Social welfare finance : selected papers

Abstract

This volume is a collaboration between public servants and academics to analyze problems in the welfare sector, which now occupies half of all Australian governmental expenditure. Four of its chapters deal with social security, two with health, two with housing, and two are special essays in social administration. Together they lift discussion of the Australian welfare state above its previous often polemical and uninformed level towards a more dispassionate and informative plane, technical but lucid. The social security chapters cover redistributive problems; social security inside the family; the surprisingly complex relationship between social security and income taxation; and an updating of the Henderson guaranteed minimum income proposals. The health chapters place Australian expenditure in a federal and an international framework. The housing chapters deal with aspects of the public housing program. The final chapters deal with long service leave and with evaluation in the health sphere.