{"product_id":"welfare-in-an-idle-society","title":"Welfare in an Idle Society?","description":"The modern welfare state is indeed one of the greatest achievements of the post-war 20th century. With its key aims of eradicating the five giant social ills of Want, Ignorance, Disease, Squalor and Idleness, it aimed to providing a minimum standard of living, with all people of working age paying a weekly contribution; in return, benefits would be paid to anyone who was sick, unemployed, retired or widowed. The modern welfare state, therefore, is about maintaining a delicate equilibrium between dependent social groups on the one hand and the active working classes on the other.   In the case of old-age security, this balance is being achieved (or not) by the so-called Generation Contract. This social pact is more of an implicit, unwritten and unspecified social contract. This ground-breaking book demonstrates how countries are addressing population-ageing challenges in depth, using the case study of Austria to gain the required complexity and differentiation in a comparative European framework of empirical evidence.   This is a broad social science study in political economy and sociology, not an economic analysis. Though focusing on pensions, it centres on the (im)balance between work and non-work, issues of health, work ability, employability, and benefit receipt  from old-age security to disability allowance. It will be required reading for all sociologists and social policy experts and academics working within this area.","brand":"Taylor \u0026 Francis Ltd","offers":[{"title":"Default Title","offer_id":54247412138328,"sku":"9781138467613","price":173.6,"currency_code":"EUR","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0278\/1295\/4195\/files\/9781138467613_71809e3f-7009-4ce3-9019-12394def5b44.jpg?v=1769633145","url":"https:\/\/agendabookshop.com\/products\/welfare-in-an-idle-society","provider":"Agenda Bookshop","version":"1.0","type":"link"}