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Individual and Social Responsibility

Child Care, Education, Medical Care, and Long-Term Care in America

Does government spend too little or too much on child care? How can education dollars be spent more efficiently? Should government’s role in medical care increase or decrease? In this volume, social scientists, lawyers, and a physician explore the political, social, and economic forces that shape policies affecting human services.

Four in-depth studies of human-service sectors—child care, education, medical care, and long-term care for the elderly—are followed by six cross-sector studies that stimulate new ways of thinking about human services through the application of economic theory, institutional analysis, and the history of social policy.

The contributors include Kenneth J. Arrow, Martin Feldstein, Victor Fuchs, Alan M. Garber, Eric A. Hanushek, Christopher Jencks, Seymour Martin Lipset, Glenn Loury, Roger G. Noll, Paul M. Romer, Amartya Sen, and Theda Skocpol.

This timely study sheds important light on the tension between individual and social responsibility, and will appeal to economists and other social scientists and policymakers concerned with social policy issues.

364 pages | 14 line drawings, 12 tables | 6 x 9 | © 1995

National Bureau of Economic Research Conference Report

Economics and Business: Health Economics

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments
Introduction
Victor R. Fuchs
1: Overview
Timothy Taylor
2: Child Care: Private Cost or Public Responsibility?
Arleen Leibowitz
Comment: Francine D. Blau
3: Rationalizing School Spending: Efficiency, Externalities, and Equity, and Their Connection to Rising Costs
Eric A. Hanushek
Comment: Christopher Jencks
4: Health Care Reform: The Clash of Goals, Facts, and Ideology
Henry J. Aaron
Comment: Martin Feldstein
5: To Comfort Always: The Prospects of Expanded Social Responsibility for Long-Term Care
Alan M. Garber
Comment: John B. Shoven
6: Consumption Externalities and the Financing of Social Services
Robert H. Frank
Comment: Amartya Sen
7: Preferences, Promises, and the Politics of Entitlement
Paul M. Romer
Comment: Roger G. Noll
8: Information, Responsibility, and Human Services
Kenneth J. Arrow
Comment: Glenn C. Loury
9: The Changing Roles of Public, Private, and Nonprofit Enterprise in Education, Health Care, and Other Human Services
Henry Hansmann
Comment: Joseph A. Grundfest
10: Government Intervention in the Markets for Education and Health Care: How and Why?
James M. Poterba
Comment: Richard J. Zeckhauser
11: The Politics of American Social Policy, Past and Future
Theda Skocpol
Comment: Seymour Martin Lipset
Contributors
Author Index
Subject Index

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