Family allowances in Canada and Australia 1940–1945: A comparative critical case study

Abstract

ABSTRACTWhilst quantitive and ‘positivist’ modes of comparative social policy can reveal significant structural factors involved in the making of welfare states, they too often ignore the role of human agency, intention and political processes. A critical-historical comparative case study of the introduction of ‘child endowment’ and of ‘family allowances’ respectively in Australia (1941) and in Canada (1944) reminds us of the interplay between structural constraints and human agency in the history of welfare states. Detailed analysis suggests that institutionalised arrangements in Australia after 1905 to resolve capital-labour conflict via arbitral and wage fixation mechanisms put the question of the adequacy of wages in meeting family needs and with it proposals for child endowment onto the public agenda as early as 1920. In Canada the absence of such mechanisms, and alternative welfare arrangements to deal with family welfare, combined to keep such proposals off the public agenda. After 1939 the development of ‘war economies’ in Australia and Canada created common contradictions for governments, trying to maintain both industrial peace and anti-inflation policies, which the introduction of family allowances in both countries were attempts to resolve. Consideration is also given to a range of political problems and contexts in both countries which this particular policy measure attempted to deal with.