Interview on Postindustrialism and the Future of the Welfare State

Abstract

In The Social Foundations of Postindustrial Economies (Oxford University Press, 1999) Gosta Esping-Andersen presents a classic example of an empirically grounded historically materialist analysis of welfare capitalism, in the tradition of Polanyi, Marshall and others. He argues that its architecture needs to be re-thought because of the changing nature of postindustrial economies and that this requires us to think in terms of ‘welfare regimes’ comprising the market, the state and the family. When the welfare state finally reached its mature institutional expression, as late as the 1960s and 1970s, it addressed the risks which had typically been faced by families in the ‘Golden Age’ of capitalism in the long post-war boom. This meant protecting prime age men employed in Fordist industries earning family wages from spells of unemployment and older men from decreased earning power. Protecting the male breadwinner was also meant to protect those dependent upon him. The bulk of income transfers were thus focused on old age pensions and unemployment insurance. There was little in the way of service provision: ‘familialism’ left reproductive work such as child or elder care to the unpaid work of women in families.