Most states in the world make some provision for the welfare of their citizens. Every state engages with health care provision, almost all provide education services, and, after an explosion of interest in recent years, a substantial majority now have national schemes in place for cash assistance.
Welfare states matter for people’s lives – but there is little agreement about what one is. What are these states trying to do, and why? The book discusses the institutions and methods that characterise welfare states around the world. It focuses on the aims, purposes and justifications for social welfare services in order to explain what the welfare state is for.
Price: $13.95
Pages: 162
Publisher: Bristol University Press
Imprint: Bristol University Press
Series: What Is It For?
Publication Date:
24 June 2025
ISBN: 9781529250756
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
POLITICAL SCIENCE / General, Welfare and benefit systems, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Social Services & Welfare, POLITICAL SCIENCE / Public Policy / Economic Policy, Social welfare, social policy and social services, Political activism / Political engagement, Welfare economics, Social security and welfare law, Politics and government
"A great introduction to the historical–philosophical underpinnings, moral–theoretical fundaments and overall functions–purposes of the welfare state!" Christian Aspalter, Beijing Normal University & Hong Kong Baptist University United International College
Professor Paul Spicker is Emeritus Professor of Public Policy in Robert Gordon University, Aberdeen and a writer and commentator on social policy. His studies of housing and welfare rights developed from his early career and his research has included benefit delivery systems, the care of old people, psychiatric patients, housing management and local anti-poverty strategy and he has published widely in the field. He is a consultant on social welfare in practice, working for agencies at local, national and international levels.
1. What is a welfare state?
2. What has government got to do with it?
3. The aims of social welfare policies
4. The case for welfare
5. Universal and communitarian perspectives
6. The welfare state and the market
7. Some challenges for the welfare states
8. The welfare states: past, present and future
