The Transformation of Incapacity Benefits

Abstract

This chapter explores the transformation of incapacity benefits in the advanced welfare states in recent decades. Protection against work incapacity has been a longstanding feature of many advanced welfare states. To that extent, it represents what Esping-Andersen (1999) and others (e.g. TaylorGooby, 2004b; Bonoli, 2006) have called an ‘old social risk’. These authors have argued that the transition to a post-industrial society has resulted in the emergence of ‘new social risks’, such as population ageing and the work-life balance, that require corresponding changes in the welfare state. However, although new social risks may have emerged, that does not mean that old social risks have remained unchanged. This is because the economic and social conditions that create such risks have themselves changed in recent decades. Moreover, concepts such as work incapacity are not fixed or immutable. Rather, they are socially contingent, contestable and subject to change over time. Indeed, a central claim of this chapter is that both the social risk of incapacity to work, and the protection that the welfare state provides against it, have been transformed in the transition from industrial to post-industrial society.¹