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The article presents an introduction to issues and topics about youth unemployment and training in the U.S. Youth unemployment in the U.S. has been aptly described as a lingering crisis. Indeed, growing evidence suggests that youth unemployment does not respond in the same manner as does adult unemployment to changes in the economy. Youth account for only 10 percent of the labor force but 25 percent of the unemployed. Various policy and program initiatives have attempted to respond, and these initiatives have tended to stress either education and employment-skill training or public-sector work opportunities. The articles in this section take up various aspects of the youth unemployment situation, with a number of pieces focusing especially on the supply-versus-demand argument. The Levin chapter draws important cross-national comparisons between youth unemployment in Australia and in the U.S. While not denying the role that job creation must play in any comprehensive attack on youth unemployment, Barton stresses the supply-side necessities of education and job training. He argues for strong federal role, focusing on the means to bring education and industry closer together to create viable transition strategies. One effort sponsored by the federal government to build linkages between education and industry is assessed by Rist. The 1977 Youth Employment and Demonstration Projects Act stipulated various requirements for linkages between education, employment and training institutions. The final article by Hamilton and Claus challenges much of the conventional policy thinking on youth unemployment.

The article presents an introduction to issues and topics about urban housing policy in the U.S. and Great Britain. The range of influence of urban housing policy has not been restricted to any on segment of the housing market or to any one component of the population. Policies have affected the rich and the poor, choices to purchase a home in the city or in the suburbs, the choice of housing available to those who are white and those who are not, and whether one finds financing for housing in the public or private sectors of the lending market. The study of housing policy, as articles on both the U.S. ad Britain suggest, is the study of a web of often conflicting societal concerns, monetary strategies and political agendas. The study of housing brings to the fore concerns of social class stratification, racial segregation, ethnicity, urban tax policy mass home ownership, protection of personal investment, entrepreneurship and both public- and private-sector lending policies. In this section, Taggart and Smith have examined the mortgage activity of financial institutions in the Boston metropolitan area to access patterns of disinvestment in the urban area. A second case study focuses on private neighborhood redevelopment and displacement in Washington D.C. Goldfield systematically examines the phenomenon, one which many argue is critical to the revitalization of urban areas throughout the nation. Creating and maintaining viable housing for the poor, the focus of an analysis at the Rand Corp. by Rydell, Mulford and Helbers, has been the subject of various federal government initiatives. A comparative view of federal housing policy in Britain by Farmer and Barrell further illustrates the tensions inherent in developing housing policy.

The article presents an introduction to issues and topics about policy considerations for education and equity. Few areas of domestic social policy generate the intense scrutiny and controversy that education does. One area in which the policy controversies are especially heated is that of how the school should promote equity in the society. Promoting change or sustaining stability in present arrangements is not an irrelevant consideration for school policymakers. The equity issue confronts the realities of race, social class, ethnicity, geography, gender language, and more. The three chapters in this section address the themes of equity. The chapter by Hill is an insider's account of how policy-relevant research on providing compensator services to low-income children was conducted over a period of several years at the National Institute of Education. Berne and Stiefel take up a crucial but widely neglected aspect of previous work on policymaking, demonstrating the central role that value judgments play in the policy process and the very real consequences such judgments have on the formulation of public policy. Finally, Coleman addresses the matter of public barriers to private education. He urges consideration of policy options to provide tuition tax credits or tuition vouchers so that more youth may have access to private education.

The article presents an introduction to issues and topics about social welfare policy in the U.S. As the country continues in a period of little or no economic growth, serious questions are being asked about government ability to sustain the present level of support for social welfare programs. The politics of scarcity necessitates a different orientation and approach to social welfare issues. For the past three decades, the broad consensus has been that the primary sector of the society to respond to welfare issues was to be government at all levels. The articles by Cochran, on the role of the private-for-profit sector in child care services, and by Khadduri and Struyk, on housing vouchers for the poor, both address aspects of public versus private sector responsibilities in providing welfare services. While it has been common knowledge that many social welfare programs have emerged from start-up with little resemblance to what was promised or originally funded, the message now is that lack of adherence to originally established goals and procedures will make that program vulnerable to extinction. Yet many of the originally established goal for programs were not clear, or were so ambitious in the objectives that successful implementation was not possible. Rodgers demonstrates this with the program to demand work tests for welfare recipients, and Erie documents the consequences of conflicting government goals on the economic well-being of the black community.

The article presents an introduction to issues and topics on federal funds. Targeting for any particular funding strategy is among the most sensitive of the policy decisions legislatures have to make. On the basis of such decisions, large group of individuals, portions of the country and types of organizations will find themselves included or excluded from the opportunity to draw on the fiscal resources. The manner in which various agencies of the federal government have responded to the targeting issue is the focus of the three articles in this section. Farnham focuses on the transformation of a number of categorical grant-in-aid programs in the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development into the Community Development Block Grant program. The analysis of the Urban Development Action Grant program by Webman is informative, for it illuminates one targeting strategy that has been used to assist distressed urban areas: specifically, liberally defining urban areas but establishing tough criteria for actual program participation. Finally, the article by Hargrove and Dean suggests that the block grant mechanism is a means to put issues of targeting square in the lap of local officials.

The article presents an introduction to issues and topics regarding the block grant mechanism. In block grants, funds from various categorical programs in a road area are combined into large block grants and then distributed to state and local governments for redistribution. The goal in this process is to achieve broad national policy objectives, but with state and local governments allocating the resources and making program implementation decisions. The rationale for the block grant funding mechanism has three components: to decentralize the decision-making process and thus enhance flexibility and program responsiveness; to increase citizen participation in decisions regarding distribution of governmental resources; and to lessen administrative costs and burdens. The section opens with congressional testimony of the U.S. Advisory Commission on Intergovernmental Relations. The paper charts three funding strategies and compares them according to several key variables, thereby more crisply defining the options for policymakers. Two articles in this section take up the application of block grants to individual content areas. Greenberg addresses the U.S. Partnership for Health Act that created a block grant in 1996 in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Alabama. Chernick suggests in his analysis that using the block grant mechanism, in contrast to a categorical grant, which requires matching funds from state and local government, means that available resources will most likely decline. Finally, the chapter by Chelmisky posits eighteen procedures that could be implemented by the U.S. Congress to ensure that the national policy objectives inherent in the block grants are being met.

The article presents an introduction to issues and topics about the aspects of income support policy in the U.S. and Great Britain. Income support focuses on the monetary impact of a person's or family's well-being. It can be of several types: direct cash transfers, as in certain welfare ad retirement programs; indirect transfers, which allows persons to retain income that otherwise would be collected in taxes; or through a guaranteed income floor to eligible persons, with government subsidies to those whose incomes fall below that designated level. Burkhauser and Smeeding examine the U.S., policy of a universal income floor for the low-income elderly through the Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and social security (OASI). They focused on the negative interaction between these two support policies and the consequences for the equity and efficiency of the current OASI-SSI system. Butler provides a comparative analysis of the British experience with price and income policies and the implications for comparable efforts in the U.S. British efforts to control wage and price escalations with both voluntary and mandatory policies are carefully assessed as to their impact and level of success. Johnson and Pencavel present a model that enables policymakers to forecast the changes in net earnings or hours worked that would accrue from the introduction of a negative income tax program.

The article presents an introduction to issues and topics regarding policy studies. An important shift is under way in the field of policy studies. This shift involves a dramatic reorientation and reformulation of the paradigm governing the presumed linkages between knowledge and decision making. The articles in the first section of the January 1982 issue of Policy Studies Review Annual speak to this shift in paradigm of policy studies. Weiss and Stromsdorfer, in particular, detail the dynamics of the decision-making process and the role that policy analysis might play. Their conclusions and recommendations suggest a direction for the field quite different from that dominant through the 1970s. The articles by Bulmer and Behn also speak to this shift, but from a different vantage. The point driven home in these pieces is that policy analysis takes place in a political context, not a vacuum. Thus if the analysis is to be utilized, analysts must not only conduct the research, but must also be sensitive to and even suggest means for its application and implementation. Ignoring the political context is to diminish the opportunity for involvement and influence. Finally, the article by Horowitz speaks to the changed political climate in the 1980s and what this portends for the relation of social science research to the centers of power. A growing emphasis on applied instead of theoretical work, on agendas being driven by private-sector market needs, and on the shifting of the resources from the federal to state and local jurisdictions suggests a decade for policy studies quiet different from that in which it began to come of age.

The section is an introduction to several articles about health care policy in the U.S. The article by Leon Wyszewianski and colleagues examine the implications for the quality if care if there is a move to control expenditures via increasing the influence of market forces on medical care decision making. On the other hand Peter Budetti and colleagues narrow the focus to the impacts of the changes already in place on the health and well-being of children. The article by Lewayne D. Gilchrist and Schinke trace out both the philosophical changes under the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan as well as the impacts of the budget reductions.

The section is an introduction to several articles about social security policy in the U.S. as of 1985. The U.S. Social Security Administration is one of the three key governmental agencies that consistently touch the lives of millions of U.S. citizens. Nathan Keyfitz details the demographic trends, the policies of the social security program, and the assumptions of a pay-as-you-go approach that all coincided to create the most serious challenge to date to the fiscal viability of the system. In his article, Mickey D. Levy assesses the impact of these policy shifts in the administration and funding of the system. While Hugh Mosley compares social security systems in the U.S. and the Federal Republic of Germany.

The section is an introduction to several articles about employment and training policy. James Bovard examines the past years of various government-sponsored training programs and concludes that they are nigh unto an unmitigated disaster. He concludes that the government policies actually have caused much of the problem they attempt to remediate. Marc Bendick Jr. and Robert Taggart each take an opposing view, presenting comprehensive approaches to restructuring employment and training programs. Each begins with the assumption that there is a critical role for government to play. Another article by Randall Ripley and Grace Franklin focuses specifically on the private sector and the contribution it might make to public employment and training programs.

This is an introduction to the articles in the section of the book Policy Studies Review Annual: Vol. 7 which examines urban policy in the U.S. In his article Thomas Main argues that it is neither appropriate nor realistic to assume that there will soon be a return to large public expenditures in support of the urban underclass. The article by Jerome G. Rose and John M. Goering focus on the intersection of race and class. The final material in this section is an excerpt from a U.S. General Accounting Office study of the applicability of the U.S. President Ronald Reagan administration proposals to create urban enterprise zones.

The article discusses the issue on whether the U.S. should develop an explicit industrial policy as of 1985. The logic of developing a national industrial policy is predicated on the active collaboration of government, unions, and businesses to make decisions on the future of different sectors of the economy and then develop strategies to implement this proposals. The present system and the lack of forward planning have to be replaced by a strategy emphasizing rigorous analytic planning that will allow the nation to make informed choices on the allocation of scarce resources to ensure growth. Two articles in the industrial policy section of the book Policy Studies Review Annual: Vol.7. examine the industrial policy of Japan and assesses its applicability to the U.S.

This section introduces a series of articles, which explored a different aspect of the immigration policy debate, attempting to clarify how various conditions are understood and what policy responses have been made. Debates focused on immigration issues such as the definition of immigrant, what quotas should there be for the sending countries, who should pay the costs associated with the arrival of new immigrants, and what should be the response to the growing illegal population. Other issue involves domestic policy, foreign policy, and intergovernmental policy among the federal, state and local jurisdictions. Generally, many observers believed that the U.S. immigration policy is nonexistent, out of control or incapable of rational response.

This section introduces a series of articles, which addressed the transition in the U.S. environmental policy. During the early to mid-1970s, the concerns of environmental policy were directed at the aspects of environmental degradation that were evident--belching smokestacks, dying rivers and lakes, blankets of smog, and wildlife dying from pesticides and oil slicks. A significant ramification is the impact it has had on the environmental movement. When the threats were visible, people would mobilize to respond.

This section introduces a series of articles, which assessed the conditions of work and employment policy in industrial countries. Expected changes in work and employment policy include more labor-management cooperation, and more displace workers. Significant changes are also expected in the nature of work, in the demands of emergent technologies on the employment and training system, and in the impact of these changes on subgroups in the industrial societies. Between 1981 and 1984, traditional cycles in France's job market have been modified. This era was considered as a pivotal period for industrial policy in France.

This section introduces a series of articles, which addressed the costs of health care for the aged in the U.S. Between 1970 and 1982, federal expenditures for health care rose from $13 billion to $74 billion. Health care-related costs are the fourth largest line item in the U.S. federal budget, exceeded only by expenditures for income security programs, defense and interest on the national debt. Central to the analysis in the articles is the policy question of how cost increase ought to be shared. Several of the options discussed include efforts at testing access to certain kinds of health care, increasing the co-insurance payments made by the elderly, or simply begin to deny some kinds of health care to various groups of patients.

This section introduces a series of articles, which reflected the significance to addressing non-economic factors within the context of economic policymaking in the U.S. Concerns over the basic assumptions that guide economic theory include the economic assumptions about the complexity of market relationships; the stability and determinacy of existing economic and organizational systems; the capacity of economic models; assumptions about the rationality and goal-seeking behavior of individuals; and what amount and kinds of data are necessary to assess economic conditions. The effort to create a discipline of socioeconomics recognizes the need for both economic and non-economic variables and concepts when discussing individual choice, competition, sources of preferences, and other key aspects of neoclassical economics.

The article presents an introduction to issues and topics about energy policy in the U.S. Energy policy over the past decade can be described as having been on a nonstops roller coaster. At present, the Reagan administration is committed to eliminating the U.S. Department of Energy and fracturing energy policy among several remaining executives agencies and departments. The articles in this section address each of these three aspects of energy policy. Rydell assesses the capability of nuclear suppliers to ensure an ongoing supply of the fuel of various users, while at the same time discouraging the proliferation of nuclear weapons. His chapter presents a striking analysis of the international linkages and interdependencies involved in the nuclear question that make it difficult if not impossible for any one supplier country individually to solve either the supply or control problem. Finally, Morell explores the public policy with respect to energy conservation. His analysis of the policy process in this area suggests that certain assumptions about the continued availability of energy are congruent with basic American myths, while arguments for conservation run contrary to these myths; that the structure U.S. energy companies and government bureaucracies is oriented toward continued emphasis on supply strategies, not toward conservation; and that countervailing conservation activities involve the participation of large numbers of persons in the society.

The article presents an introduction to issues and topics about health care policy in the U.S. The health care area does not suffer from a lack of policy research and analysis. Indeed, studies on the many aspects of this issue proliferate. The vast majority of these studies can be categorized into three areas: cost containment, regulation and access. The articles in this section fall into these three general areas. Containing the cost of health care in the U.S. has become a policy matter of paramount importance. Constantly escalating resources are being devoted to hospital care, physical fees and ancillary services. However, the multiple efforts to put a cap on these costs have been marginally successful at best. Both Brown and Mechanic explore several of the attempts at cost containment and assess the reasons for the lack of persistent and widespread success. It is in this politically sensitive atmosphere that budget cuts are being made in existing programs, on the assumption that cost cutting in and of itself will resolve the basic tensions and paradoxes. The article by Estes and Lee demonstrates that this approach has important consequences for groups in our society who rely on government support to obtain health care. What is apparent in considering these three key policies is that they are intricately linked and interdependent. Because these linkages are not complementary, they create the dilemmas and cross-pressures documented in a number of articles. McMenamin, for example analyzes the second most costly aspect of health care--physician fees. Finally, the article by Reinhardt on the health care system in the Federal Republic of Germany is informative as a case study. The West German case makes it clear that the problems plaguing the U.S. system are not the result of too many or too few resources, but rather the result of the decisions and policies made regarding allocation of these resources.