Özet:

The cash value of public services such as education, health care, social housing, elderly care and childcare increases disposable household income on average by %29 and also tends to reduce inequality. The main reason for the equality enhancing effect of public services is that the cash value of public services accounts for a significantly larger proportion of the income of poor households than of rich households. On average the use of these services accounts for %76 of the income of the poorest quintile of the income scale in the OECD countries as opposed to %14 for the richest income quintile. On the other hand public services also promote equality by providing comparable decent employment opportunities particularly for low skilled workers, women and migrant workers. But privatization and marketization has eroded the equality-enhancing effects of public services through changes in prices, the quality of services and access to services. They have also transformed the public sector employment system. As a result the goal of public service provision is no longer to provide the best possible services for all service users, but to adjust the quality of services to the purchasing power of customers. The purpose of this paper is to introduce the effects of public services on equality and discuss the consequences of privatization and marketization of these services for equality

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