Transition from industrial to post-industrial societies has fundamentally challenged social policy arrangements of Western welfare states. The concept of welfare state offers broader social protection, growing consumption, family wages, strong labor unions, better public services, and a state apparatus that was able to control the national economy. To use the slogan introduced by Berman (1982) a post-industrial society refers to a social landscape where ‘all that is solid melts into air.’ In particular, the state is no more able (or willing) to protect citizens against new social risks. In this article, our aim is to study the transition to post-industrial societies by paying attention to the globalization of the economy and the aging of the population. Due to deep ongoing social and economic changes, it has become increasingly difficult to maintain a Nordic welfare state model based on the principle of universalism.
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- 1.
Since dropping in the wake of the recession during the 1990s, the state expenditure for the EU25 has remained at 47% of the GDP since 1999. Employer’s share of social expenditure in the EU15 is 11% of the GDP, which it also was in 1990 (Eurostat Online310708).
- 2.
‘Separate discriminatory services for the poor have always tended to be poor quality services.’ Titmuss (1968, 134)
- 3.
In addition to Finland’s home care allowance (Sipilä 1995) Germany’s Pflegegeld and The Netherlands’ personal budget systems are prime examples of this.
- 4.
Himmelweit (2005: 173) notes that the emphasis in the UK as regards the provision of childcare has shifted from the provision of parental support to the provision of services purchased by municipalities. The trend in elderly care, on the other hand, has taken a rather paradoxical turn toward the payments to individuals for providing care.
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Sipilä, J., Anttonen, A., Kröger, T. (2009). A Nordic Welfare State in Post-industrial Society. In: The Welfare State in Post-Industrial Society. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4419-0066-1_10
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