Time and Poverty in Western Welfare States

Time and Poverty in Western Welfare States is the English language adaptation of one of the most important contributions to welfare economics published in recent years. Professors Leibfried and Leisering offer a time-based (dynamic) analysis of the study of poverty, and suggest the need for a radical rethinking of conventional theoretical and policy approaches. Its methodology will make it of great interest to students and researchers in the social sciences, with particular importance for social policy and welfare economics.

Preface R. Dahrendorf; Part I. The Welfare State and the Life Course Passages Through Poverty: 1. Poverty in the welfare state: the life-course approach; 2. Life course as politics; Part II. Poverty in the Life Course: The Dynamics of Social Decline and Ascent: 3. Objective time: how long do people claim social assistance?; 4. Subjective time: how social assistance is perceived and evaluated; 5. Living time: poverty careers between exclusion and integration; 6. Institutionalised time: does social assistance create dependency?; Part III. Poverty and Social Change Debates and Policies: 7. Between denial and dramatisation: images of poverty in postwar Germany; 8. Disruption and continuity in life courses: poverty in unified Germany; 9. Increasingly dynamic? The impact of social change on social assistance dynamics; Part IV. Poverty and Society: Towards a New Welfare State?: 10. Time and poverty: towards a new picture of poverty and social exclusion; 11. Paths out of poverty: perspectives on active policy; 12. Social inequality in transition; 13. Individual lives and the welfare state - recasting the German welfare regime.