure of the book is exemplary. By combining carefully constructed case studies with confirmatory quantitative analysis, the authors go a long way to achieving the methodological synthesis that many have called for but few have achieved. This is the first book to systematically incorporate the developing countries of the Third World into an analysis of the modern welfare state. By so doing, Williamson and Pampel extend the boundaries of conventional welfare state studies dramatically. The combination of theory, empirical elegance, and lucid writing will make this a text that will stand up well in advanced undergraduate and graduate level courses in political sociology, social policy, and social gerontology."--John Myles, Florida State University
"Williamson and Pampel convincingly squelch theories of the welfare state that argue that a single variable such as the strength of organized labor can adequately predict either the levels of spending or the quality of social programs. Rather their insightful and detailed analysis of both industrialized and Third World nations suggests that the most fruitful line of inquiry for future research on the welfare state lies in explaining alternate pathways and variations in outcomes."--Jill Quadagno, Florida State University
"The U.S. economists who advise emerging East European nations and Latin American countries on their old age policies should read this book. It offers a sophisticated understanding of how old age programs assuage class divisions and, in other nations, yield to the ethnic cleavages by providing individual-based pensions."--Journal of Economic Literature
Product Description
This work makes extensive use of seven well-developed historical case studies describing the evolution of public old-age security in industrial nations (Germany, United Kingdom, Sweden, and the United States) and developing nations (Brazil, Nigeria, and India). The authors focus on specifying contexts in which general theoretical perspectives can be used to account for these developments. One of the few studies which integrates historical and quantitative data, this accessible work will prove helpful to students and researchers of the welfare state, aging policy, and comparative sociology.
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