Social Welfare Policy: A
Safety Net or a Crutch?
Theodoulou
Social Welfare Policy
• Provision of appropriate levels of wellbeing—Safety Nets against poverty
• Social Welfare Policy: programs
destined
– To assist the poor and the working class
– To redress the gaps in society
• Levels of expenditure vary according to
whether a society believes the Gvt.
Should be responsible (and
responsive) to the needs of its citizens
Question: How should the
State react before the
dynamics of the market?
Understandings of Welfare:
1. Relief ancillary to economic
arrangements, because of the
instability of capitalist economies
2. Welfare policy regulates labor,
integrating people within the system
and acting as a social pacifier
3. Welfare policy should encourage
individuals to be independent
Types of Welfare Policy
Solutions
• Rights: services to which individuals are
entitled as a part of their citizenship
• Rules: specify conditions under which
individuals are eligible for certain
policies
• Inducements: positive or negative,
encourage or discourage individuals to
become subjects of specific welfare
policies
Tools
1. Policies that benefit the poor
a. General Assistance Programs (food,
money, clothing)
b. Work Assistance
c. Categorical Assistance
2. Policies that benefit the general public
a. Social Insurance (against unemployment)
b. Social Regulation Programs
Approaches Used by Gvts.
• Preventive (that individuals do not
become poor)
• Alleviate (Assistance to reduce poverty)
• Punitive (Assumption: poverty is the
poor’s fault/minimal assistance)
• Curative: attempts to “cure” causes of
poverty
• Incomes: encourages individuals to
work for Gvt. Assistance
Critics of Welfare Policies
• Claim: Welfare encourages
individuals to become dependent on
government support and remain
unemployed
Brazil: Imitation of the “Real
Thing”
• Restricted Welfare System
• Military Rule prevented the country from
developing a real public welfare system
– Focus on rapid economic growth and not on
social policies
– Increasing Gaps
• Late 1970s, rise of a state-centered
movement claiming for welfare programs
(middle and working class)
• Social rights consecrated in the 1988
Constitution—Insufficient implementation
Policy Structure
• About 50% of workers make no contributions to
the system
– Fiscal Gaps
• Series of Programs and services based upon the
Organic Social Security law promulgated in the
1930s and changed in the 70s and 90s.
• November 1998, Social Security Reform (deters
retirees from going back to work in the public
sector, reduces or eliminates certain public
pensions while fostering people’s transferring to
the private system)
• In countries as unequal as Brazil, an “equal for
equals” policy is impossible to apply (in Brazil,
universality means exclusion). Targeted policies
Recessive Cycle
• Economic Recession
• Huge Public Debt
– Cuts in public expenditure—lack of resources
to spend in education, health, etc.
• Brazil’s industry hit by globalization
(unemployment)
– Policies to attract foreign investments through
privileges
• Many social reformers argue for a strong
paternalistic state (Danger of
authoritarianism)
• Voluntary Associations
• Economically, Brazil’s national debt, deindustrialization, and dependency have
increased
• Socially, the gap (one of the biggest in the
world) is widening
• Politically, loss of legitimacy of the system
and pessimism
• Lula has brought new hopes, with his goal
of allowing all Brazilians to have three
meals a day—Will he be able to achieve
even this minimal goal?
Germany: Status Maintenance
with Minor Cutbacks
• Before Reunification
– West Germany: Pluralism, Corporatism,
Decentralization. High welfare provision
hierarchically organized and distributed
– East Germany: Centralized and
Universalistic, wide-scale coverage,
deficiencies of quality
• After Reunification: organizational
uniformity, with differences
– Western social insurance was extended to
the Eastern States with benefits calculated
on the basis of their (Eastern) income
Germany, place of Birth of the
Welfare State
• First Statutory Social Insurance System
• 1970, the Poor Law (basic assistance)
• Bismarck, 1883, compulsory sickness
insurance
• 1889, Provisions concerning old age and
invalidity insurance
• 1923, the Empowering Act (local
responsibility/ employer/employee
financing of the system)
• Under Hitler, welfare policies became restrictive
• Restrictions continued under the Allies occupation till 1947
• 1945-1949-Reconstruction of the social welfare system while
integrating war veterans, victims, and refugees.
• 1949 Basic Law settles conditions for social welfare policy:
Social State, inspired in Bismarck’s welfare state
– Key elements applied throughout the nation with local
differences in implementation
• 1950-69 Ec. Growth and expansion of the welfare state
• 1970s Welfare Reform (expansion)
• Late 1970s-1980s Economic problems and reduction of
programs (not as severe as elsewhere)
• 1990s Problems of reunification
The German System
• Social Market Economy
• Welfare policy objectives are
– Defined and articulated by the federal gvt.
– Implemented at the local level/increasing role of the
federal gvt. Since the 1980s (and with reunification)
• Funded by both the state and the private sector
(employers/employees)
The German System
• Social Insurance
– General Assistance program covering
income losses caused by sickness,
unemployment, old age, or disability. Semiautonomous organization
(employers/unions) locally administered
and sponsored by the federal gvt.
• Social Assistance (benefits for those who
cannot apply for social insurance, calculated
according to needs)—State institutions,
benefits for refugees, social housing
• Personal Social Services provided by the
states (Lander)
Criticisms and Problems
• The welfare system reproduces the
inequalities of the labor market
• Reunification brought about a crisis
of the welfare system (huge
unemployment, more individuals in
need, lack of resources, inequality
between the West and the East)
• No roll back of the state
Great Britain: 1996, “The
End of the Welfare State”?
• Antecedent: British Poor Laws (1601)
• The British Welfare State developed out of the
belief that “every individual has the right to
support in times of need and emergency.”
– 1942 Beveridge Report: social welfare seen as a right
of citizenship. Expanded notion of liberty. Attack
against the “five giants of modern society”—want,
disease, ignorance, squalor, idleness.
– Three decades of expansion of the Welfare State
– 1979: Thatcher’s Structural Cutbacks (limits: health
care & benefits for the elder)
– 1997: New Labour’s “Welfare-to-Work” approach.
Main Social Welfare Instruments
• From WWII to 1979/80:
– Single weekly contribution for “cradle-to-grave”
benefits (“all-in” insurance)
– Five areas of benefits: cash benefits, health care,
education, housing, personal & social services
(about 70% British received at least one cash
benefits, and health and education were available
to everyone)
• Since 1979, Thatcher’s drastic erosion of the
Welfare State—Privatization (of pensions,
health, education), weakening of the idea of
universal access—Replaced with the notion
of incentives and disincentives
New Labour Conservatives
•Jobseeker’s Allowance (JSA) “Welfare-to-Work”
(individuals must demonstrate their will to get any
available job to continue perceiving the benefits
•Agencies attempt to match unemployed with jobs
•Since 2000 Proliferation of Controls (beepers,
checks, etc)
•Blair’s Green paper (3 types of welfare: as a
channel for pursuing social well being as selfinterest, as the exercise of authority compelling
people to pursue the common good, and as a
mechanism for moral regeneration)
•Policies are designed nationally and implemented
locally
Shift in the Debate
• From
– How much to expect, and how should the
State provide for its citizens’ needs
• To
– How to make the choices concerning welfare
services
• Problem: lack of resources to fund a
comprehensive welfare state (the British welfare
state looks obsolete in comparison with the
Swedish or the German)
Japan: Different and Unique
• 1938 National Health Insurance
• 1944 Employees’ Pension Insurance
• Occupation—Western-style welfare
reforms (1946 Daily Life Protection)
Symbolic
1960s: Prosperity & Social Welfare
• National pension scheme
• Late 60s: movement pro-Welfare State
• 1973, the “First Year of Welfare”
– Dramatic increase in social expenditure during the
1970s
– 1980s Japan looked like Germany
• Mid 1980s (economic crisis, cutbacks)
Development of the idea of a Japanese Welfare
State— “Reconsider Welfare”
– Complex System: Family, Community, Corporation,
and... The State (the State only supports people who
are also supported by their relatives)
Mixture of welfare-state principles,
insurance, and individual responsibility
Four Main Areas
• Public Assistance
• Social Insurance
• Basic Welfare
• Public Health
Main Actor: the Central government
bureaucracy
Main Problem: the aging population
Sweden: the Social Democratic Model?
Gradualism
• Early commitment with solidarity and universalism
since the 18th century (because of the political
power of the agrarian industry, the increasing power
of the working class, and the existence of a
centralized monarchy)
• The Poor Law (1882)
• The Pension Act (1913)
• The National Unemployment Commission (1914)
• 1932-1976 Social Democratic gvts—Welfare State
based upon a Keynesian policy
• 1980s Growing deficit & Inflation
• 1990s Austerity measures (did not undermine the
structure of the Welfare State, at least not yet)
Structure
• Social Insurance: universal (sickness,
unemployment, disability, old age, longterm care). No means-tested
• Social Assistance Benefits: Meanstested (Housing and child benefits)
• Social Services: Parental benefits
package (12 months leave at 80% of
gross earning, further 180 days of leave
until the child enters primary school, up
to 60 days per year to face
emergencies); Daycare
United States
• Reluctance towards social policy
• Social welfare policies developed after the 1930s
by the federal gvt.
– Roosevelt’s New Deal Limited (and always
problematic)
• Reason: American political culture and values,
with an emphasis on self-reliance and
individualism
• Poverty is seen as the individual’s fault
• Early 20th century  punitive approach
• After 1929: acceptance of the notion that crises
may produce poverty that are not the poor’s fault
– 1935 Social Security Act  Preventive and alleviative
Phases
• 1935 Social Security Act: social security and
unemployment compensation
• (AFDC) Aid to Families with Dependent Children
• Post WWII, prosperity & suspension of social
welfare
• 1960-8 Kennedy-Johnson  the Great Society & the
War on Poverty (Medicare, Medicaid, housing
subsidies, school feeding programs, programs for
pregnant women, Equal Opportunity Act/curative)
• 1968 Nixon (Milton Friedman) inexpensive programs
based on dis/incentives  Workfare
• 1980/90s Reagan & Bush: hostility to welfare.
Poverty seen as the individuals’ fault  punitive
approach. Welfare seen as the root of all problems
• 1996-Clinton, the Personal Responsibility and Work
Opportunity Reconciliation Act  End of Welfare?
Organization
• Since 1996, recipients of welfare are required to
work
• AFDC was eliminated and replaced by TANF,
limited temporary assistance to families
– States administer funds and programs (no national
unified programs anymore)
• Elimination of benefits for immigrants
• Punitive & Incomes approach
• Different Programs
– Direct Cash Assistance
(Should I include tax discounts here?)
– In-Kind Assistance Programs
– Services (health care, childcare, help dealing with
alcohol or drugs)