Review by Choice Review
This volume reviews the recent performance of several welfare states: Britain (by Ken Judge), Sweden (by Sven Olsson), the US (by Robert Morris), Italy (by Ug Ascoli), Yugoslavia (by Eugen Pusic), Israel (by Ram Cnaan), Austria (by Rainer Munz and Helmut Winterberger), Japan (by Hye Kyung Lee), and Canada (by James Torczyner). The authors (sometimes tediously) describe the design and expansion of these welfare states since the 1940s, the distribution of income, and strategies for retrenchment since the mid-1970s. Similar patterns emerge across these nations-e.g., the rapid growth of expenditures between 1960 and 1980, the persistence of poverty, and the juggling of accounts and cost control techniques such as delaying indexed benefit increases and capital expenditures. Two concluding chapters (by Robert Friedmann and Moshe Sherer) are too brief to detail these patterns explicitly; there is no introductory chapter. Compared to The Welfare State East and West, ed. by Richard Rose and Rei Shiratori (CH, Apr '87), another recent volume surveying differences in welfare states, this book is long on description but short on comparative analysis. Good bibliographies on each country. Appropriate for upper-level undergraduates and graduate students in social work or comparative public policy courses.-D.B. Robertson, University of Missouri-St. Louis
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
