Part II focuses on a series of policy domains. These policy domains include what are sometimes referred to as the ‘five giants’ of post-war reconstruction, as identified by William Beveridge when he was tasked with assessing the provisions of the British welfare state in the early 1940s. This includes chapters on income security, work and employment, education, housing, and health. In addition to these domains of policy and service provision, we include two other areas of policy which are crucial to human welfare and social progress, but for various reasons are not always considered ‘core’ to the welfare state. There is a chapter on social care, which although not considered by British policy makers as a key element of societal rebuilding after the Second World War, is viewed through a very different lens in the twenty-first century. The term ‘social care’ is adopted for this chapter to distinguish the discussion of policy and provision from a wider consideration of the myriad dimensions of obligation and reciprocity in human relations that are inherent to the wider concept of ‘care’. Of course, these elements are also central to the operation of social care, but our distinction is one of perspective – the chapter is concerned with the mixed economy of care, that is, the ways in which the state, the market and people interact in the provision of care services. The final chapter in this section concerns environmental policy. Again, this is a policy domain which has been more generally associated with ‘public’ rather than ‘social’ policy, but again, the convergence of environmental concerns and social policy concerns in the modern world is such that the two areas are now inseparable.
The final chapter in this book has two purposes. Within a framework which foregrounds consideration of social change and continuity, the discussion draws together conclusions from the preceding chapters to identify the dominant themes. In addition to this, however, the chapter also reflects on the universal and particularistic dimensions of social policy and how these can shape a global understanding that assists in better exploring the world. It considers the general challenges and opportunities in the contemporary policy-making context and what they imply for the future development of social policy. There is much to be pessimistic about where the survival of state-supported welfare arrangements are concerned: the seeming triumph of markets over political processes; worsening inequalities within and between nations; a lack of welfare commitment on the part of governments; and the deterioration in public services through lack of funding and investment. What is clear from all the chapters is that the contemporary global ‘state of welfare’ is unsustainable for political, economic and moral reasons. However, even in ostensibly negative circumstances there is always possibility, and glimpses of this can also be discerned in many of the policy developments explored in the discussions to follow.
Inequalities and why they matter
This chapter expands on the themes in Chapter 1, exploring the particular importance of concerns about inequality and social justice for ideas of social policy. This represents a key theme for comparative analysis in that the salience of ideas about inequality in political debate influences differences between social policies across countries. The chapter will examine global and regional trends in inequality as well as the ways in which these spatial dimensions intersect with other forms of structural inequalities and social divisions in key areas of need satisfaction and measures of welfare. The chapter will consider the idea of inequality as it informs the range of policies in practice, and in policy discourse at national and supranational level, and will discuss the association of discourse and practice with the politics of welfare.
Discussions of the origins of social policies treat concerns about inequality and social justice as not necessarily tied to explanations of policy development. Interpretation of social policy origins is a matter of some intellectual controversy, often driven by ideology, in which it seems impossible to arrive at definitive conclusions. This point is revisited at the end of the chapter, as a link to the chapters that follow. Inequality is given primary attention here since one of the challenges to comprehensive social policy analysis involves the assertion that it is primarily concerned with exceptional casualties of society, in a context in which it is economic policy that is crucial for overall social progress. Such a view, of course, largely excludes the possibility that market systems have a role to play in the production of social casualties, and it is not the view that is taken in this book. On the contrary, discussions in this and following chapters are presented from the position that the need for social policy arises largely because of the inadequacies of market societies. Such a view takes social policy analysts deep into many aspects of economic policy, and in so doing widens rather than narrows the range of issues that social policy is expected to address.
However, it is appropriate to mention briefly the alternative point of view and to highlight its limitations. The view that social progress emerges from good economic policy ensuring a strong and growing economy tends to embrace two propositions. One of these is that economic institutions work best when constraints upon the market are minimized. The other is that economic progress produces social progress inasmuch as ‘a rising tide lifts all boats’. The first of these is contestable within economics in terms of the range of issues that markets do not handle very effectively. Welfare economics literature, for example, emphasizes externalities and monopolistic forces that are hard to restrain. Furthermore, it is contestable that it is any longer feasible to protect vigorously competitive markets in the face of powerful global monopolistic tendencies. With regard to the second proposition, there is now a great deal of evidence that it is not working. First, the boat-lifting image is misleading. When a real tide rises it does of course lift all boats indiscriminately, but in the context described here some boats are lifted much faster than others, and this is true both within individual countries and across world regions. This is demonstrated in Figure 2.1, which presents data on changes in the distribution of increasing global wealth between 2000 and 2016, indicating limited gains in wealth accumulation in Africa, India and Latin America in comparison to those in other regions.
In the starkest terms, wealth inequality has been calculated as ninety-two individual billionaires holding as much wealth as the poorest half of the world (Oxfam, 2015). Second, in reality, the rising of the tide is very slow in many of the so-called advanced economies, and this has been the case particularly since the global financial crisis when economic growth measured in GDP has barely reached its lowest pre-crisis points, and is predicted to slow even further up to 2020 (IMF, 2017a). This unequal distribution of world assets and opportunities, combined with limited capacity for any meaningful wealth creation, suggests not only difficult questions for economists but also a need to look more closely at the social fallout from the market economy.
Figure 2.1: Regional and selected country percentage of global total wealth (US$ trillion), 2000 and 2018
Note: Calculation from smoothed exchange rates, i.e. five-year moving average exchange rates.
Source: