Welfare state

Abstract

The term ‘welfare state’ first entered the English language in 1941 when Archbishop Temple coined the phrase to differentiate wartime Britain from the ‘warfare’ state of Nazi Germany. It quickly entered the vocabulary associated with the Beveridge Report (1942), which propounded state responsibility for individual welfare ‘from the cradle to the grave’. Paradoxically, however, it was Germany which pioneered both modern social insurance in the 1880s and the concept of Wohlfahrstaat in the 1920s. It is not easy to define the welfare state; for one reason the term refers both to goals (the idea of state responsibility for welfare) and to means (the institutions and practices through which the idea is given effect). Let us begin with goals and a well-known definition by Briggs (1961, p. 228):This has the merit of defining the welfare state as one form of state intervention in a capitalist, market economy. It then specifies those interventions which have as their aim the elimination of poverty and insecurity, and the guaranteeing of ‘best available’ standards of certain services in kind. Dispute still ensues, however, as to whether those are the defining goals of a welfare state. Some argue that it normally refers only to the provision of a minimum income ‘floor’ or minimum standards in certain areas of need (e.g. Wilensky and Lebeaux 1965). Others argue that social policies can serve other goals; for example, meritocratic education policies (Flora and Heidenheimer 1981). Gough (1979, pp. 44–5) goes further and defines the welfare state as ‘the use of state power to modify the reproduction of labour power and to maintain the non-working population in capitalist societies’. Hence a wide range of goals, motives and functions is attributed to the contemporary welfare state, but perhaps there is general agreement that the welfare state signifies the responsibility of the state for the well-being of all individuals on the basis of citizenship rights.KeywordsWelfare StateCapitalist SocietySocial ExpenditureMinimum IncomeMarxist TheoryThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.