Social policy is a plan or action of government or institutional agencies which aim to improve or reform society. Some professionals and universities consider social policy a subset of public policy,[1] while other practitioners characterize social policy and public policy to be two separate, competing approaches for the same public interest (similar to MD and DO in healthcare), with social policy deemed more holistic than public policy.[2] Whichever of these persuasions a university adheres to, social policy begins with the study of the welfare state and social services.[3] It consists of guidelines, principles, legislation and associated activities that affect the living conditions conducive to human welfare, such as a person's quality of life. Social policy might also be described as actions that affect the well-being of members of a society through shaping the distribution of and access to goods and resources in that society.[4] Social policy often seeks to alleviate precarity and wicked problems.[5]
Allegory or The Triumph of Justice, an 1858 painting by Hans von Aachen
Social policy was first conceived as an academic subject in the 1940s by Richard Titmuss within the field of social administration in Britain.[6] Titmuss's essay on the "Social Division of Welfare" (1955) laid the development for social policy to gradually absorb social administration. Titmuss was an essayist whose work concerned the failure of the market; the inadequacy of selective social services; and the superiority of collectivism and universal approaches.
Ancient world
Some of the earliest examples of direct intervention by government in human welfare date back to Ancient Rome's Cura Annonae (grain dole) founded in 123 BC, and Umar ibn al-Khattāb's rule as the second caliph of Islam in the 6th century: he used zakat collections and also other governmental resources to establish pensions, income support, child benefits, and various stipends for people of the non-Muslim community[citation needed].
English and Western European advents
The enactment of English Poor Laws helped curb poverty and recidivism: these laws influenced the justices of Berkshire to implement the Speenhamland system, which was the first social program in the modern sense of that word. The Speenhamland Plan was so generous, usually in the form of supplying peasants with bread, that it resulted in a widespread pauperization of men who stayed outside the labor market. Thus, while it was helpful in providing food assistance, it would need to be reformed to prevent men from staying paupers.
Thus, two major models of social insurance arose in practice: Bismarkian welfare from Germany and Beveridgean welfare from Britain. The Beveridge Model (like the UK's NHS) features government-funded, government-run healthcare, free at the point of service, financed by taxes, with public hospitals and staff. In contrast, the Bismarck Model (Germany, France, Japan) uses non-profit "sickness funds" funded by employer/employee payroll deductions, covering private providers, ensuring universal care but with a mix of public/private delivery and often lower wait times due to competition. The key difference is Beveridge's tax-funded, public-provider system versus Bismarck's mandatory, social insurance-funded system with private providers.
Furthermore, the post-WWII economic boom spurred much of the previously war-ravaged states to incorporate elements of social democracy into their decisionmaking, leading to more generous social expenditures nationally. Many social democratic measures were championed by the labor movement.
21st century
Social policy in the 21st century is complex and in each state it is subject to local and national governments, as well as supranational political influence. For example, membership of the European Union is conditional on member states' adherence to the Social Chapter of European Union law and other international laws.[clarify] A global influence in the retrenchment and decline of generous government support has been the introduction of workfare (enacting work requirements to receive assistance). Despite being a socialist alliance, the Red-Green coalition in Germany, which was a partnership government of Social Democrats (red) and Greens (ecologists), ushered in neoliberal alterations to the German social security program.
Academic approaches
University programs
The newly-minted academe of social policy study is configured in four primary ways across numerous universities: as a unique discipline, as a specialization of public policy, as a joint program, or as an interdisciplinary field.
Stand-alone social policy programs
While some scholars describe social policy as an interdisciplinary field of practice, scholars like Fiona Williams and Pete Alcock believe social policy is a discipline unto itself. Formulating social policy as a discipline unto itself (rather than interdisciplinary), universities offering a stand-alone social policy degree include the University of Birmingham, University of York, Oxford University, and the University of Pennsylvania.
The Department of Social Policy at the London School of Economics defines social policy as "an interdisciplinary and applied subject concerned with the analysis of societies' responses to social need", which seeks to foster in its students a capacity to understand theory and evidence drawn from a wide range of social science disciplines, including economics, sociology, psychology, geography, history, law, philosophy and political science.[8]
Statue of Lady Justice depicting justice as equipped with three symbols: a sword symbolizing the court's coercive power, a human scale weighing competing claims in each hand, and a blindfold indicating impartiality
According to the LSE, social policy aims to improve human welfare and quality of life by meeting the principal human needs of: Education, Health, Housing and Economic security.[10] Therefore, with its emphasis on preventing precarity, social policy is usually seen as being separate and distinct from fiscal policy, environmental policy, foreign policy, and military/war policy. Due to this, social policy is alternatively called domestic policy or welfare policy.
When such policies are formalized by a legislature passing them into law, instead of being only executive measures, they are categorically referred to as "social legislation."
Access to K-12 public education, college finance and admissions (higher education), teacher training, pedagogy, school disciplinary action, credit/student/teacher transferability, and related educational issues are elements of education policy, as a subset of social policy. Some analysts see education policy in terms of social engineering.[11]
Pensions, caregiving, social security (a form of social insurance), retirement policy and retirement planning, and issues related to aging societies are connected to social policy. In the U.S., AARP was founded to advance these issues, and political equity for senior citizens, and today is the largest lobbying organization in America.
At the federal level, the major areas of U.S. social policy are addressed under the jurisdiction of the United States Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, known as the HELP Committee. A complementary committee in the House of Representatives holds jurisdiction over these issues in that body, but it changes its name each time a different party comes to power.
Factors to U.S. social policy
The United States was a pioneer in generous social spending (relative to comparable countries), as it provided substantial social spending for Civil War veterans and their families.[19] However, the United States would go on to lag behind other advanced industrial democracies in social spending. Religious, racial, ideological, scientific and philosophical movements and ideas have historically influenced American social views shaping policy debates. For example, while American collectivism was greatly impacted by Methodism and Quakerism, denominations which helped thrust the social tenets of Christianity to the forefront of developing the welfare state and laws against child labor, more conservative and Calvinistic denominations (based on teachings of John Calvin and his idea of pre-destination) and the Protestant Values of hard work and individualism, might be seen as stymying social welfare. Moreover, Social Darwinism helped mold America's ideas of capitalism and the survival of the fittest mentality. The temperance movement, labor movement, women's rights movement, environmental movement, and the Catholic Church's social teaching has also been considerably influential to the development of social welfare debates in America.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt's ground breaking New Deal is a paragon example of social policy that focused predominantly on a program of providing work and stimulating the economy through public spending on projects, rather than on cash payment. The programs were in response to the Great Depression affecting the United States in the 1930s, including Social Security (United States). United States politicians who have favored increasing government observance of social policy often do not frame their proposals around typical notions of welfare or benefits; instead, in cases like Medicare and Medicaid, President Lyndon B. Johnson presented a package called the Great Society that framed a larger vision around poverty and quality of life.
President Lyndon B. Johnson would also attempt to implement education policy under his Great Society package, introducing several programs and laws, such as the Elementary and Secondary Education Act of 1965 (ESEA), Higher Education Act of 1965 (HEA), and the Bilingual Education Act of 1967 (BEA), and many others. These laws would form the backbone of the education policy changes of the No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB), introduced during the administration of Republican President George W. Bush with bipartisan support. The law took effect on 8 January 2002, attempting to raise standards in education, address educational inequities (framed as an achievement gap), and issues in schools framed as issues of accountability. The No Child Left Behind Act required every state to assess students on basic skills to receive federal funding. While the law did attempt to address issues underlying U.S. education, its provisions were widely viewed as unsuccessful. States continued to create their own standards while assessing themselves. NCLB also led to the closure of numerous schools labeled "low-performing" or "failing", disproportionately impacting schools that served predominately Black students and rural communities.[20] Provisions of NCLB were changed and replaced under the Race to the Top (R2T, RTTT or RTT) and Every Child Succeeds Act (ESSA) passed during the Administration of President Barack Obama.
↑"Penn SP2 Mission Statement". School of Social Policy & Practice. University of Pennsylvania School of Social Policy & Practice. Retrieved 26 April 2021.
↑"Gun Control". Almanac of Policy Issues. Retrieved 21 May 2015.
↑Thomasma, David C.; Graber, Glenn C. (1991). "Euthanasia: Toward an Ethical Social Policy". Ann Intern Med. 114 (12): 1067. doi:10.7326/0003-4819-114-12-1067_3.
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