Neil Gilbert

Neil Gilbert (born September 18, 1940) is an American social policy scholar and author. He is a Distinguished Professor and the Milton and Gertrude Chernin Professor of Social Welfare and Social Services at the School of Social Welfare, University of California, Berkeley. His work centers on social welfare policy, comparative welfare states, family policy, and child welfare, and he is known for a four-dimensional framework for analyzing social welfare policy and for his account of the shift from the welfare state to what he calls the "enabling state".

Gilbert is the author of 15 books, 20 edited volumes, and more than 145 articles. Beyond his welfare-state scholarship, he is most known for challenging progressive assumptions about poverty and inequality. He is the founder of the Family Welfare Research Group at Berkeley and directs its Center for Comparative Welfare State Research. He is a fellow of the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare and a recipient of an honorary doctorate from the Universidad Nacional de Educación a Distancia in Madrid.

Education and career Gilbert was associated for three years with the research and planning for the Mayor's Committee on Human Resources, Pittsburgh's Community Action Agency. At the University of California, Berkeley, he served as the School of Social Welfare's acting dean from 1994 to 1996 and as chair of the doctoral program for a five-year period. His university service included posts as vice-chair and chair of the Berkeley Senate Faculty's Graduate Council. He held three Fulbright awards, two in London and one in Israel. The framework has been used by scholars to classify and compare the design and outcomes of social welfare policies across different countries. Writing in Social Casework, Leonard M. Bloksberg called it an important and conceptually significant contribution that brought order to social welfare policy analysis. He recommended it as essential reading for social work practitioners beginning to study the field.

Capitalism and the Welfare State (1983) Capitalism and the Welfare State: Dilemmas of Social Benevolence was published in 1983. The book examines how the American welfare state changed after 1960. In it, Gilbert traces the commercialization of social services as public funding increasingly supported private provision and profit-making firms entered the sector. He argued that these trends made the programs more coherent, but pushed the poor and dependent to the margins. In the book, he calls for a renewed vision of welfare capitalism that balances the social and economic markets.

The book was generally well received. However, reviewers pointed out the limits of its scope. It was included in the New York Times New & Noteworthy paperbacks. In The New York Times, Robert B. Reich called Gilbert's thesis plausible and well documented. However, he pointed out that the book traced the erosion of a welfare ideal it never clearly defined. Edward J. Harpham, reviewing the book in the American Journal of Sociology, called it sensitively argued but pointed out its failure to weigh the expansion of major social-insurance programs. The book was reviewed by Terry Bamford in the British Journal of Social Work who found it a readable and thoughtful treatment. Writing in Library Journal, Harry Frumerman praised its fresh material and sharp insights. However, he found the text to be dense and best suited to academic libraries.

The Enabling State (1989) The Enabling State: Modern Welfare Capitalism in America (Oxford University Press, 1989) was co-authored with Barbara Gilbert. The book contends that while the US followed a traditional model of welfare state between the New Deal and the 1970s when the state funded and provided social provisions, over the next decades an "enabling state" has developed where public action was redefined in terms of financing services in the private market and promoting private responsibility.

Reception was mixed. In his review in Society, William A. Donohue praised it as the most mature account then available and a model of social science research. He appreciated its sober treatment of an ideologically charged subject. However, he questioned the authors' treatment of tax expenditures as equivalent to direct transfers. Larry W. Isaac, in the American Journal of Sociology, was impressed with its data on privatization. However, he criticized its thin theorizing and its uncritical acceptance of the public/private distinction.

Welfare Justice (1995) Welfare Justice: Restoring Social Equity (Yale University Press, 1995) collects essays contending that social welfare should rest on "equity", a social contract of reciprocal responsibilities between citizen and state, rather than on equality as the rationale for redistribution.

The book drew mixed to favorable reviews. Randi Mandelbaum, in the UC Law SF Journal on Gender and Justice, called its treatment of social equity admirable while criticizing pervasive internal inconsistencies. David Stoesz, in Social Work, wrote that the book should provoke debate over the retreat from federal responsibility for welfare, though he considered it undercut by having been written before the 1994 Republican takeover of Congress.

Combatting Child Abuse (1997) Gilbert edited the book entitled Combatting Child Abuse: International Perspectives and Trends, which was published in 1997 by Oxford University Press. The book brings together a series of country studies of the United States, Canada, England, and several European nations, each following a common framework covering the definition of child abuse. Rachael Hetherington, in International Social Work, viewed it as a welcome and substantial contribution to the comparative literature on child welfare. However, she felt its coverage was shaped by the particular countries included.

Activating the Unemployed (2001) With Rebecca A. Van Voorhis, Gilbert co-edited Activating the Unemployed: A Comparative Appraisal of Work-Oriented Policies. The book is based on national studies of the effects of work-oriented "activation" policies across nine countries.

Transformation of the Welfare State (2004) In this book, Gilbert extended the argument of his book The Enabling State,

Amitai Etzioni wrote the foreword for the book and praised it while flagging unresolved questions about the balance of rights and responsibilities. Daniel Béland wrote a review of the book in Perspectives on Politics, calling it accessible and concise but wanting a systematic model of policy change. In Social Forces, Jason Beckfield praised its comparative evidence on retrenchment. However, it criticized the book's tone of inevitability. Ivan Grgurić, in Revija za socijalnu politiku, described it as a valuable account of change in the modern welfare state.

A Mother's Work (2008) Gilbert's book A Mother's Work: How Feminism, the Market, and Policy Shape Family Life was published in 2008. It examines how women navigate the competing demands of paid employment and motherhood. It further analyzes how capitalism and public policy impact those choices. Gilbert proposes a typology of women's family commitments: traditional, neo-traditional, modern, and postmodern. He argues that conventional "family-friendly" benefits can reinforce the devaluation of motherhood. He recommends that measure should be taken such as a home-care allowance so that economic value would be attached to caregiving.

Reception was mixed. The book was reviewed by Jennifer Lynn Heller in the Journal of Family and Economic Issues. She welcomed its analysis of the pressures facing women but felt it overlooked the social rewards of paid work. Judith Kleinfeld reviewed the book in Gender Issues and wrote that she found the analysis and its international comparisons valuable. However, she doubted that a home-care allowance could achieve Gilbert's aims. Cheryl Hyde, in the Journal of Sociology & Social Welfare, praised the book's insight and its questioning of the assumption that economic necessity drives mothers into the labor force, but felt feminism functioned as a "straw woman" in the argument and that the book overlooked the role of men's choices. Sandra Tsing Loh's Atlantic essay pairing the book with Linda Hirshman's Get to Work was selected for The Best American Magazine Writing 2009.

The volume was well received. In the British Journal of Social Work, Lucy Rai wrote a review in which she called in "essential reading" and a valuable springboard for discussion. James K. Whittaker, in Social Service Review, praised its clarity and concluded that it succeeded on several levels. Ingrid Höjer wrote a review of the book in International Social Work. She found it useful and richly informative with reservations only about the structure of its chapters.

Never Enough (2017) Never Enough: Capitalism and the Progressive Spirit (Oxford University Press, 2017) challenges what Gilbert regards as progressive orthodoxy on four questions (poverty, inequality, social mobility, and the scope of the welfare state), arguing that each has been overstated. In its place he advocates a "progressive conservatism" of incremental, empirically grounded, and largely means-tested policies.

The response was divided. Reviewing the book Hedva Sarfati wrote in the International Social Security Review that she found its issues substantively argued and its historical perspective useful to policymakers.

Other work Beyond his major monographs and comparative volumes, Gilbert has written on advocacy research. In work including his article "Advocacy Research and Social Policy" (1997), he argued that research produced to advance a cause is prone to data distortion and to methodological flaws that can exaggerate the scale of social problems.

With Harry Specht, Gilbert also edited Planning for Social Welfare: Issues, Models, and Tasks (Prentice-Hall, 1977), a collection of readings on social welfare planning organized into sections on whether to plan, models of planning, planning as a socio-political process, and its technical aspects.

With Richard P. Barth and Jill Duerr Berrick, Gilbert co-edited the two-volume Child Welfare Research Review (Columbia University Press, 1994 and 1997), collecting empirical studies on child neglect, kinship care, foster family care, and family reunification.

With Kyungbae Chung, Gilbert co-edited The Korean Welfare State: Social Investment in an Aging Society (Oxford University Press, 2024), a nine-chapter volume examining South Korea's welfare state as a case of the "social investment state".

Gilbert chairs the International Editorial Council of the International Journal of Social Welfare, co-edited the Prentice Hall Series in Social Welfare, the Praeger Series on the Social Services, and the Oxford University Press Series on International Policy Exchange.

Awards and honors 1981 Fulbright Senior Research Scholar, National Institute for Social Work, London 1987 Fulbright Western European Research Fellowship, London School of Economics and University of Stockholm 2014 Fellow, American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare