welfare state

1. A social system whereby the state assumes primary responsibility for the welfare of its citizens, as in matters of health care, education, employment, and social security.
2. A nation in which such a system operates.

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Country in which government provides many services to its population, particularly in the areas of medical care, minimum income guarantees, and retirement pensions.

A system in which the government undertakes the main responsibility for providing for the social and economic security of the state's population by means of pensions, social security benefits, free health care, and so forth. 1942 the Beveridge Report in the United Kingdom proposed a far-reaching ‘settlement’, as part of a wider social and economic reconstruction, once victory in the Second World War was secured, and became the blueprint for the British welfare state.

By 1944 a White Paper made full employment the first goal of government economic policy, and the Butler Act provided for universal secondary education. Labour, however, won the 1945 general election, to a considerable extent because they appeared more wholeheartedly in favour of the Beveridge plan. The key measures which followed, largely implementing the plan's essential features, were the National Insurance Act 1946, the National Health Service Act 1946, and the National Assistance Act 1948. An ambitious programme to build a million homes was also launched. By 1948 The Times newspaper proclaimed in an editorial that these measures had created ‘security from the cradle to the grave’ for every citizen.

These measures were the foundation of the ‘welfare state’, which was seen as synonymous with ‘social security’. In a specific sense this meant entitlements to benefits under the newly established national insurance and assistance schemes. In a wider sense it referred to the other reforms implemented at the time, particularly the guarantees of full employment and access to a national health service free at the point of use. Underlying all this, however, was a new conception of the relationship between the state and the individual within a market-based society. This was based on an acceptance of the need for extensive intervention to ensure that its worst effects were mitigated, on the grounds that their causes were systemic rather than the fault or responsibility of individuals.

Nevertheless, behind the apparent consensus on the need for a welfare state, there was political conflict on its meaning between ‘reluctant collectivists’ in the liberal tradition (such as Beveridge himself) who saw the reforms of the 1940s as a high-water mark, and reformist socialists who saw it as a framework for developing a more concerted shift towards a planned and egalitarian society. A small minority of commentators, such as Hayek, were never convinced of the need for the welfare state in the first place and remained resolutely ‘anti-collectivist’.

The growing ‘crisis’ of the welfare state since the 1970s can be seen as due to changed economic and social circumstances, a disintegration of the post-war consensus, or both of these. Undoubtedly, growing economic pressures were making it harder to meet more insistent demands for improved services, and increased social needs due to changes in family patterns, more older people, and growing numbers of unemployed people. On the other hand, the ‘welfare state’ had been increasingly criticized within a more polarized political culture. Critics from the right argued that by removing responsibility from the individual, the welfare state stifled people's initiative to solve their own problems. Critics from the left agreed in part that the welfare state as it currently stood was often ‘oppressive’, but attributed this to a failure to attack the root causes of class, gender, and ‘race’ inequalities.

Even before 1979 there were discernible shifts by the 1974-9 Labour government after the expenditure crisis of 1976 towards retrenchment and ‘restructuring’ of welfare in ways that responded most to right-wing rather than left-wing critics. However, after the Conservative election victory of 1979, this shift occurred in a more concerted way and there have been substantial reforms in all of the services established as a result of the Beveridge Report, though only in one, housing, could there be said to have been significant retrenchment in provision. In other areas, there have been a tightening of eligibility rules and shifts to decentralization of managerial responsibility within tighter centralized control of finance. Perhaps most controversial of all has been the reform of the National Health Service in 1990, against widespread opposition, to create an ‘internal’ market within a socialized system.

In a wider sense, there has been a significant shift from Beveridge's assumptions. Most importantly, there was a shift in economic priorities from maintaining full employment to controlling inflation. The modest redistribution of income and wealth achieved up to the 1970s, was reversed by cuts in income tax and a shift to more regressive forms of indirect taxation like value added tax (VAT). Despite all this, by the end of the 1980s the welfare state had been ‘restructured’ rather than abolished. It was suggested that a new ‘welfare pluralist’ consensus had emerged in which it was accepted that private, state, and voluntary sectors could exist side by side. In the 1990s the growing internationalization of the global economy, which has undermined the autonomy of national governments, led to pressure to reduce wage and social security costs in order to attract highly mobile investment.

It is probably most helpful to situate the British variant analytically and comparatively as a ‘welfare state regime’. These, G. Esping-Anderson argues in The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, fall into three main types within market societies: ‘conservative’, ‘social democratic’, and ‘liberal’, depending on the extent to which they seek to work with, or to counter the effects of, the market on social inequalities. An example of a conservative regime is Germany, characterized by high welfare provision within a hierarchical and ordered society, while Sweden is closest to an egalitarian ‘social democratic’ regime. Though 1948 the British welfare state was among the most developed, by the 1970s provision had become more extensive in conservative and social democratic regimes, and the British welfare state looked closest to the ‘liberal’ model, with only limited attempts to use welfare to mitigate social inequalities. Though all welfare state regimes have been under pressure, in Britain and the United States the shift towards liberalism has been particularly pronounced, nor was it reversed on Labour coming to power in 1997.

— Mick Carpenter

An economic system that combines features of capitalism and socialism by retaining private ownership while the government enacts broad programs of social welfare, such as pensions and public housing.

A state or government that promotes public welfare through programs of public health, pensions, unemployment compensation, public housing, and the like. The expression welfare state is often used by those hostile to government intervention in these areas.

This article refers specifically to the Welfare state of the United Kingdom. For the general concept, please see Welfare state.

This article may contain original research or unverified claims. Please improve the article by adding references. See the talk page for details. (July 2008)

The Welfare State of the United Kingdom was prefigured in the William Beveridge Report in 1942, which identified five "Giant Evils" in society: squalor, ignorance, want, idleness and disease.

Clement Attlee's 1945 Labour government pledged to eradicate these Evils. The government undertook measures in policy to provide for the people of the United Kingdom "from the cradle to the grave."

This policy resulted in massive expenditure and a great widening of what was considered to be the state's responsibility. In addition to the central services of Education, Health, Unemployment and sickness allowances and so on, the welfare state included the idea of increasing redistributive taxation, increasing regulation of industry food and housing (better safety regulations, "weights and measures" controls etc.)

The Welfare State was a commitment to health (in 1948 the National Health Service was created), education, employment and social security.

However the initial foundation of the National Health Service did not involve building new hospitals but merely the nationalisation of existing municipal and charitable foundations. The aim was not to substantially increase provision but to standardise care across the country; indeed Beveridge believed that the overall cost of medical care would decrease, as people became more healthy and so needed less treatment. Instead the cost increased dramatically, leading to severe financial problems, and charges (for dentures, spectacles and prescriptions) were introduced in 1951 - by the same Labour government that had founded the NHS just three years earlier. Despite this, the principle of health care "free at the point of use" became a central part of the idea of the welfare state, which later governments critical of the welfare state were unable to reverse. The classic Welfare State period lasted from approximately 1945 to the 1970s, when policies under Thatcherism began to privatise public institutions, although many features of it remain today. This includes, but is not limited to, compulsory National Insurance contributions, and the provision of old age pensions.

Some primary reasons for the establishment of a welfare state include the reports drawn up by men such as Rowntree, son of the famous confectionery manufacturer, and Booth, into the levels of poverty in Britain in the early twentieth century. These reports indicated that in the massive industrial cities of the north, a high percentage of people were living below the level of subsistence, or the poverty line.

The deeper reasons for the establishment of the welfare state are complex. Certainly governments who had seen the revolutionary wave of revolts after the First World War were keen to ensure that deep reforms reduced the risk of mass social unrest after the Second World War. In addition, modern, complex industry had more need for a healthy and educated workforce than older industries had. Crucially, the experience of almost total state control during the Second World War had inured the population to the idea that the state might deal with wide areas of national life. Finally it seems likely that the social mixing involved in mass evacuation of children, and of service in the armed forces, had increased support for welfare among the middle classes.

Certainly, the Labour Party, standing in 1945 on a programme of establishing a welfare state, won a very clear victory. However, since the 1980s the British government has begun to reduce some provisions in England: for example, free eye tests for all have now been stopped and prescription charges for drugs have constantly risen since they were first introduced in 1951. (Policy differs in different countries of the United Kingdom.) Providing a Welfare State is however still a basic principle of government policy in the United Kingdom today.

Critics of the welfare state claim that, in relieving citizens of personal responsibility for their welfare, the government has inadvertently encouraged irresponsible and immature attitudes. ^[1][2]

See also

• Social welfare
• National Health Service

Housing:

• Public housing
• Housing estate
• Council house

External resources

• Text of the Beveridge Report

References

1. ^ The Welfare State We're in / James Bartholomew (2004) ISBN 1842750631
2. ^ Our Culture, What's Left of It: The Mandarins and the Masses / Theodore Dalrymple (2005) ISBN 1566636434

• Welfare State, Right to Life, and Capital Punishment in India / Parul Sharma, Sampark Publications,Calcutta/New Delhi (2005).

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