Emerging Trends in The Social and Behavioral Sciences

The Welfare State in Comparative Perspective

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The Welfare State in Comparative Perspective

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The Welfare State
in Comparative Perspective
JILL QUADAGNO, ORIT FISHER-SHALEM, and JoELLEN PEDERSON

Abstract
The modern welfare state, which was created in the long economic expansion of the
post-World War II era, funded benefits that provided income security across the life
course. In the 1970s, the era of welfare state expansion slowed due to rising deficits
and fiscal strains associated with population aging. In recent decades benefit reductions have become commonplace. Theories designed to explain the formation of welfare state include the logic of industrialism, power resource theory, and the theory of
welfare state regimes. Feminist critics challenged theorists to consider how welfare
benefits influence gender inequality within regime types. In recent years, research
has focused on three key issues. The first is to identify variations in welfare state attitudes across nations and among individuals within nations. The second is to consider
the causes and consequences of activation policies that focus less on direct cash transfers and more on a combination of incentives and punishments to encourage work
effort. Finally, the third is to expand the definition of the welfare state to include the
private provision of goods and services as well as education.

INTRODUCTION
The modern welfare state was created in the long economic expansion of the
post-World War II era, as rising productivity and economic growth made it
possible for governments to fund an array of benefits that provided a modicum of income security across the life course. The era of welfare state expansion slowed in the 1970s, as nations everywhere faced rising deficits and
growing awareness of the fiscal strains population aging placed on pensions,
health care and other social welfare programs. Although expenditures continued to rise in the 1980s, they rose at a slower rate than in earlier decades
and then leveled off in the 1990s. In recent years benefit cuts have become
commonplace.
Rising public budgets have not been the only challenge facing all western,
capitalist nations. The social insurance systems created in the post-World War

Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

II period were designed to protect workers against the loss of income in old
age and presumed that the typical household consisted of a male breadwinner and a dependent spouse. In this model, married women were primarily responsible for caring for children and other family members and were
largely excluded from the labor market. Women did receive benefits from the
relatively generous social insurance programs, but they were subordinated
to their husbands. In public pensions, in particular, benefits were granted to
widows and spouses on the basis of their husbands’ earnings history and presumed that the women who received them were not employed outside the
home. In the less generous social assistance programs, women had to submit
to demeaning means tests to prove their eligibility.
Although widow and spouse benefits did improve women’s income security in old age, the dramatic rise in women’s education and labor force participation has made them something of an anachronism. Working women not
only require protection against the loss of a spouse; they also need benefits
that support their multiple familial responsibilities and resultant intermittent employment patterns. In addition, rising divorce rates and increasing
numbers of out-of-wedlock births and single parent household have generated new needs. By the 1980s, then, it had become clear that the welfare
states designed for an industrial economy and the male breadwinner family type that accompanied it needed retooling for service-oriented economies
where dual-earner and female-headed households were becoming the norm.
Thus, gender relations and family forms have become central to welfare state
restructuring in the contemporary period in ways that they were not during
the age of expansion.
Race and immigration patterns are also changing how welfare states function and how they are funded in the face of concerns that increasing ethnic
heterogeneity will lead to lower levels of welfare state support. Among the
changes that have occurred as increases in immigration, a larger scope of
responsibility for international organizations such as the European Union,
and an emerging global civil society. This has increased the need for research
on race and ethnicity in an international context.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Contemporary studies of the modern welfare state came of age in the 1970s,
following more than two decades of accelerated expansion. Both the scale
and diversity among the welfare states of the industrialized nations created
a scholarly agenda based on two questions: How could these developments
be explained and what were their consequences?

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LOGIC OF INDUSTRIALISM
In the 1970s and 1980s welfare state research focused on common trends,
a line of inquiry influenced by Harold Wilensky’s (1975) book, The Welfare
State and Equality, which argued for the salience of impersonal economic
forces associated with industrialization. According to the “logic of industrialism” theory, industrialization creates new demands for public spending as
systems of social support based on kinship and the patrimonial traditions
of agrarian societies are eroded. Growing dependence on wage labor makes
those with little or no labor to sell vulnerable to being unemployed and
falling into poverty. As a result, the state takes on an expanded role to
maintain the labor force and achieve coordination and consensus in a
complex, urban society.
POWER RESOURCE THEORY
Yet if the logic of industrialism was an inexorable historical force, then why
had welfare states developed in such different ways and apparently reached
their peak strikingly different levels of spending? Increasingly, scholars
began to consider how the factors that resulted in diversity among welfare
states. In a series of influential articles, Korpi and his colleagues (Korpi &
Palme, 1998) developed what came to be known as power resource theory.
They argued that democracy made it possible for the masses to combine
against the elites and use the state to claim a larger share of the social
surplus. However, this struggle was biased in favor of the propertied simply
because electoral constituencies are large and elections costly. For workers
the compensating power resource was their numbers, which could only be
effective if they organized into unions and political parties. Thus, although
the formal institutions of democracy, including universal suffrage and free
and competitive elections are important, what matters equally is what the
mass electorate does with the franchise.
Power resource theory became the dominant paradigm in the field
and provided the benchmark against which other theories would be
tested. More important, it initiated a program of both quantitative and
historical-comparative research to test the thesis that major differences in
welfare state spending and entitlements among the capitalist democracies
could be explained by the relative success of labor parties, aligned with
strong trade unions.
WELFARE STATE REGIMES
A second stream of research was concerned with grouping nations into categories based on their strategies for organizing benefits. In his path-breaking

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

book, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Gosta Esping-Andersen (1990)
argued that the welfare states of the affluent capitalist democracies could be
distinguished not only in terms of their relative spending, but also more fundamentally, by their institutional logic for assigning welfare functions to the
state, the market, and the family. He identified three distinct welfare state
regimes: liberal, conservative, and social democratic.
In liberal welfare states, citizens are constituted primarily as individual
market actors. Rather than providing direct cash transfers, liberal welfare
states favor subsidies for private benefits. Basic security schemes are more
likely to be means-tested and social insurance benefits modest. The main
exemplars of liberal welfare states are Great Britain, Canada, and the United
States.
The second regime type is termed conservative, or more recently, Christian
Democratic, depending on the characteristics emphasized. This regime type
is less concerned with market efficiency than with rights and privileges
differentiated on the basis of class and status. In conservative regimes social
rights are extensive, and there is only a marginal role for private welfare
arrangements. These countries are also strongly influenced by Catholic
doctrine, which emphasizes local community, the church, and the family as
the locus of social welfare. While social spending in conservative nations is
higher than in the liberal welfare states, the emphasis is on income transfers
sufficient to cover the needs of the male-breadwinner family type. Services
that facilitate women’s employment such as child care are modest. The main
exemplars of conservative regimes are found in the continental European
countries, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain.
The third regime type, called social democratic, is found mainly in Scandinavia. Social democratic welfare states are characterized by extensive social
rights and a marginal role for private welfare. Benefits are universalistic and
emphasize equality of citizenship rather than preservation of status differences. Social democratic nations recognize women’s right to a place in the
labor market, and welfare states tend to be service intensive as well as transfer intensive. In this regard, the welfare state is both a major source of employment for women and a provider of other services that allow them to work
outside the home. Thus, both social democratic and conservative welfare
states spend generously on social protection but do so in fundamentally different ways.
A core premise of regime theory is that the welfare state is not only
produced by conflicts between classes, but also it is “in its own right,
a system of stratification. It is an active force in the ordering of social
relations” (Esping-Andersen, 1990, p. 23). Universal programs have greater
support than targeted programs, because they build broad solidarities
across class, gender, and racial boundaries. As a result, benefits are difficult

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to cut because they create policy feedbacks in the form of institutional
structures and self-interested beneficiaries who are likely to favor current
spending levels and additional spending in the future (Lynch & Myrskyla,
2009).
Esping-Andersen’s typology has been subject to considerable criticism for
oversimplifying the complexities within regime types. Many researchers
have tested this typology using other economic or political variables with
moderate success. Most suggest adding a fourth regime to capture additional national differences. Yet, the key insight that welfare states differ
fundamentally in the allocation of functions among states, markets, and
families has proven to be remarkably robust.
GENDER
The insight that the welfare state is a system of stratification has led to
numerous studies that sought to elucidate how welfare states altered existing
distributional relations. Feminist theorists, in particular, have been especially
critical of Esping-Andersen for ignoring the gendered aspects of welfare
regimes. In response, they have conducted comparative studies of how various welfare strategies affect gender equality (O’Conner, Orloff, & Shaver,
1999).
High rates of female labor force participation in European countries have
been fostered by an activist state and the adoption of family policies that
encourage work. Such efforts have inspired alternative typologies based on
the extent to which welfare policies are used to encourage a male breadwinner model or promote female labor force participation.
Throughout most of Europe, female educational attainment now exceeds
that of males, and in many countries rates of female labor force participation,
even among mothers with young children, has soared. Beginning in the
late 1960s, Sweden consciously moved toward a dual-breadwinner nation
by introducing separate taxation, generous parental leaves, universal,
state-run day care and policies to encourage greater involvement of fathers
in child-rearing. Sweden also expanded the definition of work to allow
pension credits to be earned for child-rearing as well as for military service,
spells of illness, unemployment, and disability (Anderson, Blomqvist, &
Immergut, 2008). France also has an array of services and subsidies to
support dual earner families. This trend is not universal, however, for the
Netherlands upholds the male breadwinner model and encourages mothers
to stay home with young children (Morgan, 2006). Similarly, Britain created
an allowance for unpaid care work for infirm dependents in the 1970s, but
married women were ineligible for this benefit, because care-giving was
considered part of their normal duties (Lewis, 1998).

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model would reduce the financial instability of state-run pension programs,
increase economic growth, and improve retirement income for the elderly.
Although few European countries pursued this model, the World Bank
had a much larger impact in Latin America. For countries in desperate need
of economic stability after years of political unrest, government corruption,
and financial mismanagement, the World Bank model seemed to offer an
attractive solution. As an incentive, developing countries were promised
large loans for restructuring purposes (Brooks, 1994). Over the next decade,
81 countries including 15 countries in Latin America adopted the model
(Quadagno, Kail, & Sheka, 2011). These reformed pension schemes fall into
one of three categories. The substitutive scheme completely replaces the
public benefit with a new private system. The parallel scheme allows private
and public systems to compete with each other. Finally, in the mixed scheme
everyone is eligible for a flat pension while contributors to private accounts
receive an extra, supplementary benefit (Arza, 2008). As privatization has
redrawn the boundaries between the state and the market, the question is
whether the private sector can provide protection against life course risks
more effectively than the government.
RACE AND IMMIGRATION
Cross-national variations in race and ethnicity have also become increasingly
important in welfare state structures and spending patterns. Race has long
been recognized as critical in understanding the development of the American welfare state. Negative racial attitudes are one of the primary reasons that
the welfare state in the United States developed in so slowly and provided
less generous benefits than its European counterparts (Quadagno, 1994). Further, race continues to influence support for the welfare state in the United
States, because whites are less likely to support policies that they see as primarily benefiting minorities (Skocpol, 1991).
Recently, several researchers have posited that racial and ethnic heterogeneity may also affect attitudes toward welfare state support in an international
context. Comparatively, race is used to describe a wide range of concepts,
including country of origin, primary language, skin tone, ancestry, sociocultural group, and so on. Some studies find that in some nations increasing
rates of immigration and greater ethnic diversity in Europe are starting to
erode support for generous benefits (Alesina & Glaeser, 2004). Specifically,
they suggest that immigration is having a negative effect on welfare state
support and that eventually politicians will use ethnic divisions as a way
to cut popular benefits. Researchers already see evidence of this effect in
some countries where several candidates who promised to decrease redistribution and enact strict immigration laws have been elected (Alesina &

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Glaeser, 2004). Alternatively, Larsen (2008) argues that ethnic homogeneity in
European countries does not increase welfare policy support, and therefore,
other factors, not ethnic diversity, affect welfare state support.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
ATTITUDES TOWARD THE WELFARE STATE
The theory that welfare states are systems of stratification that reorder social
relations initially referred to distributional consequences in regard to economic inequality. More recently, attention has been focused on the relationship between the welfare state and attitudes. Attitudes are a key factor in the
process of democratization, because a stable democracy depends on the relationship between the performance of political institutions and how citizens
feel about those institutions. Further, attitudes toward social programs can
help explain the overall welfare state structure as well as patterns of change.
A transformation in how policies are viewed can dramatically alter policy
outcomes by activating new interest groups, fragmenting the existing configuration of support or limiting the potential options for change. Struggles
over social policy thus become struggles over information.
Attitudes in Welfare State Regimes. Many studies of public opinion have
attempted to determine whether Esping-Andersen’s (1990) regime typology
can explain attitudinal variations across nations toward different programs
and policies. This line of inquiry has proven fruitful in some cases but
not in others. Jæger (2006) found mixed support for the thesis that regime
type shaped attitudes. Svallfors (1997) also found that there was some
relationship between regimes and attitudes. In his study, people had more
favorable attitudes toward redistribution in social democratic countries than
elsewhere. Other studies, however, have not found conclusive evidence
that cross-national variations attitudes in welfare can be explained by
regime type. The current consensus is that Esping-Andersen’s typology can
partially explain variations in attitudes across nations but that other factors
also come into play.
Individual Variations in Attitudes. Although the first generation of research
on attitudes toward welfare benefits emphasized variations across nations, a
more recent focus has concerned individual differences within nations. One
theory used to test differences in individuals’ attitudes toward welfare state
policies is the embedded preferences/political ideology approach. According to
this perspective, attitudes toward the welfare state are influenced by basic
value systems and by ideological predispositions, which help voters make

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sense of complex policy options. More specifically, attitudes toward the welfare state are imbedded in values regarding the proper relationship between
the individual, the state, and various institutions. In confirmation of this theory, some studies have found that a belief in social rights is a key predictor of
welfare state support while others have found that party preferences influenced support for redistribution (Brooks & Manza, 2007).
An alternative to the political ideology approach to explain variations in
attitudes is an economic approach. To the extent that some groups benefit
more than others, welfare states create cleavages and conflict structures. This
theory suggests that individual preferences for social programs can be influenced by the degree of social risk among those in need of public support
(Busemeyer, Goerres & Weschle, 2009). In other words, people should be less
likely to favor policies that cost them financially or where they feel their economic loss outweighs the social gains. Thus, policy attitudes should be based
on perceived risk.
On confirmation of this thesis, Svallfors (1997) examined whether support
for social programs was based on class and status. They found that those who
either were beneficiaries or at risk of becoming beneficiaries of programs for
the poor or the unemployed held more favorable attitudes, while more affluent respondents had less favorable attitudes. Similarly, Jæger (2006) found
that income was negatively associated with support for redistribution, as
did Cook and Barrett (1992), who found that the poor were more likely than
higher income respondents to support public assistance benefits. By contrast,
Pontusson and Rueda (2010) found that social class did influence welfare
attitudes but not necessarily in the expected direction. In their study, the
wealthiest respondents were least likely to support redistribution, but the
poorest respondents were not necessarily the most supportive.
Other researchers have examined the effect of age on support for social
programs. One study of Norway and Denmark found that age was not a
determinant of attitudes toward health care or pension programs, although
there was some age variation in attitudes for programs such as childcare and
nursing homes (Anderson, 2002). Gender is also considered a measure that is
related to self-interest. Women are more dependent on the welfare state due
to their more precarious market position and are more likely to be employed
in the administration of these benefits. Comparing gender attitudes in Norway, Germany, Australia, and the United States, Svallfors (2007) found that
women universally were more positive toward government redistribution.
Overall, attitude studies suggest that welfare states are not likely to converge any time soon if ever and that the public does not favor welfare state
retrenchment.

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ACTIVATION POLICIES
In the 1960s and 1970s, the discourse that surrounded income maintenance
programs focused on the problem of poverty and the need for levels of support that afforded a decent standard of living. The objective of welfare benefits was to provide basic financial support at a level that kept people above
the poverty line (an objective rarely met in some countries) and to allow the
unemployed to survive without being forced to take the first low-wage job
offered (Gilbert, 2002). During that period, it was almost universally accepted
that social policies should provide “passive” income supports. As a result,
many European nations facing high levels of unemployment in the 1980s
created early exit “pathways.” They used their disability and public pension
programs to allow older workers to leave the labor force, thus opening jobs
for younger workers.
By the 1990s, many European countries had made significant progress in
reducing structural unemployment, and attention shifted to a new strategy.
From countries as diverse as Sweden and the United States, policies to activate the unemployed were adopted. These policies created new incentives
coupled with strong pressures for people on welfare to find work. In practice,
this meant eliminating unconditional, exclusively cash benefits to the unemployed and replacing them with measures designed to stimulate employment and other responsible behaviors, in other words, promoting an active
society. People seeking benefits were required to participate in interviews,
training programs, and other job searching activities. Some countries even
privatized their public employment services.
In activation policies, a theoretical distinction can be drawn between
neo-statist and neoliberal strategies. The neo-statist approach emphasizes
positive incentives to seek employment rather than punitive measures like
reducing benefits for those who do not comply with work requirements. It
also aims to empower rather than control beneficiaries and favors training
over “forced labor.” Examples of the neo-statist approach can be found in the
Scandinavian countries. In contrast, the neoliberal approach relies more on
economic sanctions, offers limited training, and applies coercive measures
narrowly targeted on the unemployed.
The United States is the prototype of the neo-liberal strategy. This strategy
is best exemplified by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996. PRWORA replaced Aid to Families
with Dependent Children (AFDC), a joint federal-state program for poor,
mostly female-headed families, with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Under PROWRA, poor mothers are required to work in return
for assistance and total federal lifetime TANF eligibility is limited to 5 years.
In the first 6 years after PRWORA was enacted, dramatic changes occurred

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in the employment patterns and financial security of welfare recipients. Welfare caseloads fell by 56%, the labor force participation rates of single mothers
increased, and poverty rates declined (Acs & Loprest, 2007). Yet it would be
premature to judge the law as a success, because the poorest fifth lost income
in the post-PRWORA period (Garfinkel, Rainwater, & Smeeding, 2010).
Most theorists argue that the distinction between neo-statist and neoliberal
approaches draws too sharp a line among the mix of carrots and sticks actually administrated (Gilbert, 2002). Instead, many nations that have adopted
activation policies are aware of the need to combine economic with social
considerations. This tendency toward mixed strategies exemplifies a global
policy that has influenced many local markets around the world.
REDEFINING WELFARE STATES
A third trend in recent research is to expand the programs that are considered
part of the welfare state. In Wealth and Welfare States, three prominent poverty
researchers take a fresh look at debates about the origins and functions of
welfare state. They note that, in most wealthy nations, social welfare expenditures make up 30–40% of the total value of goods and services produced.
Given that welfare benefits consume such vast resources, they stress that it
is important to understand what they contribute to overall well-being and
whether the welfare state is a drag on the economy. Consistent with most
comparative research, they first analyze social insurance expenditures and
conclude that early expansions increased growth and more recent increases
have not harmed it. Overall, the net effect of social insurance on growth
is zero.
They also argue that an analysis focused only on social insurance excludes
alternative mechanisms that nations use to achieve similar objectives and
thus underestimates the full effect welfare states exert on economies. To remedy this problem, they add private employer benefits and tax expenditures,
which are (less progressive) ways to achieve some of the same goals as direct
spending. They also include education as part of the welfare state, which they
justify on the basis of evidence showing that public education does as much
or more than traditional benefits in promoting productivity and growth. By
expanding the definition of the welfare state to include these other mechanisms for redistributing societal resources, they are able to assert that the
welfare state’s net contribution is positive.
CONCLUSION
The modern welfare state that emerged in the post-World War II era represented a break with the English Poor Law tradition that distinguished

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between the deserving and undeserving poor and that set benefits according
to the principle of less eligibility. Yet it is apparent that many of the principles developed hundreds of years ago still apply today. Most people are
encouraged to work rather than to depend on welfare. Further, the attempt
to separate the deserving from undeserving poor remains an important part
of political debates concerning the distribution of welfare benefits. In order
to apply these principles to the current era, it is important to understand the
economic, political and demographic changes that took place in the Western
democracies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It is also
important to recognize that many political movements have altered what
was once considered the consensus on welfare policies. Although welfare
states are currently facing similar challenges associated with fiscal crises,
population aging, increasing racial and ethnic diversity, and the rising labor
force participation of women, they are responding in diverse ways. These
developments present interesting issues for researchers seeking to impose
some order on a rapidly evolving social system.
REFERENCES
Acs, G. & Loprest, P. J. (2007). TANF Caseload Composition and Leavers Synthesis Report. The Urban Institute Research of Record. http://www.urban.org/
publications/411553.html (accessed 27 November 2014).
Alesina, A., & Glaeser, E. L. (2004). Fighting poverty in the US and Europe. A world of
difference. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Anderson, S. (2002). Assuring the stability of welfare to work exits: The importance of recipient knowledge about work incentives. Social Work, 4(2), 301–314.
doi:10.1093/sw/47.2.162
Anderson, K., Blomqvist, P., & Immergut, E. (2008). Sweden: markets within politics.
In D. Beland & B. Gran (Eds.), Public and private social policy. Palgrave: New York,
NY.
Arza, C. (2008). Pension reform in Latin America: Distributional principles, inequalities and alternative policy options. Journal of Latin American Studies, 40, 1–28.
doi:10.1017/S0022216X07003616
Brooks, C. (1994). Class consciousness and politics in comparative perspective. Social
Science Research, 23, 167–195.
Brooks, C., & Manza, J. (2007). Why welfare states persist. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Busemeyer, M., Goerres, A., & Weschle, S. (2009). Attitudes towards redistributive
spending in an era of demographic ageing: the rival pressures from age and
income in 14 OECD countries. Journal of European Social Policy, 19(3), 195–212.
Cook, F. L., & Barrett, E. J. (1992). Support for the American welfare state. New York, NY:
Columbia University Press.
Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge,
England: Polity Press.

The Welfare State in Comparative Perspective

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Esping-Andersen, G. (2009). The incomplete revolution. London, England: Polity Press.
Garfinkel, I., Rainwater, L., & Smeeding, T. (2010). Wealth and welfare states. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Gilbert, N. (2002). Transformation of the welfare state. New York, NY: Oxford University
Press.
Jæger, M. M. (2006). Welfare regimes and attitudes towards redistribution: The
regime hypothesis revisited. European Sociological Review, 22, 157–170. doi:10.1093/
esr/jci049
Korpi, W., & Palme, J. (1998). The paradox of redistribution and strategies of equality: Welfare state institutions, inequality, and poverty in the western countries.
American Sociological Review, 63(5), 661.
Larsen, C. A. (2008). The institutional logic of welfare attitudes. Comparative Political
Studies, 41(2), 145–168. doi:10.1177/0010414006295234
Lewis, J. (1998). Gender and the development of welfare regimes. Journal of European
Social Policy, 2(3), 159–173. doi:10.1177/095892879200200301
Lynch, J., & Myrskyla, M. (2009). Always the third rail? Pension income and
policy preferences in European democracies. Comparative Political Studies, 42(8),
1068–1097.
Morgan, K. J. (2006). Working mothers and the welfare state. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford
University Press.
O’Conner, J., Orloff, A. S., & Shaver, S. (1999). States, markets, families. Cambridge,
MA: Cambridge University Press.
Pontusson, J., & Rueda, D. (2010). The politics of inequality: Voter mobilization
and left parties in advanced industrial states. Comparative Political Studies, 43(6),
675–705. doi:10.1177/0010414009358672
Quadagno, J. (1994). The color of welfare. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Quadagno, J., Kail, B., & Sheka, R. K. (2011). Welfare states: Protecting or risking
old age?. In R. Settersten & J. Angel (Eds.), Handbook of the sociology of aging
(pp. 321–332). New York, NY: Springer.
Skocpol, T. (1991). Targeting within universalism. In C. Jencks & P. E. Peterson (Eds.),
The urban underclass. Brookings: Washington, DC.
Svallfors, S. (1997). Words of welfare and attitudes to redistribution: A comparison
of eight western nations. European Sociological Review, 13, 283–304.
Svallfors, S. (2007). The Political Sociology of the Welfare State. Stanford University
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Wilensky, H. L. (1975). The welfare state and equality. Berkeley: University of California
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World Bank (1994). Averting the old age crisis: Policies to protect the old and promote
growth. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

FURTHER READING
Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge,
England: Polity Press.

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Garfinkel, I., Rainwater, L., & Smeeding, T. (2010). Wealth and welfare states. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Gilbert, N. (2002). Transformation of the welfare state. New York, NY: Oxford University
Press.
O’Connor, J., Orloff, A., & Shaver, S. (1999). States, markets, families. Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press.
Wilensky, H. (1975). The welfare state and equality. Berkeley: University of California
Press.

SOURCES FOR HYPERLINKS
http://www.fsu.edu/∼soc/people/quadagno/

JILL QUADAGNO SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Jill Quadagno is Professor of Sociology at Florida State University where
she holds the Mildred and Claude Pepper Eminent Scholar Chair in Social
Gerontology. She has published 12 books and more than 70 articles on aging
and social policy issues. In 1994 she served as Senior Policy Advisor on the
President’s Bi-partisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, in 1998
she served as President of the American Sociological Association, and in 2010
she was elected to the Institute of Medicine. Her most recent book is One
Nation, Uninsured: Why the US Has No National Health Insurance.
ORIT FISHER-SHALEM SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Orit Fisher-Shalem received a master’s degree from Bar Ilan University in
Israel and her PhD at Florida State University in 2013. Her dissertation used
both quantitative and qualitative data to analyze Israel’s adoption of the
Wisconsin “Welfare to Work” model in transforming welfare benefits. As a
student, she received a Dissertation Research Grant, a Florida Israel Institution Linkage Scholarship and was inducted into the Golden Key International
Honor Society. She is currently an instructor in the Department of Industrial
Engineering and Management at the Israel Institute of Technology and in the
Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Department Bar Ilan University.
JoELLEN PEDERSON SHORT BIOGRAPHY
JoEllen Pederson received her PhD from Florida State University in 2013.
As a student, she was awarded the Claude and Mildred Pepper Dissertation
Fellow from the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy. Her research
focuses on cross-national comparisons of welfare state policies, with an



The Welfare State
in Comparative Perspective
JILL QUADAGNO, ORIT FISHER-SHALEM, and JoELLEN PEDERSON

Abstract
The modern welfare state, which was created in the long economic expansion of the
post-World War II era, funded benefits that provided income security across the life
course. In the 1970s, the era of welfare state expansion slowed due to rising deficits
and fiscal strains associated with population aging. In recent decades benefit reductions have become commonplace. Theories designed to explain the formation of welfare state include the logic of industrialism, power resource theory, and the theory of
welfare state regimes. Feminist critics challenged theorists to consider how welfare
benefits influence gender inequality within regime types. In recent years, research
has focused on three key issues. The first is to identify variations in welfare state attitudes across nations and among individuals within nations. The second is to consider
the causes and consequences of activation policies that focus less on direct cash transfers and more on a combination of incentives and punishments to encourage work
effort. Finally, the third is to expand the definition of the welfare state to include the
private provision of goods and services as well as education.

INTRODUCTION
The modern welfare state was created in the long economic expansion of the
post-World War II era, as rising productivity and economic growth made it
possible for governments to fund an array of benefits that provided a modicum of income security across the life course. The era of welfare state expansion slowed in the 1970s, as nations everywhere faced rising deficits and
growing awareness of the fiscal strains population aging placed on pensions,
health care and other social welfare programs. Although expenditures continued to rise in the 1980s, they rose at a slower rate than in earlier decades
and then leveled off in the 1990s. In recent years benefit cuts have become
commonplace.
Rising public budgets have not been the only challenge facing all western,
capitalist nations. The social insurance systems created in the post-World War

Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences. Edited by Robert Scott and Stephen Kosslyn.
© 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Inc. ISBN 978-1-118-90077-2.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

II period were designed to protect workers against the loss of income in old
age and presumed that the typical household consisted of a male breadwinner and a dependent spouse. In this model, married women were primarily responsible for caring for children and other family members and were
largely excluded from the labor market. Women did receive benefits from the
relatively generous social insurance programs, but they were subordinated
to their husbands. In public pensions, in particular, benefits were granted to
widows and spouses on the basis of their husbands’ earnings history and presumed that the women who received them were not employed outside the
home. In the less generous social assistance programs, women had to submit
to demeaning means tests to prove their eligibility.
Although widow and spouse benefits did improve women’s income security in old age, the dramatic rise in women’s education and labor force participation has made them something of an anachronism. Working women not
only require protection against the loss of a spouse; they also need benefits
that support their multiple familial responsibilities and resultant intermittent employment patterns. In addition, rising divorce rates and increasing
numbers of out-of-wedlock births and single parent household have generated new needs. By the 1980s, then, it had become clear that the welfare
states designed for an industrial economy and the male breadwinner family type that accompanied it needed retooling for service-oriented economies
where dual-earner and female-headed households were becoming the norm.
Thus, gender relations and family forms have become central to welfare state
restructuring in the contemporary period in ways that they were not during
the age of expansion.
Race and immigration patterns are also changing how welfare states function and how they are funded in the face of concerns that increasing ethnic
heterogeneity will lead to lower levels of welfare state support. Among the
changes that have occurred as increases in immigration, a larger scope of
responsibility for international organizations such as the European Union,
and an emerging global civil society. This has increased the need for research
on race and ethnicity in an international context.
FOUNDATIONAL RESEARCH
Contemporary studies of the modern welfare state came of age in the 1970s,
following more than two decades of accelerated expansion. Both the scale
and diversity among the welfare states of the industrialized nations created
a scholarly agenda based on two questions: How could these developments
be explained and what were their consequences?

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3

LOGIC OF INDUSTRIALISM
In the 1970s and 1980s welfare state research focused on common trends,
a line of inquiry influenced by Harold Wilensky’s (1975) book, The Welfare
State and Equality, which argued for the salience of impersonal economic
forces associated with industrialization. According to the “logic of industrialism” theory, industrialization creates new demands for public spending as
systems of social support based on kinship and the patrimonial traditions
of agrarian societies are eroded. Growing dependence on wage labor makes
those with little or no labor to sell vulnerable to being unemployed and
falling into poverty. As a result, the state takes on an expanded role to
maintain the labor force and achieve coordination and consensus in a
complex, urban society.
POWER RESOURCE THEORY
Yet if the logic of industrialism was an inexorable historical force, then why
had welfare states developed in such different ways and apparently reached
their peak strikingly different levels of spending? Increasingly, scholars
began to consider how the factors that resulted in diversity among welfare
states. In a series of influential articles, Korpi and his colleagues (Korpi &
Palme, 1998) developed what came to be known as power resource theory.
They argued that democracy made it possible for the masses to combine
against the elites and use the state to claim a larger share of the social
surplus. However, this struggle was biased in favor of the propertied simply
because electoral constituencies are large and elections costly. For workers
the compensating power resource was their numbers, which could only be
effective if they organized into unions and political parties. Thus, although
the formal institutions of democracy, including universal suffrage and free
and competitive elections are important, what matters equally is what the
mass electorate does with the franchise.
Power resource theory became the dominant paradigm in the field
and provided the benchmark against which other theories would be
tested. More important, it initiated a program of both quantitative and
historical-comparative research to test the thesis that major differences in
welfare state spending and entitlements among the capitalist democracies
could be explained by the relative success of labor parties, aligned with
strong trade unions.
WELFARE STATE REGIMES
A second stream of research was concerned with grouping nations into categories based on their strategies for organizing benefits. In his path-breaking

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

book, The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism, Gosta Esping-Andersen (1990)
argued that the welfare states of the affluent capitalist democracies could be
distinguished not only in terms of their relative spending, but also more fundamentally, by their institutional logic for assigning welfare functions to the
state, the market, and the family. He identified three distinct welfare state
regimes: liberal, conservative, and social democratic.
In liberal welfare states, citizens are constituted primarily as individual
market actors. Rather than providing direct cash transfers, liberal welfare
states favor subsidies for private benefits. Basic security schemes are more
likely to be means-tested and social insurance benefits modest. The main
exemplars of liberal welfare states are Great Britain, Canada, and the United
States.
The second regime type is termed conservative, or more recently, Christian
Democratic, depending on the characteristics emphasized. This regime type
is less concerned with market efficiency than with rights and privileges
differentiated on the basis of class and status. In conservative regimes social
rights are extensive, and there is only a marginal role for private welfare
arrangements. These countries are also strongly influenced by Catholic
doctrine, which emphasizes local community, the church, and the family as
the locus of social welfare. While social spending in conservative nations is
higher than in the liberal welfare states, the emphasis is on income transfers
sufficient to cover the needs of the male-breadwinner family type. Services
that facilitate women’s employment such as child care are modest. The main
exemplars of conservative regimes are found in the continental European
countries, France, Italy, Germany, and Spain.
The third regime type, called social democratic, is found mainly in Scandinavia. Social democratic welfare states are characterized by extensive social
rights and a marginal role for private welfare. Benefits are universalistic and
emphasize equality of citizenship rather than preservation of status differences. Social democratic nations recognize women’s right to a place in the
labor market, and welfare states tend to be service intensive as well as transfer intensive. In this regard, the welfare state is both a major source of employment for women and a provider of other services that allow them to work
outside the home. Thus, both social democratic and conservative welfare
states spend generously on social protection but do so in fundamentally different ways.
A core premise of regime theory is that the welfare state is not only
produced by conflicts between classes, but also it is “in its own right,
a system of stratification. It is an active force in the ordering of social
relations” (Esping-Andersen, 1990, p. 23). Universal programs have greater
support than targeted programs, because they build broad solidarities
across class, gender, and racial boundaries. As a result, benefits are difficult

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5

to cut because they create policy feedbacks in the form of institutional
structures and self-interested beneficiaries who are likely to favor current
spending levels and additional spending in the future (Lynch & Myrskyla,
2009).
Esping-Andersen’s typology has been subject to considerable criticism for
oversimplifying the complexities within regime types. Many researchers
have tested this typology using other economic or political variables with
moderate success. Most suggest adding a fourth regime to capture additional national differences. Yet, the key insight that welfare states differ
fundamentally in the allocation of functions among states, markets, and
families has proven to be remarkably robust.
GENDER
The insight that the welfare state is a system of stratification has led to
numerous studies that sought to elucidate how welfare states altered existing
distributional relations. Feminist theorists, in particular, have been especially
critical of Esping-Andersen for ignoring the gendered aspects of welfare
regimes. In response, they have conducted comparative studies of how various welfare strategies affect gender equality (O’Conner, Orloff, & Shaver,
1999).
High rates of female labor force participation in European countries have
been fostered by an activist state and the adoption of family policies that
encourage work. Such efforts have inspired alternative typologies based on
the extent to which welfare policies are used to encourage a male breadwinner model or promote female labor force participation.
Throughout most of Europe, female educational attainment now exceeds
that of males, and in many countries rates of female labor force participation,
even among mothers with young children, has soared. Beginning in the
late 1960s, Sweden consciously moved toward a dual-breadwinner nation
by introducing separate taxation, generous parental leaves, universal,
state-run day care and policies to encourage greater involvement of fathers
in child-rearing. Sweden also expanded the definition of work to allow
pension credits to be earned for child-rearing as well as for military service,
spells of illness, unemployment, and disability (Anderson, Blomqvist, &
Immergut, 2008). France also has an array of services and subsidies to
support dual earner families. This trend is not universal, however, for the
Netherlands upholds the male breadwinner model and encourages mothers
to stay home with young children (Morgan, 2006). Similarly, Britain created
an allowance for unpaid care work for infirm dependents in the 1970s, but
married women were ineligible for this benefit, because care-giving was
considered part of their normal duties (Lewis, 1998).

The Welfare State in Comparative Perspective

7

model would reduce the financial instability of state-run pension programs,
increase economic growth, and improve retirement income for the elderly.
Although few European countries pursued this model, the World Bank
had a much larger impact in Latin America. For countries in desperate need
of economic stability after years of political unrest, government corruption,
and financial mismanagement, the World Bank model seemed to offer an
attractive solution. As an incentive, developing countries were promised
large loans for restructuring purposes (Brooks, 1994). Over the next decade,
81 countries including 15 countries in Latin America adopted the model
(Quadagno, Kail, & Sheka, 2011). These reformed pension schemes fall into
one of three categories. The substitutive scheme completely replaces the
public benefit with a new private system. The parallel scheme allows private
and public systems to compete with each other. Finally, in the mixed scheme
everyone is eligible for a flat pension while contributors to private accounts
receive an extra, supplementary benefit (Arza, 2008). As privatization has
redrawn the boundaries between the state and the market, the question is
whether the private sector can provide protection against life course risks
more effectively than the government.
RACE AND IMMIGRATION
Cross-national variations in race and ethnicity have also become increasingly
important in welfare state structures and spending patterns. Race has long
been recognized as critical in understanding the development of the American welfare state. Negative racial attitudes are one of the primary reasons that
the welfare state in the United States developed in so slowly and provided
less generous benefits than its European counterparts (Quadagno, 1994). Further, race continues to influence support for the welfare state in the United
States, because whites are less likely to support policies that they see as primarily benefiting minorities (Skocpol, 1991).
Recently, several researchers have posited that racial and ethnic heterogeneity may also affect attitudes toward welfare state support in an international
context. Comparatively, race is used to describe a wide range of concepts,
including country of origin, primary language, skin tone, ancestry, sociocultural group, and so on. Some studies find that in some nations increasing
rates of immigration and greater ethnic diversity in Europe are starting to
erode support for generous benefits (Alesina & Glaeser, 2004). Specifically,
they suggest that immigration is having a negative effect on welfare state
support and that eventually politicians will use ethnic divisions as a way
to cut popular benefits. Researchers already see evidence of this effect in
some countries where several candidates who promised to decrease redistribution and enact strict immigration laws have been elected (Alesina &

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

Glaeser, 2004). Alternatively, Larsen (2008) argues that ethnic homogeneity in
European countries does not increase welfare policy support, and therefore,
other factors, not ethnic diversity, affect welfare state support.
KEY ISSUES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH
ATTITUDES TOWARD THE WELFARE STATE
The theory that welfare states are systems of stratification that reorder social
relations initially referred to distributional consequences in regard to economic inequality. More recently, attention has been focused on the relationship between the welfare state and attitudes. Attitudes are a key factor in the
process of democratization, because a stable democracy depends on the relationship between the performance of political institutions and how citizens
feel about those institutions. Further, attitudes toward social programs can
help explain the overall welfare state structure as well as patterns of change.
A transformation in how policies are viewed can dramatically alter policy
outcomes by activating new interest groups, fragmenting the existing configuration of support or limiting the potential options for change. Struggles
over social policy thus become struggles over information.
Attitudes in Welfare State Regimes. Many studies of public opinion have
attempted to determine whether Esping-Andersen’s (1990) regime typology
can explain attitudinal variations across nations toward different programs
and policies. This line of inquiry has proven fruitful in some cases but
not in others. Jæger (2006) found mixed support for the thesis that regime
type shaped attitudes. Svallfors (1997) also found that there was some
relationship between regimes and attitudes. In his study, people had more
favorable attitudes toward redistribution in social democratic countries than
elsewhere. Other studies, however, have not found conclusive evidence
that cross-national variations attitudes in welfare can be explained by
regime type. The current consensus is that Esping-Andersen’s typology can
partially explain variations in attitudes across nations but that other factors
also come into play.
Individual Variations in Attitudes. Although the first generation of research
on attitudes toward welfare benefits emphasized variations across nations, a
more recent focus has concerned individual differences within nations. One
theory used to test differences in individuals’ attitudes toward welfare state
policies is the embedded preferences/political ideology approach. According to
this perspective, attitudes toward the welfare state are influenced by basic
value systems and by ideological predispositions, which help voters make

The Welfare State in Comparative Perspective

9

sense of complex policy options. More specifically, attitudes toward the welfare state are imbedded in values regarding the proper relationship between
the individual, the state, and various institutions. In confirmation of this theory, some studies have found that a belief in social rights is a key predictor of
welfare state support while others have found that party preferences influenced support for redistribution (Brooks & Manza, 2007).
An alternative to the political ideology approach to explain variations in
attitudes is an economic approach. To the extent that some groups benefit
more than others, welfare states create cleavages and conflict structures. This
theory suggests that individual preferences for social programs can be influenced by the degree of social risk among those in need of public support
(Busemeyer, Goerres & Weschle, 2009). In other words, people should be less
likely to favor policies that cost them financially or where they feel their economic loss outweighs the social gains. Thus, policy attitudes should be based
on perceived risk.
On confirmation of this thesis, Svallfors (1997) examined whether support
for social programs was based on class and status. They found that those who
either were beneficiaries or at risk of becoming beneficiaries of programs for
the poor or the unemployed held more favorable attitudes, while more affluent respondents had less favorable attitudes. Similarly, Jæger (2006) found
that income was negatively associated with support for redistribution, as
did Cook and Barrett (1992), who found that the poor were more likely than
higher income respondents to support public assistance benefits. By contrast,
Pontusson and Rueda (2010) found that social class did influence welfare
attitudes but not necessarily in the expected direction. In their study, the
wealthiest respondents were least likely to support redistribution, but the
poorest respondents were not necessarily the most supportive.
Other researchers have examined the effect of age on support for social
programs. One study of Norway and Denmark found that age was not a
determinant of attitudes toward health care or pension programs, although
there was some age variation in attitudes for programs such as childcare and
nursing homes (Anderson, 2002). Gender is also considered a measure that is
related to self-interest. Women are more dependent on the welfare state due
to their more precarious market position and are more likely to be employed
in the administration of these benefits. Comparing gender attitudes in Norway, Germany, Australia, and the United States, Svallfors (2007) found that
women universally were more positive toward government redistribution.
Overall, attitude studies suggest that welfare states are not likely to converge any time soon if ever and that the public does not favor welfare state
retrenchment.

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

ACTIVATION POLICIES
In the 1960s and 1970s, the discourse that surrounded income maintenance
programs focused on the problem of poverty and the need for levels of support that afforded a decent standard of living. The objective of welfare benefits was to provide basic financial support at a level that kept people above
the poverty line (an objective rarely met in some countries) and to allow the
unemployed to survive without being forced to take the first low-wage job
offered (Gilbert, 2002). During that period, it was almost universally accepted
that social policies should provide “passive” income supports. As a result,
many European nations facing high levels of unemployment in the 1980s
created early exit “pathways.” They used their disability and public pension
programs to allow older workers to leave the labor force, thus opening jobs
for younger workers.
By the 1990s, many European countries had made significant progress in
reducing structural unemployment, and attention shifted to a new strategy.
From countries as diverse as Sweden and the United States, policies to activate the unemployed were adopted. These policies created new incentives
coupled with strong pressures for people on welfare to find work. In practice,
this meant eliminating unconditional, exclusively cash benefits to the unemployed and replacing them with measures designed to stimulate employment and other responsible behaviors, in other words, promoting an active
society. People seeking benefits were required to participate in interviews,
training programs, and other job searching activities. Some countries even
privatized their public employment services.
In activation policies, a theoretical distinction can be drawn between
neo-statist and neoliberal strategies. The neo-statist approach emphasizes
positive incentives to seek employment rather than punitive measures like
reducing benefits for those who do not comply with work requirements. It
also aims to empower rather than control beneficiaries and favors training
over “forced labor.” Examples of the neo-statist approach can be found in the
Scandinavian countries. In contrast, the neoliberal approach relies more on
economic sanctions, offers limited training, and applies coercive measures
narrowly targeted on the unemployed.
The United States is the prototype of the neo-liberal strategy. This strategy
is best exemplified by the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity
Reconciliation Act (PRWORA) of 1996. PRWORA replaced Aid to Families
with Dependent Children (AFDC), a joint federal-state program for poor,
mostly female-headed families, with Temporary Assistance for Needy Families (TANF). Under PROWRA, poor mothers are required to work in return
for assistance and total federal lifetime TANF eligibility is limited to 5 years.
In the first 6 years after PRWORA was enacted, dramatic changes occurred

The Welfare State in Comparative Perspective

11

in the employment patterns and financial security of welfare recipients. Welfare caseloads fell by 56%, the labor force participation rates of single mothers
increased, and poverty rates declined (Acs & Loprest, 2007). Yet it would be
premature to judge the law as a success, because the poorest fifth lost income
in the post-PRWORA period (Garfinkel, Rainwater, & Smeeding, 2010).
Most theorists argue that the distinction between neo-statist and neoliberal
approaches draws too sharp a line among the mix of carrots and sticks actually administrated (Gilbert, 2002). Instead, many nations that have adopted
activation policies are aware of the need to combine economic with social
considerations. This tendency toward mixed strategies exemplifies a global
policy that has influenced many local markets around the world.
REDEFINING WELFARE STATES
A third trend in recent research is to expand the programs that are considered
part of the welfare state. In Wealth and Welfare States, three prominent poverty
researchers take a fresh look at debates about the origins and functions of
welfare state. They note that, in most wealthy nations, social welfare expenditures make up 30–40% of the total value of goods and services produced.
Given that welfare benefits consume such vast resources, they stress that it
is important to understand what they contribute to overall well-being and
whether the welfare state is a drag on the economy. Consistent with most
comparative research, they first analyze social insurance expenditures and
conclude that early expansions increased growth and more recent increases
have not harmed it. Overall, the net effect of social insurance on growth
is zero.
They also argue that an analysis focused only on social insurance excludes
alternative mechanisms that nations use to achieve similar objectives and
thus underestimates the full effect welfare states exert on economies. To remedy this problem, they add private employer benefits and tax expenditures,
which are (less progressive) ways to achieve some of the same goals as direct
spending. They also include education as part of the welfare state, which they
justify on the basis of evidence showing that public education does as much
or more than traditional benefits in promoting productivity and growth. By
expanding the definition of the welfare state to include these other mechanisms for redistributing societal resources, they are able to assert that the
welfare state’s net contribution is positive.
CONCLUSION
The modern welfare state that emerged in the post-World War II era represented a break with the English Poor Law tradition that distinguished

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EMERGING TRENDS IN THE SOCIAL AND BEHAVIORAL SCIENCES

between the deserving and undeserving poor and that set benefits according
to the principle of less eligibility. Yet it is apparent that many of the principles developed hundreds of years ago still apply today. Most people are
encouraged to work rather than to depend on welfare. Further, the attempt
to separate the deserving from undeserving poor remains an important part
of political debates concerning the distribution of welfare benefits. In order
to apply these principles to the current era, it is important to understand the
economic, political and demographic changes that took place in the Western
democracies in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries. It is also
important to recognize that many political movements have altered what
was once considered the consensus on welfare policies. Although welfare
states are currently facing similar challenges associated with fiscal crises,
population aging, increasing racial and ethnic diversity, and the rising labor
force participation of women, they are responding in diverse ways. These
developments present interesting issues for researchers seeking to impose
some order on a rapidly evolving social system.
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Acs, G. & Loprest, P. J. (2007). TANF Caseload Composition and Leavers Synthesis Report. The Urban Institute Research of Record. http://www.urban.org/
publications/411553.html (accessed 27 November 2014).
Alesina, A., & Glaeser, E. L. (2004). Fighting poverty in the US and Europe. A world of
difference. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press.
Anderson, S. (2002). Assuring the stability of welfare to work exits: The importance of recipient knowledge about work incentives. Social Work, 4(2), 301–314.
doi:10.1093/sw/47.2.162
Anderson, K., Blomqvist, P., & Immergut, E. (2008). Sweden: markets within politics.
In D. Beland & B. Gran (Eds.), Public and private social policy. Palgrave: New York,
NY.
Arza, C. (2008). Pension reform in Latin America: Distributional principles, inequalities and alternative policy options. Journal of Latin American Studies, 40, 1–28.
doi:10.1017/S0022216X07003616
Brooks, C. (1994). Class consciousness and politics in comparative perspective. Social
Science Research, 23, 167–195.
Brooks, C., & Manza, J. (2007). Why welfare states persist. Chicago, IL: University of
Chicago Press.
Busemeyer, M., Goerres, A., & Weschle, S. (2009). Attitudes towards redistributive
spending in an era of demographic ageing: the rival pressures from age and
income in 14 OECD countries. Journal of European Social Policy, 19(3), 195–212.
Cook, F. L., & Barrett, E. J. (1992). Support for the American welfare state. New York, NY:
Columbia University Press.
Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge,
England: Polity Press.

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13

Esping-Andersen, G. (2009). The incomplete revolution. London, England: Polity Press.
Garfinkel, I., Rainwater, L., & Smeeding, T. (2010). Wealth and welfare states. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Gilbert, N. (2002). Transformation of the welfare state. New York, NY: Oxford University
Press.
Jæger, M. M. (2006). Welfare regimes and attitudes towards redistribution: The
regime hypothesis revisited. European Sociological Review, 22, 157–170. doi:10.1093/
esr/jci049
Korpi, W., & Palme, J. (1998). The paradox of redistribution and strategies of equality: Welfare state institutions, inequality, and poverty in the western countries.
American Sociological Review, 63(5), 661.
Larsen, C. A. (2008). The institutional logic of welfare attitudes. Comparative Political
Studies, 41(2), 145–168. doi:10.1177/0010414006295234
Lewis, J. (1998). Gender and the development of welfare regimes. Journal of European
Social Policy, 2(3), 159–173. doi:10.1177/095892879200200301
Lynch, J., & Myrskyla, M. (2009). Always the third rail? Pension income and
policy preferences in European democracies. Comparative Political Studies, 42(8),
1068–1097.
Morgan, K. J. (2006). Working mothers and the welfare state. Palo Alto, CA: Stanford
University Press.
O’Conner, J., Orloff, A. S., & Shaver, S. (1999). States, markets, families. Cambridge,
MA: Cambridge University Press.
Pontusson, J., & Rueda, D. (2010). The politics of inequality: Voter mobilization
and left parties in advanced industrial states. Comparative Political Studies, 43(6),
675–705. doi:10.1177/0010414009358672
Quadagno, J. (1994). The color of welfare. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
Quadagno, J., Kail, B., & Sheka, R. K. (2011). Welfare states: Protecting or risking
old age?. In R. Settersten & J. Angel (Eds.), Handbook of the sociology of aging
(pp. 321–332). New York, NY: Springer.
Skocpol, T. (1991). Targeting within universalism. In C. Jencks & P. E. Peterson (Eds.),
The urban underclass. Brookings: Washington, DC.
Svallfors, S. (1997). Words of welfare and attitudes to redistribution: A comparison
of eight western nations. European Sociological Review, 13, 283–304.
Svallfors, S. (2007). The Political Sociology of the Welfare State. Stanford University
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Wilensky, H. L. (1975). The welfare state and equality. Berkeley: University of California
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World Bank (1994). Averting the old age crisis: Policies to protect the old and promote
growth. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.

FURTHER READING
Esping-Andersen, G. (1990). The three worlds of welfare capitalism. Cambridge,
England: Polity Press.

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Garfinkel, I., Rainwater, L., & Smeeding, T. (2010). Wealth and welfare states. New York,
NY: Oxford University Press.
Gilbert, N. (2002). Transformation of the welfare state. New York, NY: Oxford University
Press.
O’Connor, J., Orloff, A., & Shaver, S. (1999). States, markets, families. Cambridge, MA:
Cambridge University Press.
Wilensky, H. (1975). The welfare state and equality. Berkeley: University of California
Press.

SOURCES FOR HYPERLINKS
http://www.fsu.edu/∼soc/people/quadagno/

JILL QUADAGNO SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Jill Quadagno is Professor of Sociology at Florida State University where
she holds the Mildred and Claude Pepper Eminent Scholar Chair in Social
Gerontology. She has published 12 books and more than 70 articles on aging
and social policy issues. In 1994 she served as Senior Policy Advisor on the
President’s Bi-partisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, in 1998
she served as President of the American Sociological Association, and in 2010
she was elected to the Institute of Medicine. Her most recent book is One
Nation, Uninsured: Why the US Has No National Health Insurance.
ORIT FISHER-SHALEM SHORT BIOGRAPHY
Orit Fisher-Shalem received a master’s degree from Bar Ilan University in
Israel and her PhD at Florida State University in 2013. Her dissertation used
both quantitative and qualitative data to analyze Israel’s adoption of the
Wisconsin “Welfare to Work” model in transforming welfare benefits. As a
student, she received a Dissertation Research Grant, a Florida Israel Institution Linkage Scholarship and was inducted into the Golden Key International
Honor Society. She is currently an instructor in the Department of Industrial
Engineering and Management at the Israel Institute of Technology and in the
Interdisciplinary Social Sciences Department Bar Ilan University.
JoELLEN PEDERSON SHORT BIOGRAPHY
JoEllen Pederson received her PhD from Florida State University in 2013.
As a student, she was awarded the Claude and Mildred Pepper Dissertation
Fellow from the Pepper Institute on Aging and Public Policy. Her research
focuses on cross-national comparisons of welfare state policies, with an