Pharmaceutical benefits in Australia and Sweden: welfare policy and the cost of prescription drugs

Pharmaceutical benefits provide a stable framework within which consumers, prescribers, suppliers, pharmacists and other actors undertake transactions. The state in effect delivers a good that enhances individual autonomy. A major reason for the legitimacy enjoyed by pharmaceutical benefits in both Australia and Sweden is that these programs have strong attributes of universalism (rather than targeting). Sweden's predominantly public health system allows greater scope for pharmaceutical policy innovation. Australia's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), while historically resilient and effective, is now wedged precariously between traditional considerations of equity and public health on the one hand, and constant pressure for increased marketisation on the other.

Middle-class school choice in urban spaces: the economics of public schooling and globalized education reform

Middle-class School Choice in Urban Spaces examines government-funded public schools from a range of perspectives and scholarship in order to examine the historical, political and economic conditions of public schooling within a globalized, post-welfare context. In this book, Rowe argues that post-welfare policy conditions are detrimental to government-funded public schools, as they engender consistent pressure in rearticulating the public school in alignment with the market, produce tensions in serving the more historical conceptualizations of public schooling, and are preoccupied by contemporary profit-driven concerns.Chapters focus on public schooling from different global perspectives, with examples from Chile and the US, to examine how various social movements encapsulate ideologies around public schooling. Rowe also draws upon a rich, five-year ethnographic study of campaigns lobbying the Victorian State Government in Australia for a brand-new, local-specific public school. Critical attention is paid to the public school as a means to achieve empowerment and overcome discrimination, and both a local and global lens are used to identify how parents choose the public school, the values they attach to it, and the strategies they use to obtain it. Also considered, however, are how quality gaps, distances and differences between public schools threaten to undermine the democracy of education as a means for individuals to be socially mobile and escape poverty.This book makes an important contribution to our understanding of global social movements and activism around public education. As such, it will be of key interest to researchers, academics and postgraduate students in the field of education, specifically those working on school choice, class and identity, as well as educational geography.

Widening development prescriptions: policy implications of an index of sustainable economic welfare (SEW) for Thailand

Over the past three decades, Thailand has recorded consistently high levels of economic growth, making it one of the most successful economies in the world during this period. However, economic growth has associated costs that can also reduce social welfare. This study will estimate an Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) for Thailand over a twenty-five year period, 1975–1999. This paper concludes that even low-middle income countries are beginning to approach the point at which economic growth produces both diminishing and, at times, negative welfare returns as the costs of achieving growth begin to outweigh the associated benefits. These results are important for policy makers and highlight the importance of widening policy prescriptions in order to increase social welfare. However, the policy guidelines that are suggested must be critically accepted before being adopted due to possible weaknesses of the ISEW approach.

Preventing tobacco use and harm: what is evidence based policy?

The majority of tobacco users commence in early to mid-adolescence. Tobacco smoking can be characterised as a chronic, relapsing disorder. While risk increases with amount smoked, there is no safe level of use (i.e., all use is risky). Duration of use is the most important predictor of premature death with the majority of excess morbidity and mortality avoidable if people quit before middle age. Investment in initiatives that reduce smoking among pregnant women and those at risk of cardiovascular disease provide quickest returns -in reduced health care episodes and expenditure.  Measures that successfully reduce smoking among parents probably reduce smoking uptake by children, and high levels of smoking among both children and parents appear to be associated with higher levels of illicit drug use.
The evidence base for pharmcotherapies in the treatment of tobacco dependence is very strong. Population-level initiatives such as tax increases, mass media-led campaigns and smoke-free policies are all highly cost-effective in reducing population-smoking levels, including among children and young people.
Australian tobacco control initiatives have been based on "social ecology" conceptualisations of the problem, which acknowledge the pivotal role of the media in shaping social values, and public and political opinion.
Broad social change, as well as more focused prevention and cessation initiatives, has drawn heavily on research findings from the behavioural sciences. Considerable effort (mainly, in Australian, in the NGO sector) has gone into documenting policy inputs and monitoring impact and outcome measures.
This chapter discusses why conceptualising tobacco-related harm from legal, economic and social policy perspectives should also help build support for tobacco control policy among academic and practising economists and lawyers, and in the business, welfare and government sectors.

Globalization, international trade and welfare

The term globalization is generally used to describe an increase in international transactions in markets for goods and services and factors of production, plus the growth and expanded scope of mar.y institutions that straddle international borders. Globalization has also led to a more liberal economic environment where issues such as labour standards, human rights, the environment, intellectual property rights, investment codes and competition policy are now considered legitimate topics in the trade debate. Free global markets cannot guarantee that air, water or energy resources are accurately priced for sustainable development since there is no mechanism to internalize environmental costs. Economic growth, although a powerful tool for increasing a country's wealth, cannot guarantee that such wealth will be equally distributed. What is needed is environmental and social policy to redistribute the benefits.
Recent empirical studies show that there are clear signs of income convergence among countries that integrate more fully with the world economy but a divergence between these active participants and those who elect to remain insulated from global markets. The inequality within nations (distribution of income) has increased during the period of globalization over the last fifty years.

The care crunch: changing work, families and welfare in Australia

Structural shifts in labour markets and in households are impacting on the capacity of households and families to deal with risk. In Australia the post-Federation and post-war social settlement, based on the gendered assumptions underpinning the male breadwinner/female carer model, is no longer viable in an era of increasingly precarious employment, diverse family forms and deepening inequalities. Labour market and industrial relations changes, when combined with major demographic shifts such as divorce and population ageing, and increasing expectations for community care are contributing to a 'care crunch'. The article canvasses the challenge of developing a social risk protection framework that balances caring, work and quality of life.

Diminishing and negative welfare returns of economic growth : an index of sustainable economic welfare (ISEW) for Thailand

Thailand has achieved remarkable levels of economic growth over the last three decades. This sustained economic growth has played a major role in reducing absolute poverty levels from nearly one third of the population in 1975 to presently less than 10%, thus increasing the welfare of many Thais. This performance ranks Thailand as one of the world's most successful economies during this period. However, an increasing number of studies have begun to find that at a certain point achieving economic growth stops improving welfare and actually begins to diminish it due to the hidden and traditionally unreported costs of associated with this growth. With one exception, these new studies have focussed on high-income countries. This study will estimate an index of sustainable economic welfare (ISEW) for a developing country, Thailand, over a 25-year period, 1975–1999. This paper concludes that even low–middle income countries are beginning to approach the point in which economic growth produces both diminishing and, at times, negative welfare returns as the costs of achieving economic growth begin to outweigh the benefits. These results are important for policy makers and highlight the importance of implementing alternative welfare enhancing interventions that must be considered in place of simply achieving economic growth. The emphasis of this paper is not on the methodology of estimating the ISEW for Thailand, but rather on the policy implications for developing countries of diminishing and negative welfare returns brought about through the achievement of economic growth.

Reconstructing child welfare through participatory and child centred professional practice

This questionnaire study examined the adjustment of 245 lone-parenting women following marital separation. A composite model included intrapsychic variables as intervening between demographic and contextual variables and adjustment (life satisfaction). Regression analyses showed that the demographic and contextual variables were partially mediated by the intrapsychic variables. The path model indicated that the intrapsychic variables (sense of coherence, control, depression, and grief) had a direct impact on life satisfaction and that there was an indirect path for depression through sense of coherence (SOC) and control. It was concluded that the intrapsychic variables had a more powerful relationship with women's post-separation life satisfaction than did the demographic/contextual variables. Social implications and recommendations for future policy are considered.

Wait no more : the use of private dental services by welfare recipients in Australia

Dental services in Australia are available both privately and publicly. However, access to public dental services, like access to public hospital services for non-urgent treatment, is subject to a considerable waiting period. Moreover, access to public dental services is restricted to certain categories of welfare beneficiaries who qualify for a health care card. Because of the waiting time for public treatment, there is a frequent call for more public dental resources. This paper addresses the issue of what the waiting time for public dental services represents. One view largely confirmed by our research is that state governments are using the waiting time as a way of trying to push more and more people into the private sector. We find that more and more health care card holders are using the
private sector for dental services.

How welfare-to-work requirements impact on single parents' volunteer activities

This paper seeks to describe the volunteering experiences of female single parents engaged in Australia's welfare-to-work program. Interviews were conducted with 26 single parents who had been required to increase their hours of work as a condition of the Centrelink policy introduced in 2006. To analyse the data, the technique of rich point analysis was employed which identified three key concepts central to the women's experiences.  These concepts included the nature of a decent job, notions of reciprocity, and a seeming hierarchy of suitable jobs promoted within the welfareto- work policy. How volunteer activities fit within these constructs was the focus of the investigation. The analysis revealed that the types of paid jobs women obtained were less fulfilling and flexible than their volunteer activities. and gave them less sense of contributing to society, Further, in most cases prior to welfare reform, these single mothers were volunteering in their children's school and as such, both the school's capacity and intergenerational role modelling of volunteering were depleted.