H. Allan Hunt and Marcus Dillender provide a succinct analysis of the state of WC programs in North America by focusing on three key performance issues: 1) the adequacy of compensation for those disabled in the workplace, 2) return-to-work performance for injured workers, and 3) prevention of disabling injury and disease. Following a brief introductory chapter that provides a discussion of the difficulties of trying to compare so many diverse programs, Hunt and Dillender devote a chapter to each of the three performance issues and provide empirical findings and useful guidance for policymakers and researchers as they set their sights on adapting WC for the twenty-first century.

The articles in this volume were first presented at the Seventh and Eighth Conferences on Economic Issues in Workers' Compensation sponsored by the National Council on Compensation Insurance. A principal objective of the Conference series has been for workers' compensation insurance researchers to apply state-of-the-art research methodologies to policy questions of interest to the workers' compensation insurance community. This community is a rather diverse group--it includes employers, insurers, injured workers, regulators, and legislators, as well as those who service or represent these groups (e.g., physicians, rehabilitation specialists, labor unions). Despite this diversity and the variety of agendas, the Conference series continues to address many important policy questions. Readers familiar with the Conference series and the four previously published volumes should notice an evolution in terms of the topics addressed in this volume. In the earlier conferences, the topics were more often concerned with the underlying causes of the tremendous increase in workers' compensation benefit payments. In the present volume, h- ever, only four of the fourteen chapters directly concern workers' c- pensation insurance benefits, while the other ten concern the pricing of workers compensation insurance. This is not to suggest that workers' compensation cost increases have abated. In 1989, workers' compensation incurred losses exceeded $45 billion to continue the annual double-digit cost increases. Two explanations can be offered for the somewhat altered focus of this volume. First, despite the continued increase in prices, the financial results for the workers' compensation insurance line continue to be poor.

In 1998, NASI convened a study panel of its Workers' Compensation Steering Committee (seep.145 for a list of panel members) to review the earnings replacement benefits under the variousstate and federal workers' compensation programs for workers injured or made ill by their jobs.The Benefit Adequacy Study Panel's task was to examine the extent to which workers'compensation wage replacement benefits paid to injured workers replace their lost wages, and toassess the adequacy of wage replacement.

Workers' compensation was arguably the first widespread social insurance program in the United States and the most successful form of labor legislation to emerge from the early Progressive Movement. Adopted in most states between 1910 and 1920, workers' compensation laws have been paving seen as the way for social security, Medicare, unemployment insurance, and eventually the broad network of social welfare programs we have today. In this highly original and persuasive work, Price V. Fishback and Shawn Everett Kantor challenge widespread historical perceptions, arguing that, rather than being an early progressive victory, workers' compensation succeeded because all relevant parties—labor and management, insurance companies, lawyers, and legislators—benefited from the legislation. Thorough, rigorous, and convincing, A Prelude to the Welfare State: The Origins of Workers' Compensation is a major reappraisal of the causes and consequences of a movement that ultimately transformed the nature of social insurance and the American workplace.