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There are three main interpretations of the idea of a "welfare state". In the first, a welfare state is an
ideal model in which the government assumes the primary responsibility for the
individual and social welfare of its citizens. Secondly, the term is used for the provision of welfare services by the state.
Third, welfare states may be identified with general systems of social protection. In many "welfare states" welfare is not
provided by the state at all, but by a combination of independent, voluntary and government services.
Examples of early welfare-states in the modern world are the Sweden and New Zealand of 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 in contrast to
the harsh mass-poverty of the Depression.
Social protection tends to be more advanced in economically more developed countries; poorer countries generally have more
limited welfare services. Critics of the welfare state in the US claim it makes citizens lazy and less inclined to work. This is
unsupported by the economic evidence: there is no association between economic performance and welfare expenditure in developed
countries. See A B Atkinson, 1995, The welfare state and economic performance, in Incomes and the welfare state, Cambridge
University Press. The Welfare State idea is criticized as not much bang for the buck. In practice, national systems like the UK
National Health Service are proportionately cheaper, and have better coverage, than market-based systems. (The OECD produces
international statistics on health care, at http://www.oecd.org.) The Welfare State is accused of resulting in high taxes in places like Denmark
(Tax level of 50,4 % of the GNP in 2002) and Sweden (Tax level of 50,3% of the GNP in 2002). Some do, but these countries also
have high wage economies and high GNPs. Expenditure on welfare services is not the main predictor of total government
expenditure: see e.g. H Wilensky, 1975, The welfare state and equality, University of California Press, which found the main
predictors to be miltary expenditure and the relative numbers of elderly people. Critics of the welfare state also argue that
these government services are in fact inefficient and thus expensive, compared to what you would get for your money in nations
with less welfare, such as the USA. In fact, the US system is substantially more expensive, especially in health care, because of
its organisational diversity and heavy administrative costs. Many of the myths advanced in this paragraph are punctured by R
Goodin et al., The real worlds of welfare capitalism, Cambridge University Press, 2000.
Examples of welfare states
See also
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