History of Social Policy and the Welfare State

This book examines the emergence of protective labor legislation and maternity benefits in Sweden and Germany. It addresses three central questions. Why was the early formation of welfare states in some countries more gendered than in others? Were gender politics relevant for the emergence of different welfare state regimes? How do we conceptualize gender as an explanatory category in comparative welfare state analysis? The study focuses on two countries that played a prominent role in the development of welfare states. With its legislation from the 1880s, Germany was the pioneer of compulsory workers’ insurance, and with its pension law of 1913 Sweden became the first country to introduce a universal social insurance scheme. In spite of these landmark innovations, there is extraordinarily little research looking into the rise of these two countries’ welfare states from a gendered perspective. For example, it is not well known that Bismarck’s health insurance law of 1883 made Germany the first country to introduce a maternity allowance for women workers. Roughly the same is true of Sweden. It was not in the era of social democracy, the 1930s, that maternity benefits were first proposed, but much earlier, in 1912, and as a state-subsidized allowance within the framework of voluntary health insurance.
Maternalist policies are rather contested among feminist scholars. On the one hand, some see these polices as having created and solidified a status of secondary citizenship for women. I argue that it is important to distinguish between visionary concepts and Realpolitik. Maternalist policies must be situated within a continuum of paradoxical gender relations: Motherhood can be used both to exclude women from citizenship and to include them. Social provisions for mothers were the focus of multiple and often contradictory objectives. They were a means to promote women’s economic independence – and its opposite. National women’s movements could be proponent as well as opponents of a gendered differentiation within protective labor legislation. This book examines the objectives that decisively influenced the strategies and identities of the political actors who shaped the conception of maternalist policies in Sweden and Germany before the First World War. Why Sweden and Germany? Sweden and Germany are ideal subjects for a comparative study of two countries. On the one hand, they present two similar cases of sociohistorical development. Both countries were characterized by late and rapid industrialization, late democratization, a traditionally strong state, a weak bourgeoisie, and early mobilization of the labor movement. On the other hand, despite these similarities they produced quite different types of welfare states. Today their welfare states are regarded as representative of two contrasting types: in Germany a conservative welfare state based on status and labor, and in Sweden a social democratic, universalistic welfare state based on citizenship. Both welfare states are also seen as having radically different gender specifics, with Germany representing a strong male breadwinner model and Sweden a weak one. Even in the early phases of welfare state formation, important differences were becoming evident. This study, by contrast, will show that each of these two countries had a considerably different gender order from the outset. I argue that greater gender solidarity was not a product of Sweden’s later, universalist welfare state; rather, it was an important element in the very rise of that kind of welfare state. On the other hand, the status orientation of German social policy was intrinsically related to safeguarding masculine status and to male closure of the public and political sphere during the early phase of welfare state formation. The research strategy pursued in this book links the explanatory framework of historical institutionalism to insights from discursive analysis. A fine-grained inquiry into decision-making processes is combined with a long-term perspective on state- and nation-building and on the formation of social classes and political actors. In Chapter 1 I critically review the variety of theories within comparative welfare state analysis and formulate a gender-inclusive approach based on interweaving historical institutionalism with discursive analysis. Chapter 2 examines the emergence of protective labor legislation in Germany. It demonstrates that the gendering of protective regulations was the result of a particular political constellation, enormously conflict-ridden and loaded with cultural cleavages, in which social welfare rights were posed against political citizenship. The feminization of protective labor legislation had its counterpart in an extreme masculinization of political identities. A strongly gender-differentiated citizen status rendered work in home and family care invisible while coding women’s wage labor as harmful to the social body. Chapter 3 shows how the pioneering invention of the maternity allowance in Germany amounted to a carryover of this constellation. Though its incorporation into the status-differentiated system of sickness insurance, however, the maternity allowance was tied into solidaristic relations that had very little to do with mothers’ life situations. Chapter 4 seeks to explain why Sweden did not adopt any gender-specific regulations for its first modern social welfare legislation around 1890. It is significant that there was initially no link between efforts at workplace protection and strategies against female work. The priority of economic over cultural cleavages eased the way for a “rational” manner of dealing with gender conflicts in both the political arena and in the processes of class formation. Two main pillars of modern gender dualism were not yet established in Sweden at the end of the 19th century: the interpretive patterns of physiological sexism and the universalization of political citizenship for men. Chapter 5 traces the struggle for the extension of the maternity allowance in Germany before the First World War. From the moment of its birth, the German welfare state is marked by a paradox that will leave a lasting imprint on it. Germany pioneered motherhood-oriented social policies, yet the German women’s movement had no influence at all on these early provisions. These benefits were embedded in relations of solidarity, which hindered polices friendly toward women in the long run. Chapter 6 explores Sweden’s introduction of a maternity leave for factory workers in 1900 and its ban on night work for women in 1909. Chapter 7 investigates the failure to invent an independent motherhood insurance in Sweden in 1912. Because Sweden had no compulsory sickness insurance at that time, the government drafted a bill to introduce a stand-alone maternal insurance for female factory workers. Swedish women were strong enough to prevent the institutionalization of a program based, as they perceived it, on false solidarities. Swedish women explicitly rejected the notion that there can be solidarity among women based on the experience of maternity and that might give rise to redistributive policies.

1. Phd dissertation Synopsis: Dynamic and continuously evolving social policy, with its diverse approaches and vague delineation that illustrate the continuous engagement of the individual with the collective, the social with the economic and the political with the cultural element, constitutes a field of robust study and reflection on the implementation of social policy in the particular circumstances of each state. The inability of the Greek social security system to meet the needs of society as mandated by the institutional framework since the mid-1980s has provided the evidence for this study on the institutional development of social policy in Greece. There are weaknesses in the Greek welfare system. Similar problems were observed in almost all countries since the 1980s, and they were attributed to the growth of the welfare state with its high operational and provisional costs. Within this framework, the extensive international literature highlights the pluralism of approaches to the issue, thus reinforcing the need for a multidisciplinary approach to the subject matter of social policy. Such an approach draws the necessary theoretical and methodological knowledge primarily from sociology as well as from legal, economic, political and administrative sciences, but mainly from history. Thus the role of Economic History becomes very important. Economic History shows that different characteristics of the shape and growth of the economies in European countries determined the institutional formation of social policy. This study, based on both qualitative and raw quantitative data, focuses on the institutional dimension of social policy in the Hellenic State for more than two centuries (1828-2008), with an emphasis on the redistribution mechanisms of social security.

This paper raises the hypothesis that a pluralistic welfare model is being
shaped in the Ionian island during the British occupation due to the
particularities of the cultural, political, economic and societal characteristics of the Ionian society and economy. A long term institutional analysis of the welfare provisions, from the Venetian period to the British rule, reveals the development of a complex coexistence, unique in the area at that period, of public and private institutions that aim to alleviate the paupers and those in need.

El Índice de Desarrollo Humano (IDH) permite revisitar la debacle de Venezuela desde varias dimensiones, como la de la caída económico-social o las relacionadas con los endebles argumentos que atribuyen el colapso a la crisis de precios petroleros o a las sanciones internacionales. El IDH resulta –en ese sentido- un relevante y útil referente para analizar las tendencias del anti-desarrollo venezolano en el siglo XXI.

Language analysis can help explore how public debates on these issues have evolved, and build understanding of how people form opinions. This paper employs a variety of techniques from cognitive linguistics, a field dedicated to how people process information and communicate, to examine how people reason and come to conclusions about poverty and income in Australia.

“แนวคิดและทฤษฎีการศึกษานโยบายทางสังคม (Concepts and Theories for Social Policy Studies)” เล่มนี้ ผู้เขียนได้เรียบเรียงเนื้อหาที่จะเป็นประโยชน์ต่อการศึกษาทำความเข้าใจวิชานโยบายทางสังคมสำหรับนักศึกษาในสาขาวิชาที่เกี่ยวข้อง โดยเฉพาะอย่างยิ่งสาขารัฐศาสตร์ รัฐประศาสนศาสตร์ สังคมสงเคราะห์ และการบริหารการพัฒนา ซึ่งหนังสือเล่มนี้ ประกอบด้วยเนื้อหาทั้งหมด 5 บท ในบทที่ 1 เป็นแนวคิดพื้นฐานที่นักศึกษาจำเป็นต้องเรียนรู้เกี่ยวกับการศึกษานโยบายทางสังคมในมิติต่าง ๆ ส่วน บทที่ 2 เป็นเรื่องของแนวคิดหลักที่นำไปใช้ในการศึกษา อธิบาย หรือวิเคราะห์นโยบายทางสังคมด้านต่าง ๆ สำหรับบทที่ 3 เป็นเรื่องของกลไกเชิงสถาบันในระบบการจัดสวัสดิการทางสังคม บทที่ 4 เกี่ยวข้องกับสวัสดิการของรัฐด้านต่าง ๆ รวมถึงการจัดทำนโยบายสาธารณะ สินค้าสาธารณะ บริการสาธารณะ และการประเมินนโยบายทางสังคมของรัฐด้วย และบทที่ 5 เกี่ยวข้องกับกรอบแนวคิดในการศึกษาและวิเคราะห์รัฐสวัสดิการ รวมถึงลักษณะสำคัญของตัวแบบรัฐสวัสดิการประเภทต่าง ๆ ด้วย สนใจติดต่อสั่งซื้อได้ที่ศูนย์หนังสือ ม.เกษตรศาสตร์ และศูนย์หนังสือจุฬา ฯ (CU Book Store) ทุกสาขาทั่วประเทศ หรือ สั่งซื้อผ่านเว็บไซต์ www.chulabook.com

This paper discusses and compares the development of Norwegian social policies within the framework of European welfare state models. The author shows the links to the social democratic model adopted by other Nordic nation-states after World War II. The paper then discusses how national social policies have been modified according to changing government policies and economic constraints. The paper concludes with significant challenges to the present welfare state model in Norway.

Objetivos: contribuir a la investigación sobre la vinculación entre la política sanitaria de profilaxis venérea y el proceso de producción, importación y circulación de medicamentos para el tratamiento de los “males secretos” durante el siglo xx en Argentina. Desarrollo: desde 1936 el Estado desplegó una política de profilaxis venérea que otorgó prerrogativas a los grupos privados para la producción e importación de fármacos. Mientras el Departamento Nacional de Higiene promovió un tratamiento estandarizado de las dolencias, los laboratorios privados usaron publicidades para construir, ampliar y segmentar el mercado consumidor. En este artículo destacamos cómo el mensaje de las propagandas de medicamentos contra las dolencias de transmisión sexual en las revistas médicas tenía como fin transformar a los galenos en agentes de recomendación de dichos productos. Conclusiones: el tratamiento estandarizado impuesto por la burocracia sanitaria estimuló la producción, importación y oferta de fármacos de laboratorios nacionales y extranjeros. Los anuncios publicitarios apelaron al galeno como portador de un criterio legítimo para el consumo de medicamentos. Los laboratorios  nanciaron revistas de grupos de galenos con el fin de ampliar el consumo de sus productos entre los pacientes de estos.

6. Forms of social welfare and state innovation in the Greek area (18th-19th centuries) [in Greek]: According to Braudel, history and sociology meet, identify with each other and merge. The cause of this convergence is quite simple: on one hand, imperialism, the inflation of history; on the other hand, the intrinsic identity, the fact that history and sociology are the only comprehensive sciences susceptible to sprawling their concern over any aspect of social life. The study of social policy and the regulatory principles underpinning its formation in the historical dimension are a typical example and the scope of the previously mentioned argument. In this case, the analysis focuses on forms of social welfare and state innovation that developed in Greece mainly over the 18th and 19th centuries. This work is prompted by the need to delineate the factors that were instrumental, whether directly or indirectly, in the establishment of social insurance as an institution of the newly-founded Greek State. It proves absolutely necessary to state the fact that provisions and institutional expressions of social welfare in the Greek communities were observed during the Ottoman rule as well as the Greek Revolution, thus pointing out the relevant dynamics that developed within this framework. Yet the article centres on the 19th century and the institutional dimension of social welfare in Greece, given the historical focus on social changes throughout the cataclysmic economic changes during the 19th century, also taking into account the particular social, political and economic substratum of the newly-established Greek kingdom. In extension to these primary thoughts and in the knowledge that the analysis owes to the logic of its sources, a most expedient working hypothesis is that the adoption of provisions for social welfare and the creation of the first social insurance organizations on one hand reflect the economic, social and cultural priorities of the Greek state and on the other hand clearly illustrate the dynamics developed by specific social groups.
A brief digression, essential though for the argumentation in this paper: the concept of the social group in this analysis is identical to that of status (social position) in the typology of social stratification as adopted by Max Weber and is determined by the prestige of a group of people, thanks to which they acquire preferential access to goods and services. For the methodological needs of this paper, the protection of citizens from social dangers (old age, disability, unemployment, health) and their ability to be covered by insurance is defined as preferential access to goods and services in realistic terms for the timeframe of this study.

Gli autori ricostruiscono la storia dello Stato sociale in una prospettiva comparata e di lungo periodo: dall’analisi delle forme di assistenza ai poveri nell’Inghilterra elisabettiana alla diffusione delle assicurazioni occupazionali nella Germania di Bismarck e nel resto d’Europa; dalla nascita del concetto di sicurezza sociale nell’America di Roosevelt alla strada seguita in quegli anni dagli Stati totalitari, alle alterne vicende del welfare state nel mondo occidentale. Nella nuova edizione rivista e aggiornata il libro illustra, infine, i nuovi sentieri che lo Stato sociale ha cominciato a percorrere per rispondere alle sfide dei grandi cambiamenti sociali, economici e demografici oggi in atto. Sopravviveranno i sistemi di welfare all’onda d’urto della crisi economica e al perdurante appeal delle teorie neoliberiste? Gli autori propendono per una risposta positiva e ne individuano le ragioni in due aspetti che da sempre rappresentano altrettanti elementi fondativi dello Stato sociale: la sua flessibilità, l’attitudine cioè a intercettare i mutevoli bisogni della società modificando nel tempo gli ambiti di tutela, e soprattutto la sua funzione di difesa rispetto ai traumi politici e sociali prodotti da un mondo sempre più insicuro.

This succinct review returns to the debate on political-culture and Singaporean social policy nexus that has been abandoned since 2000. They put the spotlight on the social policy through the Confucian lens, examining to what extent Confucianism teaching was conditioned in formal welfare provisions. Yet, they are too focused on the common idea of Confucianism while overlooking the original idea of Singaporean value promoted by Lee Kuan Yew. Hence, this article raises the discussion of the links of Singaporean values and the Central Provident Found (CPF) which have barely been highlighted in the literature. Singaporean values are hybrid between Confucianism and Western values. This article argues that although the CPF has expanded in terms of features and benefits, it has not crossed the line that separates Singapore from Western models. Because of its Singaporean values, the country does not follow the typical European model, which is being adopted by other East Asian countries. This article concludes the CPF not only reflects its centrality to Singaporean values but also as a value stabilizer that has long history in contributing to Singaporean nation-building.

In The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism (1990), Gøsta Esping-Andersen sought to describe the differences between welfare states, and group those with significant similarities. By researching decommodification, the extent to which welfare is provided independently from the market, and stratification, the extent to which welfare access differs between social classes, Esping-Andersen provided an influential classification that has influenced much more comparative research and regime typology literature.  However, there is concern over whether or not the typology retains explanatory power, both at the time of publishing, and as time has progressed. This essay discusses the typology in more detail, followed by a brief acknowledgement of the limits and value of ideal-type research. Next, three main critiques on the theory will be examined: the role of Mediterranean countries, the analysis of the Antipodes, and the exclusion of gender theory and informal welfare. Finally, the future of the welfare state, and role of path dependency and convergence theory will be discussed. This essay will show that, while Esping-Andersen’s original welfare typology still retains a strong explanatory power, there are a number of aspects that merit further consideration.

La dinámica histórica del "Estado de bienestar", su tan anunciada crisis y su no menos incierto futuro, puede ser mejor comprendida si se la concibe como el fruto de una determinada constelación histórica de estrategias organizativas, frentes de conflicto y actores colectivos. Esa constelación permite configurarlo teóricamente como un espacio político en el que confluyen tres modelos distintos de confrontación de intereses: los del capital y del trabajo, los de la política institucionalizada y los expresados en formas extra-institucionales de protesta. De su capacidad institucional para resolver esos tipos de conflicto, así como del recíproco ajuste de equilibrio entre sus escenarios, depende en buena medida el futuro político de los Estados de bienestar.

This report explores attitudes towards people experiencing poverty. It also reflects on what these attitudes mean for how we as advocates communicate and persuade.

‘The real story: What Australians think about poverty and how we shape the debate’ features a literature review on poverty in Australia at Chapter 1, the results of a nationally representative survey of attitudes at Chapter 2, and a language analysis at Chapter 3.

The overarching finding from this study has been that attitudes are not fixed. They are shaped and reshaped through persuasion and debate. It also shows that Australians are more sympathetic to those in poverty then even they realise.

Nazism across Borders argues that Nazi social policies were part of transnational exchanges and processes. Beyond territorial conquest, the Nazis planned to export and internationalize their version of welfare, and promoted a new kind of internationalism, pitched as a superior alternative to its liberal and Communist contenders. Since the late nineteenth century, the 'German social model' had established itself as a powerful route for escaping from the precarious conditions associated with wage work. The Nazis capitalized on this reputation, continuing some elements, but also added new measures, mainly to pursue their antisemitic, racist, and highly aggressive goals. The contributions in this collection shed new light on the complex ways in which German and Nazi ideas were received and negotiated by non-German actors and groups around the world before the Second World War. Why were they interested in what was going on in Germany? To what extent did Nazi policies emulate programmes elsewhere

https://perspectivia.net/publikationen/studies_of_the_ghil/kott_patel_nazism

De Leuvense academische ziekenhuizen zijn uitgegroeid tot een symbool van medische spitstechnologie en topgeneeskunde. Dit boek schetst hun geschiedenis en belicht de ontwikkeling van vier campussen: Salve Mater in Lovenjoel, Sint-Barbara in Pellenberg, Sint-Rafaël en Sint-Pieters in het Leuvense stadscentrum, en Gasthuisberg net buiten de stad. Het volgt de evolutie van de Leuvense ziekenzorg van de bestuurskamers tot het ziekbed, vanaf de Eerste Wereldoorlog tot heden. Die evolutie werd gekenmerkt door een buitengewone groei, waarachter een complex spel schuilging van kennisproductie, staatsvorming, ideologie en taalstrijd. De uitbouw van de Belgische welvaartstaat, de strijd om Leuven-Vlaams, de toename van medische specialisatie en de secularisering van de samenleving: het waren processen die om een voortdurende modernisering van het ziekenhuis vroegen. Artsen, verpleegkundigen én patiënten worstelden met die veranderende structuren. Dit boek brengt hun verhalen.

For more information: https://lup.be/collections/category-history-1800-present/products/118429

History's epistemological dilemma equally applies to sociology: how can we make claims about persons, events, and processes on the basis of archival records? This article develops a framework called Life on File that combines sociological strengths in qualitative methodologies and an interest in how states shape populations, with library and information sciences' attention to documentary production and anthropological and historical insights into the intersections of archives, knowledge, and power. The framework has three components: the act of recovery of life, processes, and events; the turning of life into a record; and the movement of a file from collection to preservation and use. The result is a methodologically rigorous and globally mobile theory. Empirically, the piece draws on comparative historical fieldwork on state-led racial classification and naturalization practices preserved in Japanese and German archives. While the framework is grounded in research on state archives, its utility extends across types of archives and records. In addition, it provides sociologists with a roadmap on how to use archives in single case as well as comparative and transnational research. The archive is like a raw material, which is not the same as saying that it is an originary material or an unworked-upon material; rather it is what has been made available, what has been thus presented to us, a kind of gift, which is to say also-for future constituencies, future publics-a kind of debt. (Osborne 1999, 57) Cast in the image of the humans who create them, archives are mortals with aspirations to immortality. (Daston 2017, 329)

The chapter focuses on the formation of a vital link between the social security system in former Czechoslovakia and that in the Reich under conditions of unequal power in the occupied territory of Bohemia and Moravia, and the implementation of the Reich system in the annexed Sudetenland.

Nikolas Dörr, 165 Jahre Einschränkung der Kinderarbeit in Preußen. Ein Beitrag zum Beginn der Sozialgesetzgebung in Deutschland, in: MenschenRechtsMagazin (hrsg. vom Menschenrechtszentrum der Universität Potsdam), 9. Jahrgang, Nr. 2/2004, S. 141–151.

In a world dominated by poverty, a central
characteristic has been the plight of orphans and
abandoned children. Over the centuries, State, Church
and individuals have all attempted to tackle the issue,
but can we trace any change over the course of time
when it comes to the welfare system intended for
these disadvantaged children and acts of
philanthropy? What kind of social policies did States
follow and what were the main differences between
countries and regions? Drawing on historical evidence
across several centuries and a range of European
countries, the contributors to this volume provide a
transnational overview.

In this paper, I provide an account of the development of church-related social welfare agencies from European settlement to the commencement of the contracting era in the 1990s. In doing so, I explore the ideological, ecclesiastical and geographical influences that contributed to what emerged as a 'mixed economy of welfare', in which the state, while a significant actor, shares the provision of welfare with not-for-profit agencies. I then turn my attention to the constitutional arrangements underpinning church-state engagement in Australia that sit in the background to this structure.

One of the major contributions to comparative social policy research is Gøsta Esping-Andersen’s 1990 welfare regime typology, which identifies the key differences and similarities between provision of welfare in Western welfare systems. Sorting eighteen OECD (Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development) countries into three categories was a relatively new area of comparative research, which was inevitably met with a great deal of criticism. The following paragraphs will outline the typology itself, present the successes of the theory, and lastly discuss the criticisms, pointing out examples and counter-arguments throughout. The theory, its successes, and its criticisms draw attention to the evolving subject, creates a historical record of perspectives of welfare regimes, and encourages further analytical progress. By discussing the virtues and failures of Esping-Andersen’s typology, this essay concludes that the theory should be valued as a landmark piece of research despite the many criticisms, in part due to the continuous assortment of responses and attention he drew to the field of study.

The recent discussions about the role and the transformation of the state in modern European and North American societies help to reanalyze the ‘prehistory of the present’ of welfare states. This essay sketches six dimensions of welfare-state functions in the 20th century: the transitions from warfare to welfare, the management of life chances, the construction of work and non-work, redistributions, inclusion and exclusion, and knowledge production. With a series of historical, not normative, observations, the article tries to show that certain welfare-state functions are indispensable even if one allows for a neo-liberal point of view. But, it also argues that such a pragmatic view needs to recognize the darker as well as the brighter sides of 20th-century governmentality in social policy.

WASHINGTON, DC – On March 17, Social work students and early professionals will attend the first student-led Social Work Student Advocacy Day on Capitol Hill. This advocacy training for
students and emerging professionals, will complement the Congressional Social Work Caucus' “Social Work Day on the Hill.”

The day’s events will provide an opportunity for students to learn how policy is shaped and how pertinent issues are addressed the affect the profession as a whole. A major focus will be the
Social Work Reinvestment Act (SWRA), a groundbreaking initiative created to address the challenges faced by social workers and recommend strategies to maximize the services social workers provide, with recommendations spanning recruitment, research funding, educational debt, and salary inequalities.

In-person training will provide an opportunity for millennials to voice ideas and concerns to legislators and congressional staff, to speak up about the need for support for professional growth and innovation in the field, and to experience the power of getting involved in direct advocacy.

This article explores the development of a municipal welfare state in post-war Milan. Looking at developments from a municipal level has interesting implications for the current historiography of the Italian welfare state which is less attentive to regional variations. The article shows how certain cities were able to develop local provision based on municipal rather than national strategies.
Here on Academia you can read the introduction.
You can find the article at this link:
http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/20514530.2015.1101290?journalCode=yjrl20

Gandhism is the culmination of ideas, thoughts, values and practices
that defines the life of Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi – The Father
of our Nation who played a major role in the freedom struggle of our
country. The two main weapons of Gandhiji were Ahimsa (Non violence) and Satyagraha (Truth), the other than those that he
proposed as principles and ways to live a life in its true sense for the
overall development of the self and the society at large. The education
system, value education, family structure, life habits and social life all
these things have brought a change in the life style of the current
generation. This paper examines the various measures, considered fit
to practice or implement the principles of Gandhiji in the modern
times. The issue, on which the present paper focuses on, is how the
trinity of Sarvodaya, Swachhata & Social Work can be practiced in the
present conditions in Gandhian style.

Este documento tiene por objetivo analizar los cambios y continuidades conceptuales, de atención y operativas de PROSPERA, desde su creación hasta el presente, visualizando áreas de oportunidad actuales, así como su potencial papel futuro en la política social de combate a la pobreza extrema. Entre las conclusiones puede mencionarse que el proceso de diseño del Programa, así como el de las acciones realizadas para contribuir a su transición entre los sexenios de los presidentes Ernesto Zedillo y Vicente Fox pueden fungir como punto de referencia esencial para la creación de nuevos programas de política social. La existencia de un diagnóstico claro, la implementación de dispositivos institucionales que garanticen la imparcialidad de la operación, la evaluación y toma de decisiones orientada por la evidencia, son algunos de los factores que contribuyen a entender la persistencia del Programa en sus 20 años de existencia.