The Pro-Elderly bias of social policies in Israel : a historical-institutional account
By: GAMLIEL-YEHOSHUA, Haya
.
Contributor(s): VANHUYSSE, Pieter.
Material type: 
ArticlePublisher: Oxford : Wiley-Blackwell, dec. 2010Subject(s): Política Social | Bem Estar Social | Sociologia | Pesquisa | IsraelSocial Policy & Administration 44, 6, p. 708-726Abstract: Accelerated population ageing and high voting turnout rates among elderly voters in recent decades have led many social scientists to predict increasing pro-elderly biases in the social policies of mature welfare states. This article investigates and empirically estimates the evolving age orientation of social policies in Israel, which is a comparatively young society that has nevertheless aged significantly since independence in 1948. We present a historical and qualitative overview of the development of policy efforts towards different age groups and develop an Elderly/Non-elderly Spending Ratio at four points in time between 1975 and 2005. We argue that in its first five decades, the Israeli welfare state uniquely combined a broadly universalistic and citizenship-based outlook with a number of significant particularistic spending biases towards specific subgroups. But from the second half of the 1990s onwards, the pro-elderly policy bias of the Israeli welfare state has strongly increased. These findings support Lynch's thesis for 21 OECD countries, which posits that a shift from a universal to a more occupationally based institutional model of welfare will result in a higher pro-elderly bias of social spending
Accelerated population ageing and high voting turnout rates among elderly voters in recent decades have led many social scientists to predict increasing pro-elderly biases in the social policies of mature welfare states. This article investigates and empirically estimates the evolving age orientation of social policies in Israel, which is a comparatively young society that has nevertheless aged significantly since independence in 1948. We present a historical and qualitative overview of the development of policy efforts towards different age groups and develop an Elderly/Non-elderly Spending Ratio at four points in time between 1975 and 2005. We argue that in its first five decades, the Israeli welfare state uniquely combined a broadly universalistic and citizenship-based outlook with a number of significant particularistic spending biases towards specific subgroups. But from the second half of the 1990s onwards, the pro-elderly policy bias of the Israeli welfare state has strongly increased. These findings support Lynch's thesis for 21 OECD countries, which posits that a shift from a universal to a more occupationally based institutional model of welfare will result in a higher pro-elderly bias of social spending
Click on an image to view it in the image viewer
There are no comments for this item.