This assignment is due on Next Friday so plenty of time

Multiple and Interrelated BenefitsIt would be a mistake to leave the reader with the conclusion that most social policies andsocial programs pursue their objectives through single benefit or service strategies. Althoughthere are instances of that, it is not the general case, especially in relation to programsthat intend to deal with the social problem of poverty. It is common for citizens tothink of programs like Social Security or even unemployment security as providing onlya single benefit, but in fact eligibility for one benefit form very often automatically qualifiesa person for multiple benefits. The fact of interrelated benefit packages certainlymakes the analysis of social policy with respect to benefit forms, in particular, a livelyand complex venture. It is not surprising that programs and policies should have morethan a single kind of benefit; after all, we have already seen that multiple goals or objectivesare commonplace. Where that is the case and where such goals are diverse it wouldbe expected that different benefit types and thus multiple benefits would occur. Lewis andMorrison found that multiple benefits can occur in two major forms: (1) benefits fromone program can alter benefits in other programs and (2) program benefits can changepersonal tax liability.6The U.S. Unemployment Insurance (UI) program is an example of a benefit thatgenerates multiple benefits: eligible, involuntarily unemployed workers might receiveboth a cash payment, services from the state vocational and rehabilitation service, andreferral to employers searching for workers. The purpose of rehabilitation services isto retrain the employee and to provide trained and ready-to-work employees for employers.Maintaining the stability of a large workforce for the economic enterprise ofthe country as well as for relief of unemployment is a goal of the UI program. TheTANF program (Temporary Assistance to Needy Families) is another example of ahighly complex package of benefits and services. It is difficult to elaborate because ofinterstate variation, but the list that follows characterizes the most general case: a cashbenefit, a medical card, child support enforcement, special food allowance for infantsand pregnant mothers, vocational training, family planning services, and so forth. Noticethat elements in this benefit package are mostly compulsory: child support enforcement,job searches, and/or vocational training are compulsory. In the past,“benefits” were sometimes used punitively against clients: sterilization, family planning,and abortion. Furthermore, some program policies automatically disqualify a recipientfrom benefits from another program. We will discuss those complex examplesin Chapter 9, which deals with program and policy interrelationships.Criteria for Evaluating the Merit of Benefitand Service TypesStigmatization, Cost-Effectiveness, Substitutability,Target Efficiency, and Trade-OffsWhenever there is a benefit to be given in remedy of a specific tangible need, it can begiven in the form of cash or it can be given it in the form of directly consumable articles(e.g., food or clothing). The question is: “Which form is best, why, and from what point of view?” Almost all U.S. public benefits available in income maintenance programscould be given in kind. The issue touches on more than income-related benefits. Thinkfor a moment about the delivery of medical care benefits and services. A cash approachwould give dollars directly to families in need, that amount equivalent to whatever wasthe price of the necessary medical care. This benefit is most commonly given not in theform of cash, but in the form of a credit or voucher—a strategy that is more related toan in-kind benefit than a cash strategy.Such examples serve to illustrate how the evaluation criteria apply to this generalquestion. From the consumer’s point of view, the major difference is the degree to whicha choice can be exercised with regard to the goods or services delivered—the evaluationcriterion we earlier called consumer sovereignty. From the benefit giver’s point of view, themajor difference is the ability to exercise control over the nature of the article and the wayit is consumed—the evaluation criterion we earlier called target efficiency. If a family needscheese and you give them $5 to buy it, the family can decide whom to buy it from, whento make the purchase, under what conditions, and at what price—an example of maximumconsumer sovereignty. If you give the family a letter telling the cheese store to givethe family $5 worth of cheddar and to add it to your bill, the choices that can be made bythe family are thereby limited. But notice that from the point of view of the benefit giver(the person who is paying for the cheese), it may be important to restrict the choices. Forexample, the benefit giver may get a special price from the cheese dealer if a great deal ofcheese is purchased this way and our cheese dealer can purchase more economically if hecan count on volume sales. Not only that, the merchant knows that no advertising expenseis incurred. Thus, the benefit giver is able to help more hungry people becausecheese can be purchased for less in an in-kind, rather than a cash, benefit form. Underthis condition (but only this condition), giving the benefit in an in-kind form satisfies theevaluation criterion of cost-effectiveness—the benefit is delivered at a cost that is effectivelythe lowest relative to the other available and practical forms and means of delivery.Note that it is also true that the benefit goes directly for the specific social problemof concern—hunger. This is an example of the evaluation criterion called target efficiency,a virtue here because the efficiency involved makes it possible to benefit morehungry people. There is not much else to do with cheese except eat it, though a genuinelyimaginative person might use it to catch mice, or sell it to a neighbor at a cut-rate price,or trade it for another commodity. And, of course, there is a well-known street trade infood stamps.Here are the arguments against the preceding conclusions. With regard to thelower expense of in-kind benefits, they say, it is not entirely clear whether economies ofscale work in a way that inevitably yields a lower unit cost than cash (and, thus, generatea cost-effective benefit form). A person can take the view that the only way to establisha true cost is through an exchange in a free market, even a cheese market. How can thebenefit giver really know that the price charged by the cheese merchant was the bestprice on that day for that amount of cheese of that particular kind? Whereas the pricequoted to the in-kind benefit giver may have been the best price the benefit giver couldhave obtained that day, suppose there was a cheese crisis the day following; if the familyhad cash with which to deal, they might have obtained twice as much cheese for half theprice. On the other hand, the cheese merchant may have had bad luck selling his Swissthat week and would’ve sold twice as much to the family for half the price. (Of course, it might also have worked in exactly the opposite direction.) The same argument raises anobjection to an extension of social control via the purchase of cheese. The cost to thefamily is a lack of consumer autonomy, and that makes them even more dependent andless able to cope with the stresses of life. After all, this argument goes, independence andself-reliance are built on experience in such small matters as deciding whether to buycheddar, Swiss, or mozzarella. Notice how important are the details, for it is on themthat the ultimate conclusion depends.Notice the trade-offs operating here between the various evaluation criteria. Atrade-off occurs when the policy system has to suffer some disadvantage in order to getanother advantage. In general, benefits delivered in the form of cash increase consumersovereignty and reduce target efficiency. Another example of trade-offs is with regard toprograms to reduce poverty. When such programs create low unemployment (a virtue),economists believe that they will invariably increase inflation (a vice) as more employedworkers become consumers with money to spend. Although considered by economiststo be a side effect—and certainly it is in the sense that it was not intended—it is undeniablyan important effect on the lives of most people. But then it pays to notice thateconomists aren’t always right: In the 1994–1998 period of historically low unemploymentrates, inflation did not appear as economists predicted.Somewhat more serious is the argument that the price of in-kind benefits is stigmatization.When the consumption or acquisition of benefits is public, certain kinds of itemsbecome associated with “being on welfare,” and negative attributions are made to thoseso identified. Although someone seen eating a slice of cheddar cheese attracts little attention,it certainly is the case that disparaging comments are made to women who spendWIC vouchers in grocery stores (a mild form of in-kind benefit). According to Terkel,local welfare agencies bought certain kinds of shoes and dresses during the depression,and those who wore them were sure to inspire negative comments from others.7Some of these objections to in-kind benefit forms do not apply in all instances; it issurely not the case that all noncash forms stigmatize recipients—not all consumption ordelivery of the article or good is public. For example, one way to avoid public consumptionor delivery of foodstuffs in a noncash form is to use a subsidy method that was commonin England. If the U.S. government wished to increase the nutritional level of itslow-income citizens, it could subsidize the price of a popular food to the point where itcould become the least expensive, most nutritious food available (e.g., bread or milkproducts). The public treasury could subsidize the bakers or grocers, perhaps 40 cents aloaf; every month, those vendors would tote up how many loaves they sold and submit abill to the public treasury. In return, they would agree to sell bread for half the formerprice, maybe 35 cents a loaf. Thus, the consumer gets bread at a reduction and the bakeror grocer still makes a profit. Would the consumption of bread increase? Very likely.Would consumers be stigmatized for buying bread? Not very likely, because everyonepays the same price. Would the benefit go only to those who “really” need it? No, becausethere would be considerable “seepage” to those not in low-income brackets (again,a question about the target efficiency criterion). Would this form of the benefit be morecost-effective than cash? That question can be answered only through the empiricalstudy of increased nutrition as a result of the increased use of the subsidized foodstuffs The increase in nutrition resulting from the cash-benefit strategy would also have to bestudied and the net results of the two compared.Note that the cost of achieving the nutritional goal is the cost of the subsidy for thefoodstuffs actually bought by the poor; the cost of the destigmatization of the in-kindstrategy is exactly the cost of subsidizing the foodstuffs bought by the nonpoor. Thus, inthis case, the exact cost of the trade-off can be specified. Those who strongly support cashbenefits argue that such a benefit form clearly has an advantage along the lines of ensuringconsumer sovereignty by means of which receivers maintain control over when,what, and how things are bought. From the consumer’s point of view, that autonomy is amajor issue.The Political and Public Administration ViewpointHow does all this look from the benefit giver’s view, the perspective of the legislature,and the public program manager? Politicians and bureaucrats have their own preferencesfor benefit forms, as well as evaluation criteria of their own. Linder and Petersthink that one such is administrative complexity, for example.8It’s only natural to expect that public administrators will value a benefit form thatis simple rather than complicated to administer. It would seem preferable to administera fairly simple program delivering a partial cash subsidy to the elderly to pay part of theirwinter heating bill rather than administer an in-kind commodity program for the samepurpose—one in which the benefit would be gas or oil or electricity (or cow chips forthat matter), which the government owned and would deliver directly to consumers.Think of the problems of storage, delivery, services, and all the rest. A cash benefitplaces the responsibility on the beneficiary for obtaining the product needed and, thus,avoids the administrative complexities. Or consider a program that delivers services forseverely mentally ill children. Such a program may involve such complexities as administeringincome or asset tests to a wide variety of income levels (e.g., to determinewhether to charge for hospitalization); coordinating the program activities of a wide varietyof professionals; facing high costs per case and treatment strategies of uncertainand sometimes controversial validity to consumers potentially capable of deviant andantisocial behavior. On the other hand, the public policy may choose to deliver this benefitin a form that simply subsidizes the costs of such services in the private sector by theconsumer. In this case, the public administrator looks to the cost issues and struggleswith determining whether charges are fair and whether services were actually delivered,but certainly that is less complex than taking responsibility for their actual delivery. Theform taken by the benefit is determining here. Material, hard benefits are obviouslysimpler to administer than personal social services, which are often intangible and oftencontroversial as to their effectiveness. It is quite likely that less complex practices alsoentail low administrative cost, another evaluation criterion of preference to public administratorsand political figures who must account to the public in such matters.Another evaluation criterion common to public administration and the politicalcontext is the extent of adaptability across different kinds of users. A subsidy (equivalent tocash) is obviously quite adaptable to different kinds of users: those who heat with gas versus electricity; those who live in apartments versus their own homes; those who livein rural areas versus central cities. An in-kind benefit may not be so adaptable acrossthe diverse users in those examples. Political risk is also an evaluation criterion in thiscontext; for example, the level of public visibility of the benefit form may be an issuehere. The cash-equivalent subsidy for the winter heating program for the low-incomeelderly is quite invisible in that such programs can be handled via the U.S. mail. Note,however, that even if benefit receipt were visible, in this case it might be a political advantagerather than a liability; the viewpoint in our society is that the low-income elderlyare surely “deserving poor,” and that a politician who helps them projects theimage of a social and moral conscience—good political images, no doubt. Contrast thelevel of political risk via the high public visibility of a program that generates benefitsin the form of psychiatric services for severely mentally ill children. Because such childrenare capable of social deviance, they can be highly visible to a sensitive public andif the benefits (no matter how great or obvious the need for them) are delivered to apopulation group that is considered deviant, the political risk is high. It is widely believedamong social historians that the popularity of mental institutions as a benefitform for the severely mentally ill or shelters for the homeless are, in the first instance,appealing to politicians and public administrators simply because such institutions effectivelyreduce the visibility to the public (hence the political risk) of the targeted socialproblem and the people who are subject to it.9Finally, another evaluation criterion, potential for failure to reduce or soften the impactof the social problem, should attract the attention of the reader. There are few social programsthat have an unmitigated record of success. New programs should actually bethought of as experimental ventures and should be proposed to decision makers as exactlythat. Too many unkept promises, and too many disappointments on the part of those whofund programs create an enduring pessimism that will come to haunt social programproviders in the future. This evaluation criterion points to that issue; surely, before politicallyastute legislators make a public commitment in support of a social program, theymake calculations of their potential for failure. Those who seek funding should be preparedto make statements about the probability for success of their program design. Furthermore,they should also be prepared to make proposals as clear experiments on ideasthat have no history. Experimental failures are not a moral mistake; program failures, forwhich success has been widely advertised, are immense political mistakes.Criteria for Evaluating the Merit of Benefit Types:Consumer Sovereignty, Coercion, and IntrusivenessThis section considers an evaluation criterion that is preferred by the authors/analysts:consumer sovereignty. One argument for its generally positive effects is that it allows formaking choices—a strengths approach. The cash benefit expended contributes to thesupport of the general public economy in ways that in-kind benefits cannot. Cash benefitssupport ordinary businesses and ordinary employers and employees. In-kind benefits,if they are to achieve their major advantages of economy of scale and expensereduction, must enter a special market at the producer and wholesaler levels—certainly not the same retail market corridor used by the ordinary citizen/consumer. Support ofthat market bypasses many free markets, and in a way, that costs jobs because employerswill not need the employees that are created by the additional cash demand forgoods and products. In the long run, this argument speaks to the appealing idea of creatingmore employment and more taxes paid by a mechanism that remains faithful to acash market system; cash benefits ensure that “the consumer is king.” The point is that,in contrast to in-kind benefits, cash benefits have capacity for welfare-expenditure reductionsjust because when welfare recipients spend welfare dollars, those dollars createsome employment while in-kind benefits do not. One wouldn’t expect thatfree-market advocates would prefer a welfare benefit form that takes welfare beneficiariesout of the free market in the ways outlined before. Radical free-marketeers often findin-kind benefits attractive on the view that in-kind benefits are socially stigmatizingand, thus, make welfare unattractive.Still there are those who seriously advocate for in-kind benefits. Alva Myrdal, the1983 Nobel Prize winner in economics, is an example. Most of the arguments discussedbefore can be read in greater detail in her work.10 However, Myrdal makes two otherpoints we have not covered previously and are worth noting because they concern cogentarguments about their limitations. The first is that the issue of consumer choice is notvery relevant when it comes to benefits targeted primarily toward children; children seldomexercise much consumer choice in poor families. The second is that in-kind benefitscannot be seriously preferred where family income is not adequate in the first place.In the last analysis, Myrdal comes out for restricting in-kind benefits to secondary needs,nonbasic food, shelter, and clothing. With that view, then, it would seem that the kindsof benefits Myrdal really advocates as appropriate for in-kind forms are items such asmedical care, education, perhaps clothing, and surely expert services.The issue of substitutability of goods, also important to Myrdal, refers to the possibilitythat a public policy or program the intent of which is to increase food purchases, forexample, may not do so because more food is not purchased. Instead, the family uses foodstamps to purchase the same amount of food they would have bought ordinarily; themoney released by the availability of food stamps can then be used to buy other commoditiesof choice; the net gain, then, is not necessarily in food items. For example, thesocially conforming family may use the extra purchasing power to buy books or morevegetables for the children. The less socially conforming may use it to buy illegal drugs,clothes, or a good time. Substitutability is an important idea because it shows how the inkindbenefit, when it concerns items that are vitally necessary for survival, may not alwaysbe an effective way of controlling the consumption pattern, amount, or kind of benefitreceived. The same argument might be made with respect to the provision of vouchersfor medical care, physician prescriptions, and credit for child care or work clothing, forexample. Substitutability is probably a criterion that has wide relevance to the evaluationof the merit of benefit forms, whatever those benefit forms might be.Consumer sovereignty is a virtue because it works against coerciveness and intrusivenessof government in the lives and private affairs of citizen-recipients of public benefits.Coerciveness and intrusiveness into private lives should be conceded as an importantcriteria for evaluating benefit and service types. It is important for readers to rememberthat intrusiveness into private affairs can violate a citizen’s right to privacy—which itself derives from constitutional provisions. Being a recipient of public benefits doesn’t changethat. Obviously, some types of benefits and services are worse offenders than others in thisrespect. The greatest potential for this offense is when beneficiaries are dependent onpublic benefits for their very physical survival. That would direct us to means-tested programslike TANF, food stamps, or SSI for the disabled or aged. Their means tests must berepeated at intervals in order for the program administrators to carry out their responsibilityto see that beneficiaries are still actually eligible: for example, beneficiaries may beliving a shared life with a household member who is working and earning but not be reportingit as household income. Notice that reporting it requires revelation of the beneficiaries’personal relationships, where that would ordinarily be considered “private affairs”were the person not a welfare beneficiary. One of the reasons means tests are objectionableis that they cannot easily avoid this kind of intrusiveness. But notice in contrast programslike Social Security Retirement and Disability, which are usually means tested butonly at the level of individuals, not households. No need there to be concerned about whoelse is sharing a household, a bed, or an income as in TANF or food stamps.AFDC, in particular, had a history of notorious intrusiveness. The best example isthe public welfare staff/county prosecutor “night-riders” in Newburgh, New York, whoroutinely stationed themselves outside recipients’ dwellings after dark to see who cameand went. It was a county-administered program at that time and the local policy concernedwhat was called the “man-in-the-house” rule: Any recipient who had a “man-inthe-house” (anytime after dark presumably) lost her benefits (illegally as it turned out).The point is that the eligibility rule has to do with who shares a household income, notwith who sleeps together. Besides being a violation of citizens’ privacy rights, knowingthat there was a “man in the house” doesn’t necessarily tell you anything about householdincome sharing, though recipients were disentitled just on that basis. The readershouldn’t conclude that this is an argument against administrative rules; rather, it is anargument about how such rules should be applied with due respect for their legality.And it is advice to practitioners to be alert to abuses of that kind.Of course, the reader must realize that there are social programs whose very natureit is to intrude into private affairs, the obvious example being families whose childrenare being severely physically abused. Notice that the issue there is social controlbut of a kind that is legally sanctioned. Although that cannot justify just any kind of intrusionor coercion, it is an important distinction because when the intrusion has occurredby court order, it also means there is a way of remedying abuses through the court systemand the legally required defense attorney. In contrast, administrative, extrajudicialcoercion, and privacy intrusions occur buried in organizational privacy, without clearand ready remedies.Criteria for Evaluating the Fit of the Benefit/ServiceType to the Social Problem AnalysisWhatever the type of benefit, the basic question is whether it fits the social problem analysis,that is, fits compatibly with the definition of the problem. One way to approach thisquestion of fit is to look at what the problem definition implies as the most prominent needs of the people who have the problem and ask whether the benefit the program deliversis relevant to any of them. If it is not, then the benefits are clearly off target and irrelevantto the social problem. They may even be desirable yet not a relevant benefit.Think of an after-school recreational program for children who are disruptive in classrooms.As desirable as this recreational program might be (perhaps it provides afterschoolhours supervision for working parents when no adult is at home), if the programcannot make a case for some linkage with classroom behavior, then the program fails thefitness test. Notice that you might create a fit by a design for the recreational programthat tailors itself to outcomes that are relevant to decreasing disruptive classroom behaviorin some way. That is, of course, exactly the point: If the tailoring is strong, theprogram activities would likely be much more specific than just simply “recreational”—recall that the definition of recreation is “doing what you want, when you want.”The policy and program analyst should also look at the social problem theory and,in particular, its derivative—the social program theory. Note that program theory willspecify some set of factors as a preferred outcome and describe how to set in motion achain of events (or processes) to obtain just that outcome. The benefit/service type mustbe one of those events, causal antecedents likely to set this chain of events in motion.And there must be a plausible and logical argument as to why this benefit would be expectedto have that result. That is what “fit of the benefit/service type” is all about. If thatargument is not there, then there is no fit.There are some historical examples of bad consequences as a result of this lack of fitwith the social problem analysis. In the 1970s, federal payments to states for foster homecare were raised to 100 percent of state costs. There was an entirely innocent motive onthe part of the U.S. Congress: States complained that they didn’t have funds to provide allthe foster home care they needed to protect children from abuse and neglect. The legislationand the federal dollars appropriated made cost-free foster home care available tostates. The benefit/service was a bad fit to the social problem of concern. The social problemwasn’t just the lack of foster home care—couldn’t be, since foster home care is nevermore than a means to some other end. In this case the “bad thing” that identifies the socialproblem was the neglect and abuse of children. Clearly, foster care protects childrenfrom immediate harm, but it doesn’t by itself change anything for next year or the yearafter that. As it happened, within the year, there were massive increases in the numbers ofchildren removed from their homes and placed in public foster home care facilities. Itwould appear that cost-free foster care created large-scale overuse of this service.11 Notonly that, many believe that cost-free foster home care funding was a major factor in childrencontinuing in long-term foster care, “stuck” there for interminable periods. Thatphenomenon came to be called foster care drift, a phrase referring to children who neitherreturn to their own homes nor are placed in permanent adoption. Foster care drift has badconsequences: Many children in foster care for long periods literally lose their place infamilies since families are living, organic things, changing with age/stage development oftheir members and adapting to the surrounding social and economic circumstances. Theprogram of cost-free foster home care actually created a whole new social problem—foster caredrift—an outcome that should be kept in mind when initiating new social programs.It is a great temptation for legislators, policy makers, and social practitionersalike to believe that a personal social service can (somehow) substitute for a necessary material need. It is almost always a mistake to believe that job training can provide alivelihood when the economy itself is not at that moment providing jobs for that particularperson, to believe that various “counselings” can help a mother find a way todeal with an aggressive child acting out when she has to work two jobs and twelve hoursa day in order to feed and provide shelter for her family. That is not to say that personalsocial services are never effective, only to say that they can only be effective for peoplewho are at least minimally fed, housed, and clothed. It would seem to be obvious, butthe history of the provision of social welfare benefits in the United States shows thatimportant and very costly mistakes can be made in that regard. In legislating the 1962amendments to the Social Security Act, social workers and other human service proponentsconvinced Congress that personal social services should be institutionalized asa major strategy against the problem of poverty. It wasn’t exactly a new idea—theemergency relief legislation of the depression era in the early 1930s had provided forspecial units of social workers to be available for difficult cases on an individualisticbasis to those who were poor and/or had personal problems. Prior to that time, privatecharitable agencies as far back as the Charity Organization Societies of the mid-1800sincluded social workers as part of a system to tailor cash assistance to individual characteristicsand to plan and implement service and benefit delivery. In its 1962 amendments,the Social Security Act provided the first federal statutory instance in theUnited States for the general provision of personal social services to families on relief.According to Morris, at the same time Congress increased the federal dollar match (tostate funds) to 75 percent for this purpose as if to underscore their commitment to the“rehabilitation” of the poor via personal social services.12 This effectively put intopractice the idea that services were an inextricable part, if not the major strategy, for asolution to the problem of poverty. The social problem viewpoint was that the cause ofpoverty was an interaction between lack of material resources and some personal attribute(attitude, cultural approach to work) and was amenable to change by a servicestrategy: family, group, and individual counseling; job and parent training; referralagencies; and service coordination, which avoided duplication of services. Indeed, thevery name of the federal agency responsible for basic income maintenance programs(e.g., AFDC) was changed to the Family Service Administration.13Congress was convinced to increase appropriations by hundreds of millions of dollarsfor services and the training of personal social service workers on behalf of thoseideas. Federal expenditures for personal social services increased from $194 million in1963 to a billion and a half dollars by 1972.14 Not surprisingly, services weren’t successfulin reducing poverty. The money was directed at what was perceived to be the shortcomingsof individuals rather than the shortcomings of the economic system. Themistake was to think that these services could somehow substitute for the problems of aneconomy that created most of the poverty in the first place.Here is an instance of a social problem analysis shown by subsequent events to bedead wrong and it reveals, on the one hand, the limitations of the criterion of fit withthe social problem analysis. On the other hand, it shows how important it is to remake thesocial problem analysis when that is the case. An obvious alternative hypothesis is thatthe social problem is caused by external and environmental, not only personal, attributes.The best training, education, and job referral systems cannot make up for a bad job market or low earnings combined with (for example) high child care and transportation costs.The English historian Barbara Wootten puts it this way: “It is always easier to put up aclinic than tear down a slum . . . we prefer today to analyze the infected individual ratherthan . . . the infection from the environment.”15But it isn’t that difficult to take all this history into account and then recreate a socialproblem analysis based on a broader economic and social system viewpoint. If onedid, the implication would be reasonably clear that the most obvious cause of poverty islack of money and the most obvious remedy is via material benefits: cash and/or adequatelypaid, full-time jobs. History shows that such jobs can be increased by a widerange of governmental public policies including (but not limited to) the following:
“Trickle-down” policies that give tax cuts to employers and investors to invest innew industrial plants and equipment to create new jobs (very slow in producingeffects and with sizable benefits to the wealthy)
Governmental policies to place new orders to private business for military equipment,roads, bridges, and hydroelectric power dams in employment-distressedregions (quicker effects for the middle class but expensive and controversiallycost-effective for the poor)
Projects directly administered by the federal and state government to constructpublic buildings, roads and bridges, and national park facilities like the WorksProgress Administration (WPA) and the Tennessee Valley Authority (TVA) duringthe 1930s’ depression (quickest for the poor but controversially cost-effectivefor the product produced and politically very controversial in the United States,though not in Europe)And, of course, there is an incident in world history that, although not so intended,dramatically demonstrates the effectiveness of public policy remedying poverty by hardbenefits like money or food or the access to opportunity for the ordinary jobs that produceincome. In the 1800s, Great Britain, stubbornly ignoring the relationship amongcrime, poverty, and general economic distress, decided to solve its problem of an immenseoverload of civil prisoners by shipping them off to their colonies in Australia andNew Zealand—out of sight, out of mind, out of trouble. No one believed that these colonialsocieties would be successful. As hindsight shows, not only did that happen but successfulmodern social and economic structures were built on a populace of convictedcriminals. The desire to work and the ability to compete and survive are shown by thisexample not to have been lacking in the convict society. The economic and social developmentof these countries is the premier example of the importance of having availablesufficient economic opportunity created by public social utilities (when the private sectorcannot provide it). Given abundant land made available by explicit public policy in theform of subsidies, land grants, transportation, and settlement, a society made up of convictedcriminals created a hardworking, ordered, socially conforming, and economicallyproductive life.16 The mistake in the British approach to its social problem of crime wasan ideological error in the British understanding of the problem of criminal behavior—the problem was thought to be totally about moral lack, not of economic opportunity.However, when given a labor market that provided opportunity, these early Australian and New Zealand settlers took advantage of its benefits and turned them to their ownself-interest. Personal social services were not required. One might say that the lesson tobe learned from this history is that it takes very dramatic, hard-benefit–oriented mechanisms(jobs and money) to produce a major impact on serious national poverty and crimeand no personal social service strategy—training, rehabilitation, job search sophistication,however well financed or conceived—can substitute for it. Will there be some whodon’t work however many jobs are available? Of course there will be, because no socialprogram or policy is ever perfect.Criteria for Evaluating the Merit of BenefitForms: Adequacy, Equity, and EfficiencyWe have already considered adequacy and efficiency in the earlier section on the fit of thebenefit form with the social problem analysis. But there are moments when equity has aspecial relevance to the choice of benefit type. Educational vouchers, it turns out, providea good example. Here is the argument. Suppose that instead of providing neighborhoodschools for children, a school district decides to issue educational vouchers. When presentedto a private school, the school district will guarantee payment of a child’s tuitioncosts from tax funds. Commonly, educational vouchers pay tuition costs up to the dollarper pupil costs in the local school district—some places that could amount to, say, $5,000per year per child, not an insignificant sum of money. Those who object to this form ofeducational benefit argue that for most private schools, the tuition is always more thanthe voucher will provide, so that only those families with greater-than-average incomewho can make up the difference can take advantage of them. And, if a significant numberof parents choose vouchers and private schools, the number of citizens who support publicschools will not only diminish but also actively oppose their improvement since theyare paying double educational costs. Indeed, with less pupils, per pupil costs rise, and atsome point, these cost increases mean less will be provided for public school students.Some voucher opponents argue that ultimately vouchers mean that public schools areonly for those of less-than-average income and will not have enough support from taxpayersto avoid serious deterioration in teaching staff and curriculum offerings, not tomention buildings and facilities.That is, of course, a consequence that is seriously inequitable because it falls primarilyon low-income citizens who are least able to accommodate to it. The issue hereis not that vouchers are inevitably inequitable, only that where it creates inequities, thevoucher policy design must have features that eliminate it. Vouchers can have some importantpositive qualities, particularly the increase in what we have earlier called consumersovereignty—parents can exercise free choice over what kind of school theirchildren attend. The trade-off here is between that free choice and the inequity in theform of lower-class schooling it visits on children who remain in public schools. Thereare a number of ways of reducing the inequity. Most of the solutions turn on differentways of equalizing educational costs so that all parents have the opportunity to sendtheir children to private schools: for example, private schools could be prevented fromcharging more than the local district per pupil costs, the school district could subsidize private schools at a higher rate than their own per pupil cost, and so on. Note that all theprevious discussion avoids other important issues in public payments to private schools,notably the issue of church–state separation.SummaryNine types of benefits and services were presented for use in the analysis of social programsand policy provisions: cash, material goods and commodities, expert services,positive discrimination, credits/vouchers, market/wholesale subsidies, government loanguarantees, protective regulation, and power over decisions. Criteria for evaluating themerit of benefits and services were presented: fit with the social problem analysis, fit withthe program design, potential for stigmatization, target efficiency, cost-effectiveness,consumer sovereignty, substitutability, and trade-offs, among others. Interrelationshipsbetween benefits and benefit packages accruing from more than a single program will bethe sole concern in a subsequent chapter of this book.Resouces Chaper 5 of Social Policy and Social Programs Write a 300 word summary evaluating the benefit types and services of the same agency or organization you used in pervious assignments  The information that is stated above is the pages 96-107 from the text book that you will need to complete this assignment Use the criteria for evaluating benefits and services , located in the above information 

Please no Plagirism-