Age in the Welfare State
The Origins of Social Spending on Pensioners, Workers, and Children

Examines the different approaches in state spending on pensions and benefits in various countries.

Julia Lynch (Author)

9780521615167, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 5 June 2006

246 pages, 16 tables
22.8 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.346 kg

'Lynch proposes an innovative historical-institutional explanation … Lynch's fact-finding strategy in these chapters is certainly helpful in establishing precise values for the ENSR and in raising additional theoretical puzzles. … the author supplements this early analysis with three rigourous chapter-length studies of family allowances, unemployment benefits and pensions in two countries … Julia Lynch has made an unusually creative and insightful contribution to comparative social policy theory. … this book is highly recommended for anyone interested in the interplay of liberal democracy and public policy.' Journal of Social Policy

This book asks why some countries devote the lion's share of their social policy resources to the elderly, while others have a more balanced repertoire of social spending. Far from being the outcome of demands for welfare spending by powerful age-based groups in society, the 'age' of welfare is an unintended consequence of the way that social programs are set up. The way that politicians use welfare state spending to compete for votes, along either programmatic or particularistic lines, locks these early institutional choices into place. So while society is changing - aging, divorcing, moving in and out of the labor force over the life course in new ways - social policies do not evolve to catch up. The result, in occupational welfare states like Italy, the United States, and Japan, is social spending that favors the elderly and leaves working-aged adults and children largely to fend for themselves.

1. Introduction
2. Measuring the age of welfare
3. Age and the welfare state: theories and hypotheses
4. Family allowances: wages, taxes, and the appeal to the self-employed
5. Benefits for the unemployed: young and old in the fortress labor market
6. Old-age pensions: the architecture of spending
7. Conclusion.

Subject Areas: Comparative politics [JPB], Regional studies [GTB]