Welfare state

This article is about the welfare state as a general concept. For the system known as "the Welfare State" in the United Kingdom, see Welfare State.

% of GDP in social expenditures in OECD states, 2001.

A welfare state is a "concept of government in which the state plays a key role in the protection and promotion of the economic and social well-being of its citizens. It is based on the principles of equality of opportunity, equitable distribution of wealth, and public responsibility for those unable to avail themselves of the minimal provisions for a good life. The general term may cover a variety of forms of economic and social organization."^[1]

Modern welfare states include countries such as Sweden, Norway, Denmark and Finland^[2] which employ a system known as the Nordic model. The welfare state involves a direct transfer of funds from the state, to the services provided (i.e. healthcare, education) as well as directly to individuals ("benefits"). The welfare state is funded through redistributionist taxation and is often referred to as a type of "mixed economy"^[3] in the United States and many other countries.

Etymology

The German term (Sozialstaat, "social state") has been used since 1870 to describe state support programs being developed by the German Sozialpolitiker—"Social Politicians"— and implemented through Bismarck's conservative reforms.^[4]

Despite early attempts to use an equivalent phrase in English^[5] the term only entered common use when William Temple popularized it during the Second World War, contrasting wartime Britain's welfare state with the "warfare state" of Nazi Germany.^[6]

The Italian term "Social state" (Stato sociale) has the same origin. The Swedish welfare state is called Folkhemmet (literally; the folk home) and goes back to the 1936 compromise between the Union and big Corporate companies. It is a Mixed economy, built on strong unions and a strong system of Social security and universal health care. The term "Wohlfahrtsstaat", a direct translation from English, is used in Germany to describe Sweden. In Spanish and many other languages, an analogous term is used: estado del bienestar; translated literally: "state of well-being". In Portuguese, two similar phrases exist: "Estado do bem-estar socal" which means "state of social well-being" and Estado de Providência which means "Providing State", as in the State should provide citizens their demands in order to achieve people's well-being. In Brazil it is referred to as Previdencia Social, translated as social providence.

History of welfare states

Germany

In Germany, Chancellor Otto von Bismarck created the modern welfare state by building on a tradition of welfare programs in Prussia and Saxony that began as early as in the 1840s, and by winning the support of business. In the 1880s he introduced old age pensions, accident insurance, medical care and unemployment insurance that formed the basis of the modern European welfare state. His paternalistic programs won the support of German industry because its goals were to win the support of the working classes for the Empire and reduce the outflow of immigrants to America, where wages were higher but welfare did not exist.^[7][8] Bismarck further won the support of both industry and skilled workers by his high tariff policies, which protected profits and wages from American competition, although they alienated the liberal intellectuals who wanted free trade.^[9][10]

Modern model

Modern welfare programs differed from previous schemes of poverty relief due to their relatively universal coverage. The development of social insurance in Germany under Bismarck was particularly influential. Some schemes were based largely in the development of autonomous, mutualist provision of benefits. Others were founded on state provision. The term was not, however, applied to all states offering social protection. The sociologist T.H. Marshall identified the welfare state as a distinctive combination of democracy, welfare and capitalism. Examples of early welfare states in the modern world are Germany, all of the Nordic Countries, the Netherlands, Uruguay and New Zealand and the United Kingdom in the 1930s.

Changed attitudes in reaction to the Great Depression were instrumental in the move to the welfare state in many countries, a harbinger of new times where "cradle-to-grave" services became a reality after the poverty of the Depression. During the Great Depression, it was seen as an alternative "middle way" between communism and capitalism.^[11] In the period following the Second World War, many countries in Europe moved from partial or selective provision of social services to relatively comprehensive coverage of the population.

The activities of present-day welfare states extend to the provision of both cash welfare benefits (such as old-age pensions or unemployment benefits) and in-kind welfare services (such as health or childcare services). Through these provisions, welfare states can affect the distribution of wellbeing and personal autonomy among their citizens, as well as influencing how their citizens consume and how they spend their time.^[12][13]

Britain

In Britain, the beginning of the modern welfare state was in 1911 when David Lloyd George and his Liberal Party enacted the National Insurance Act 1911 setting up a national insurance contribution for unemployment and health benefits from work.^[14] In 1942, the Social Insurance and Allied Services was created by Sir William Beveridge in order to aid those who were in need of help, or in poverty. Beveridge worked as a volunteer for the poor, and set up national insurance. He stated that 'All people of working age should pay a weekly national insurance contribution. In return, benefits would be paid to people who were sick, unemployed, retired or widowed.'

The basic assumptions of the report were that the National Health Service would provide free health care to all citizens. The Universal Child Benefit was a scheme to give benefits to parents, encouraging people to have children by enabling them to feed and support a family. One theme of the report was the relative cheapness of universal benefits. Beveridge quoted miner's pension schemes as some of the most efficient available, and argued that a state scheme would be cheaper to run than individual friendly societies and private insurance schemes, as well as being cheaper than means-tested government-run schemes for the poor.

The cheapness of what was to be called National Insurance was an argument alongside fairness, and justified a scheme in which the rich paid-in and the state paid-out to the rich, just as for the poor. In the original scheme, only some benefits called National Assistance were to be paid regardless of contribution. Universal benefits paid to rich and poor such as child benefit were particularly beneficial after the Second World War when the birth rate was low. Universal Child Benefit may have helped drive the Baby boom.

Beveridge recommended to the government that they should find ways of tackling the five giants, being Want, Disease, Ignorance, Squalor and Idleness. He argued to cure these problems, the government should provide adequate income to people, adequate health care, adequate education, adequate housing and adequate employment. Before 1939, most health care had to be paid for through non government organisations, this was done through a vast network of friendly societies, trade unions and other insurance companies which counted the vast majority of the UK working population as members.

These friendly societies provided insurance for sickness, unemployment and invalidity, therefore providing people with an income when they were unable to work. But because of the 1942 Beveridge Report, in 5 July 1948, the National Insurance Act, National Assistance Act and National Health Service Act came into force, thus this is the day that the modern UK welfare state was founded. Institutions run by local councils to provide health services for the uninsured poor - part of the poor law tradition of workhouses - were merged into the new national system.

Welfare systems had been developing intensively since the end of the World War II. At the end of the century due to their restructuring, part of their responsibilities started to be channeled through non-governmental organizations which became important providers of social services.^[15]

Oil countries

Saudi Arabia,^[16][17] Brunei, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates all became welfare states for their citizens but not for foreign nationals legally resident or employed.

Three worlds of the welfare state

According to Esping-Andersen (1990),^[18] there are three ways of organizing a welfare state instead of only two.^[19]

Esping-Andersen categorised three different types of welfare states in the 1990 book 'The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism'. Though increasingly criticised (for a review of the debate on the Three worlds of Welfare Capitalism see Art and Gelissen [2002] and Ferragina and Seeleib-Kaiser[2011]), these classifications remain the most commonly used in distinguishing types of modern welfare states, and offer a solid starting point in such analysis. It has been argued that these typologies remain a fundamental heuristic tool for welfare state scholars, even for those who claim that in-depth analysis of a single case is more suited to capture the complexity of different social policy arrangments. Welfare typologies have the function to provide a comparative lens and place even the single case into a a comparative perspective (Ferragina and Seeleib-Kaiser 2011)^[20] .

Esping-Andersen (1990) constructed the welfare regime typology acknowledging the ideational importance and power of the three dominant political movements of the long 20th century in Western Europe and North America, that is Social Demcoracy, Christian Democracy(conservatism) and Liberalism (Stephens 1979; Korpi 1983; Van Kersbergen 1995; Ferragina and Seeleib-Kaiser 2011). The ideal Social-Democratic welfare state is based on the principle of universalism granting access to benefits and services based on citizenship. Such a welfare state is said to provide a relatively high degree of autonomy, limiting the reliance of family and market (Ferragina and Seeleib-Kaiser 2011)^[21] . In this context, social policies are perceived as 'politics against the market' (Esping-Andersen 1985). Christian-democratic welfare states are based on the principle of subsidiarity and the dominance of social insurance schemes, offering a medium level of decommodification and a high degree of social stratification. The liberal regime is based on the notion of market dominance and private provision; ideally, the state only interferes to ameliorate poverty and provide for basic needs, largely on a means-tested basis. Hence, the decommodification potential of state benefits is assumed to be low and social stratification high (Ferragina and Seeleib-Kaiser 2011)^[22] .

Based on the decommodification index Esping-Andersen divided into the following regimes 18 OECD countries (Esping-Andersen 1990: 71): 1. Liberal: Australia, Canada, Japan, Switzerland and the US; 2. Conservative: Austria, Belgium, France, Germany and Italy; 3. Social Demcoratic: Denmark, Finland, the Netherlands, Norway and Sweden 4. Not clearly classified: Ireland, New Zealand and the United Kingdom. These 18 countries can be placed on a continuum from the most purely social-democratic, Sweden, to the most liberal country, the United States (Ferragina and Seeleib-Kaiser 2011)^[23] .

Rothstein argues that in the first model, the state is primarily concerned with directing the resources to “the people most in need”. This requires a tight bureaucratic control over the people concerned. Under the second model, the state distributes welfare with as little bureaucratic interference as possible, to all people who fulfill easily established criteria (e.g. having children, receiving medical treatment, etc.). This requires high taxation. This model was constructed by the Scandinavian ministers Karl Kristian Steincke and Gustav Möller in the 30s and is dominant in Scandinavia. The third model is similar to the one found in Britain (Beveridge model) and is based more on citizenship and a certain level of welfare ‘as a right’, which may then be modified according to needs.

Effects on poverty

Main article: Welfare's effect on poverty

Empirical evidence suggests that taxes and transfers considerably reduce poverty in most countries, whose welfare states commonly constitute at least a fifth of GDP.^[24][25] Most "welfare states" have considerably lower poverty rates than they had before the implementation of welfare programs.

Country	Absolute poverty rate (1960–1991) (threshold set at 40% of U.S. median household income)[24]		Relative poverty rate (1970–1997)[25]
	Pre-welfare	Post-welfare	Pre-welfare	Post-welfare
Sweden	23.7	5.8	14.8	4.8
Norway	9.2	1.7	12.4	4.0
Netherlands	22.1	7.3	18.5	11.5
Finland	11.9	3.7	12.4	3.1
Denmark	26.4	5.9	17.4	4.8
Germany	15.2	4.3	9.7	5.1
Switzerland	12.5	3.8	10.9	9.1
Canada	22.5	6.5	17.1	11.9
France	36.1	9.8	21.8	6.1
Belgium	26.8	6.0	19.5	4.1
Australia	23.3	11.9	16.2	9.2
United Kingdom	16.8	8.7	16.4	8.2
United States	21.0	11.7	17.2	15.1
Italy	30.7	14.3	19.7	9.1

Welfare expenditure

There is very little correlation between economic performance and welfare expenditure.^[26]

The table does not show the effect of expenditure on income inequalities, and does not encompass some other forms of welfare provision (such as occupational welfare).

The table below shows, first, welfare expenditure as a percentage of GDP for some (selected) OECD member states, with and without public education,^[27] and second, GDP per capita (PPP US$) in 2001:

Nation	Welfare expenditure (% of GDP) omitting education	Welfare expenditure (% of GDP) including education	GDP per capita (PPP US$)
Denmark	29.2	37.9	$29,000
Sweden	28.9	38.2	$24,180
France	28.5	34.9	$23,990
Germany	27.4	33.2	$25,350
Belgium	27.2	32.7	$25,520
Switzerland	26.4	31.6	$28,100
Austria	26.0	32.4	$26,730
Finland	24.8	32.3	$24,430
Netherlands	24.3	27.3	$27,190
Italy	24.4	28.6	$24,670
Greece	24.3	28.4	$17,440
Norway	23.9	33.2	$29,620
Poland	23.0	N/A	$9,450
United Kingdom	21.8	25.9	$24,160
Portugal	21.1	25.5	$18,150
Luxembourg	20.8	N/A	$53,780
Czech Republic	20.1	N/A	$14,720
Hungary	20.1	N/A	$12,340
Iceland	19.8	23.2	$29,990
Spain	19.6	25.3	$20,150
New Zealand	18.5	25.8	$19,160
Australia	18.0	22.5	$25,370
Slovak Republic	17.9	N/A	$11,960
Canada	17.8	23.1	$27,130
Japan	16.9	18.6	$25,130
United States	14.8	19.4	$36,000
Ireland	13.8	18.5	$32,410
Mexico	11.8	N/A	$8,430
South Korea	6.1	11.0	$15,090

Figures from the OECD^[28] and the UNDP.^[29]

Criticisms of welfare

Main article: Criticisms of welfare

The notion, and the extent of, the modern welfare state has been criticized on economic, social, and ideological grounds from both the Left and the Right of the political spectrum.

See also

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Social protection Social security Social stratification Social welfare provision Welfare reform

Models:

• Swedish welfare state
• Third way
• Nordic model
• European welfare state
• American welfare state
• Welfare State (United Kingdom)

Transfer of wealth:

• Transfer payment
• Redistribution (economics)
• Tax rates of Europe
• Cloward–Piven strategy

Housing:

• Public housing
• Housing estate
• Council house

Technology:

• Welfare Management System

Notes

1. ^ Welfare state, Britannica Online Encyclopedia
2. ^ Paul K. Edwards and Tony Elger, The global economy, national states and the regulation of labour (1999) p, 111
3. ^ "Welfare state." Encyclopedia of Political Economy. Ed. Phillip Anthony O'Hara. Routledge, 1999. p. 1245
4. ^ S. B. Fay, 'Bismarck's Welfare State', Current History, Vol. XVIII (January 1950), pp. 1-7.
5. ^ Munroe Smith's text "Four German Jurists"Smith, Munroe (December 1901). "Four German Jurists. IV". Political Science Quarterly (The Academy of Political Science) 16 (4): 669. doi:10.2307/2140421. ISSN 0032-3195. JSTOR 2140421. 
6. ^ Megginson, William L.; Jeffry M. Netter (June 2001). "From State to Market: A Survey of Empirical Studies on Privatization" (PDF). Journal of Economic Literature 39 (2): 321–389. doi:10.1257/jel.39.2.321. ISSN 0022-0515. http://faculty-staff.ou.edu/M/William.L.Megginson-1/prvsvpapJLE.pdf. 
7. ^ E. P. Hennock, The Origin of the Welfare State in England and Germany, 1850–1914: Social Policies Compared (2007)
8. ^ Hermann Beck, Origins of the Authoritarian Welfare State in Prussia, 1815-1870 (1995)
9. ^ Elaine Glovka Spencer, "Rules of the Ruhr: Leadership and Authority in German Big Business Before 1914," Business History Review, Spring 1979, Vol. 53 Issue 1, pp 40-64
10. ^ Ivo N. Lambi, "The Protectionist Interests of the German Iron and Steel Industry, 1873-1879," Journal of Economic History, March 1962, Vol. 22 Issue 1, pp 59-70
11. ^ "welfare state." O'Hara, Phillip Anthony (editor). Encyclopedia of political economy. Routledge 1999. p. 1245
12. ^ Esping-Andersen, Gøsta (1999). Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies. Oxford: Oxford University Press. ISBN 0-19-874200-2. 
13. ^ Rice, James Mahmud; Robert E. Goodin, Antti Parpo (September–December 2006). "The Temporal Welfare State: A Crossnational Comparison" (PDF). Journal of Public Policy 26 (3): 195–228. doi:10.1017/S0143814X06000523. ISSN 0143-814X. http://www.jamesmahmudrice.info/Welfare.pdf. 
14. ^ Bentley Gilbert, "David Lloyd George: Land, the Budget, and Social Reform," American Historical Review, Dec 1976, Vol. 81 Issue 5, pp 1058-66 in JSTOR
15. ^ Pawel Zaleski Global Non-governmental Administrative System: Geosociology of the Third Sector, [in:] Gawin, Dariusz & Glinski, Piotr [ed.]: "Civil Society in the Making", IFiS Publishers, Warszawa 2006
16. ^ Social Services (2) - Saudi Arabia Information
17. ^ Royal Embassy of Saudi Arabia London
18. ^ Gosta Esping-Andersen. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press.
19. ^ Bo Rothstein: Just Institutions Matter: The Moral and Political Logic of the Universal Welfare State (Theories of Institutional Design), Cambridge 1998
20. ^ Emanuele Ferragina and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser (2011). Welfare regime debate: past, present, futures. Policy & Politics vol. 39 (4). p. 598. 
21. ^ Emanuele Ferragina and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser (2011). Welfare regime debate: past, present, futures. Policy & Politics, vol. 39 (4). p. 584. 
22. ^ Emanuele Ferragina and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser (2011). Welfare regime debate: past, present, futures. Policy & Politics, vol. 39 (4). p. 584. 
23. ^ Emanuele Ferragina and Martin Seeleib-Kaiser (2011). Welfare regime debate: past, present, futures. Policy & Politics, vol. 39 (4). p. 597. 
24. ^ ^{a b} Kenworthy, L. (1999). Do social-welfare policies reduce poverty? A cross-national assessment. Social Forces, 77(3), 1119-1139.
25. ^ ^{a b} Bradley, D., Huber, E., Moller, S., Nielson, F. & Stephens, J. D. (2003). Determinants of relative poverty in advanced capitalist democracies. American Sociological Review, 68(3), 22-51.
26. ^ Atkinson, A. B. (1995). Incomes and the Welfare State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-55796-8. 
27. ^ Barr, N. (2004). Economics of the welfare state. New York: Oxford University Press (USA).
28. ^ Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) (2001). "Welfare Expenditure Report" (Microsoft Excel Workbook). OECD. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/56/37/31613113.xls. 
29. ^ United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) (2003). "Human Development Indicators". Human Development Report 2003. New York: Oxford University Press for the UNDP. http://hdr.undp.org/reports/global/2003/pdf/hdr03_HDI.pdf. 

References

• Arts, Wil and Gelissen John; "Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism or More? A State-of-the-art report"; Journal of European Social Policy, vol. 12 (2), pp. 137-158 (2002).
• Esping-Andersen, Gosta; Politics against markets, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (1985).
• Esping-Andersen, Gosta; "The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism", Princeton NJ: Princeton University Press (1990).
• Ferragina, Emanuele and Seeleib-Kaiser, Martin; Welfare Regime Debate: Past, Present, Futures?; Policy & Politics, Vol. 39 (4), pp. 583-611 (2011).http://www.ingentaconnect.com/content/tpp/pap/2011/00000039/00000004/art00010.
• Korpi, Walter; "The Demcoratic Class Struggle"; London: Routledge (1983).
• Stein Kuhnle Survival of the European Welfare State 2000 Routledge ISBN 0-415-21291-X
• Stephens, John D. "The Transition from Capitalism to SOcialism"; Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press (1979).
• Van Kesbergen "Social Capitalism"; London: Routledge (1995).

External links

• Center for Public Policy
• Social Policy Virtual Library
• Social Sciences Information Gateway
• Race and Welfare in the United States
• The Welfare State: A Critique
• Shavell's criticism of social justice programmes
• Kaplow's criticism of social justice programmes.
• García Calvo's Analysis of Welfare Society
• World report on Welfare State
• Journal containing free daily information on welfare policies at local, national and EU level

Data and statistics

• OECD - Health Policy and Data: Health Division Website
• OECD - National Accounts: Statistics Portal
• OECD - Social Expenditure database (SOCX) Website