Book Reviews: Documenting the Deficiencies of Modern Disability Policies
By Monroe Berkowitz, Ph.D., Rutgers University (berkowi@rci.rutgers.edu)
Christopher Prinz, Editor, Transforming Disability into Ability, Policies to Promote Work and Income Security for Disabled People, OECD, Organization for Economic cooperation and Development, Paris, 2003
Christopher Prinz, Editor, European Disability Pension Policies, 11 Country Trends 1970-2002, England, Ashgate Publishing. Ltd, 2003
Anyone interested in disability policy should have copies of each of these volumes in their library. Members of international and national organizations primarily concerned with disability advocacy would particularly profit by these studies. The volume on European policies has an introduction by Bernd Marin that gets to the heart of the matter. Marin makes the point that the failure of modern disability policies is not accidental but the inevitable byproduct of the way that we go about compensating persons with disabilities. So long as we give people benefits because of the assumption that they are not able to work and so long as we do not mount programs that are concerned with reintegration, then we are in trouble.
Mincing no words, Marin proclaims the deficiency of modern disability welfare policy as a triple failure (p.48). First, is the failure to contain the case load. Second is the failure of the systems to deliver the kind of benefits most needed by persons with disabilities and third is the failure to focus disability benefits on those most in need of support, particularly severely disabled people.
Following Marin's introduction and a chapter by Philip de Jong on disability insurance, individual authors examine trends in these European countries: Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Slovenia, Sweden and Switzerland.
The companion OECD volume covers additional countries including the UK and the US. It provides the documentation for the policy discussions in both volumes.
These volumes are much more than another attempt to describe disability policies in what is usually a confusing manner. Instead, they are penetrating analyses of the basic issues. They recognize that the success of a nation's labor market integration policies cannot be tested without careful consideration of its benefit systems. The combinations and the trade-offs are detailed and although they have not found any country with an ideal program, they give us the information and the methods to continue the quest.
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