Leaving the Australian Labor Force
An Extended Encounter with the State
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6263653 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Francis G Castles (Australian National University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1997 |
| Volume | 10 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 97-121 |
| Publication date | 1997-04-01 |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Governance (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0952-1895 • E-ISSN: 1468-0491 |
| Publisher | Wiley (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1111/0952-1895.331997033 |
| OpenAlex | W2042840196 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
This article seeks to demonstrate the way in which labor market choices are shaped by institutional arrangements devised by the state. Since these arrangements differ markedly from country to country, much that is distinctive about national labor market outcomes is a function of diverse encounters with the state. This argument is illustrated by an account that explains why Australia, a country which apparently devotes little in the way of public resources to the old, manifests an exceptionally high level of early retirement. This account shows that, in contrast to the standard European welfare state strategy of public pensions, the Australian state has over many decades tackled the need for provision for the old by encouraging retirement strategies that are not subsidized directly from the public purse. These strategies include the encouragement of widely dispersed home ownership and occupational pensions. Read broadly, the article suggests that the extremity of contrasts frequently made between the advanced welfare states of Western Europe and the miserable social policy outcomes in the democracies of the New World have been far too extreme. The article experiments with novel presentational techniques designed to focus attention on individual choices and on policy outcomes for the individual rather than policy outputs by governments
Argument (complex analysis · Economic growth · Economics · Labour economics · Market economy · Political science · Politics · Presentational and representational acting · Public economics · Public policy · Social policy · State (computer science · Subsidy · Welfare · Welfare state · Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism · Social Policy and Reform Studies
| Citations per year | 0.25 |
|---|---|
| Citation span | 2002 - 2012 (11) |
| Highly cited | No |