Welfare

Mary Daly

• Publisher: Polity
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9780745637228
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Politics & International Relations
• Subtopic: Social Policy
• Index: Politics & International Relations

Welfare is an important concept in the social sciences. It is also challenged and contested not only by alternative concepts but also as a political goal in itself. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, this book takes a fresh look at the continuing relevance of welfare in the context of public policy, recent scholarly developments and changes in popular attitudes and behaviour.

The book connects theory and practice. Tracing the concept's background in economics, political science and social policy, the book juxtaposes welfare with newer approaches, such as subjective well-being, capabilities, care, social exclusion and social capital. The links between welfare and political ideas are also elaborated. The welfare state, as it developed historically in Europe and as it is changing in different countries, is given an important place in the analysis. Drawing on a range of empirical work, the book in its final part considers how individuals and groups attain welfare and how this shapes people's decisions and actions in their everyday lives.

Written in a lively style, the book provides students of sociology, social policy and political science with a valuable point of access to a range of debates and thinking in the field of welfare and related concepts.

1

Founding Ideas and Approaches

This chapter introduces welfare by outlining its most enduring representations in academic work. As it develops, the chapter tilts towards the historical – the intention is to pinpoint the long-standing concerns that are evoked by welfare and the scholarly approaches through which these have been identified, examined and developed. Following a brief outline of a range of definitions, the second section of the chapter takes us in turn through a discussion of welfare viewed as economic, as a philosophical and political ideal, and as a response to perceived social problems and social ills. In its third part, the chapter engages further with the concept by considering some enduring questions that it raises. These probe the relative vs universal nature of welfare, whether it should be thought of in relation to individuals or collectivities, and the matter of whose responsibility it is to provide welfare. We shall see that the concept has a range of meanings and that it is a site of competing accounts and visions.

Origins and Meanings of Welfare

The origins of the term can be traced back at least to the fourteenth century when it meant to fare or journey well (Williams 1976: 281). There is a dual sense of welfare here as both condition and process – captured if we hyphenate the word: wel-fare. Over time, welfare has acquired a diverse set of meanings. Among its many popular references now are material sufficiency, well-being, the absence of negative conditions, physical and mental health, satisfaction of desires, and provision for need within the context of organised services for the needy and the population more broadly.

As mentioned, welfare as a term is not as widely used now as in the past. In the 1970s and 1980s, there were far more publications with ‘welfare’ in the title as compared with the present period, for instance. There are other indications also that the concept has fallen out of favour. As Dean views it (2006: 21), recent ideological controversy over the nature and purpose of social policies has seen welfare acquire a pejorative connotation. This is true especially in the US, where the term has a powerful negative charge. Its American usage is associated with both safety-net or means-tested benefits and people who depend on them for their income. When this view is unpicked, a connected set of assumptions is revealed. Three such assumptions are noteworthy.

In the first instance, ‘welfare’ is connected to a moral code that places special value not so much on work as on the work of the poor (Frankel 1966: 151). Adults without an income need to be made to work. This quasi-punitive tradition has deep roots. For example, it was inscribed in the English Poor Law tradition, which dates from the early seventeenth century. This was a regime wherein those who were considered needy through no fault of their own received non-punitive forms of assistance whereas aid to those deemed ‘indigent’ was organised through regimes of ‘correction’. The latter only got help if they subjected themselves to the stringent conditions attached to receiving aid. Their comparators were the ‘independent labourers’, in many cases the working poor. In effect, assistance to the poor was basically framed in terms of labour supply – aid for the able-bodied should not interfere with the work incentive (ibid.). The term ‘welfare to work’, so widely used in social policy discourse now, carries these ideas forward, implying a movement from a state of dependency to one of self-sufficiency.

A second set of assumptions connects ‘welfare’ with the behaviour and assumed character of those who receive public support. As a group these are inscribed with negative characteristics. They are assumed to be if not lazy then lacking a sense of responsibility and ‘get up and go’. ‘Welfare’, then, is a codeword for the presupposition of economic inactivity, dependency on public support, and shiftlessness (Fraser and Gordon 1994a). It is a shorthand for character really – people on ‘welfare’ lack the necessary moral fibre to be self-supporting. Also embedded in this notion of ‘welfare’ is a set of beliefs about organised public support. A third set of assumptions homes in on this. While some would hold that organised public systems of aid and support always contain perverse incentives – encouraging ‘free riding’ (in the sense of people claiming more than their fair share) and lack of independence – a more nuanced version of the argument differentiates between benefits organised around the principles of social insurance and social assistance respectively. A relatively simple division is imposed here, with the former seen to be earned and deserved and the latter acquired through need. When this is applied to individuals, it leads to a division of benefit recipients into two crude categories – those claiming benefits which they are considered to have earned and those receiving monies given on the basis of general need. If labour supply preoccupies the minds of those who plan and design benefit systems, the public imagination tends to be more focused on separating the ‘deserving’ and the ‘undeserving’. This latter preoccupation, too, has deep roots. Historical research in the UK, for example, traces it as far back as the 1860s, dubbing it a ‘Victorian idea’ (Kidd 2004: 213). Just as one should not see this issue as recent, so also should it not be treated in isolated terms, as if it pertains only to views about those receiving benefits. Rather, the question of who deserves what is fundamental to the fabric of moral and social life (and is the reason why we introduce it so early).

This minimal sense of welfare is, then, an important current in contemporary and historical thought on the subject. As we shall see, though, the pejorative usage of welfare is a rather small part of the universe of the term’s usages and origins.

In the academic literature, welfare has been conceptualised very diversely and there is no commonly agreed approach. The following is a sample of definitions, drawing upon different constituent elements and approaches:

the possession of all-purpose means to attain one’s ends and/or the satisfaction of one’s desires and preferences

(Fives 2008: 3–4)

providing some of the conditions for the realisation of mutual security, dignity and respect

(Williams 1999: 685)

the common denominator that we all share and which marks us out as members of the same social group

(Fitzpatrick 2001: 23)

an overall goal of the political community consisting in the optimal satisfaction of interests which the members of the community have in common

(Pusi

1966: 83).

While these writers obviously understand welfare quite differently, viewed in the round the definitions alert us to some foundations of the concept and a broader set of references than we have encountered to date. One set of meanings is of welfare as relative to the group or situation one finds oneself in rather than referring to an absolute set of needs or conditions. Are there core or essential conditions for human welfare? Do we have needs that are universal or are our needs determined by the general conditions and standards of the society in which we live? While Fives (2008) speaks of individual desires and preferences, Williams (1999) sees welfare as realised by mutual security, dignity and respect. This brings us to a second noteworthy reference in the term which is to the collective level and how activity on the part of individuals relates to resources and outcomes for the group or society as a whole and vice versa. This is an issue that runs through most discussions of welfare. Indeed, it is an enduring tension in social provision overall: how is the well-being of particular groups to be set against the situation of the collectivity as a whole? What priority should be given to those in need and how are antagonistic interests to be reconciled? For Fitzpatrick welfare is inherently social – the ‘common denominator’ that we share by virtue of our social group membership. Fitzpatrick’s underlying reference is to ‘social welfare’, by which is usually meant a collective state of well-being. Finally, there is the question of where the appropriate responsibility for welfare lies. Welfare animates a range of political interests and as the definition by Pusi

above suggests politics are shaped fundamentally by responses to welfare-related demands voiced on behalf of different, and usually opposing, constituencies and met in ways that politically favour one sector of society over another. We shall return to these questions again in the final section of the chapter.

It is already obvious that welfare has no fixed meaning. Focusing in on the dominant streams of work helps to make sense of the variation, showing that it is not random but has been historically constructed. Viewed over time, thinking on welfare has developed through three main lines of scholarly activity: as an outcome of markets and economic exchanges, as a philosophical ideal and subject of political contestation and state organisation, as a set of responses to social problems and prevailing social conditions (box 1.1). Each dovetails with the orientations and interests of particular disciplines – although we should not view this too narrowly or in territorial terms.

Box 1.1 Three core meanings of welfare in scholarship

Neo-classical Economics	Welfare as preference satisfaction
Political Philosophy/Political Science	Welfare as a political ideal and object of political/state organisation
Social Policy/Social Work/Sociology	Welfare as residing in responses to a range of social problems

Welfare in Economistic Thinking

Many perspectives in economics (e.g. Marxism, Keynesianism) have insights to convey about welfare but these have been displaced by what since the 1970s has become the ruling theory – neo-classical economics. In neo-classical (neo-liberal) theory, the endowment of resources, technology and tastes and preferences are taken as given. With their initial endowment of resources, people exchange some of what they have for a combination that will give them more satisfaction. Thus, in this approach the market is given priority as is consumption (choice) over production. The kinds of issue that this scholarship has puzzled over include the nature of welfare as utility (pleasure or satisfaction), the relationship between welfare and an optimum distribution of resources, the matter of individual choice and autonomy, the effectiveness of the market arrangements in achieving welfare, and the priority of welfare in the allocation of public resources (Adiseshiah 1966: 97).

To understand how welfare is conceived within neo-classical economics, we need to have a grasp of utilitarianism, welfarism, and Pareto efficiency. A utilitarian perspective conceives of welfare as the satisfaction of a person’s preferences (utilities). In Jeremy Bentham’s view, all experiences can be measured on a single scale of pleasure and pain; and pleasure is the only ultimate source of value (Sugden 1993: 1949). A utilitarian approach is primarily focused on welfare as a mental state consequent upon autonomous actions by individuals to satisfy their preferences. Etzioni (1986 as reported in Culyer 1990: 16) identified three main variations in economists’ use of the concept of utility. The first is that of pleasure of the self. The second is an expanded version of the first, encompassing the satisfactions achieved through own consumption of goods and those of others. The third usage treats utility as a means of ranking preferences. The underlying theory is that individuals achieve satisfaction from the goods and services that they purchase and this satisfaction is reflected in the prices they are willing to pay for such goods and services. The understanding of welfare, then, is of taste satisfaction associated with exchange and consumption. Gasper (2007: 39) summarises the classic foci and presumptions as a causal chain:

exogenous preferences and resource endowments → income → choice/expenditure → preference fulfilment → satisfaction (utility).

He spends therefore he is well!

Welfarism is a related approach, evolving from classical utilitarian theories. Welfarism was developed in a period when it was assumed that the purpose of welfare economics was to produce policy recommendations on how to achieve the social good (Sugden 1993: 1948). Its framework of analysis consists of assigning a numerical index of social welfare to every possible social state (ibid.). To determine how to evaluate a social state it draws on two principles. First, if every individual in society is indifferent between two particular social states, then those states must be assigned the same welfare index. But, and this is the second principle, if at least one individual prefers x to y, and no one prefers y, then x must be assigned a higher value than y. Value is demonstrated by preferences.¹ Welfarism is consequentialist, holding that actions, policies, and/or rules should be evaluated on the basis of their consequences. Welfarist views have been especially influential in law and economics, leading to an approach to policy evaluation that is closely focused on outcomes and measurable achievements (Dean 2010: 103).

The concept of efficiency is another popular criterion for judging welfare in neo-classical economics scholarship. As a judgement on the allocation of goods or income, Pareto efficiency holds that welfare unambiguously increases only if the welfare of any member of society increases and that of no one falls. A society that is making at least one person better off without disimproving anyone’s situation is, then, increasing its level of welfare (Fitzpatrick 2001: 13). While it does have the benefit of recognising potential conflict over resources and is in essence a moral position, as a standard of welfare it is almost impossible to fulfil, given that resources are always scarce.

While it might be correct to claim parsimony for the neo-classical economics perspective in that it rests on a small number of assumptions about human beings and their behaviour, such parsimony is not without costs. Individuals’ preferences are taken as given and seen as relatively consistent. Nor is there much mystique in human behaviour: people will choose to maximise their satisfactions. That is, people will always act rationally and in their own interests. Utilitarianism certainly does not problematise value as having social components. Indeed, its understanding of social relations is on the primitive side. Society is the aggregate outcome of individual actions, a loose association of individuals connected by contract and consent (Dwyer 2000: 39). Culture, morals, institutions and social processes are just some of the social phenomena rendered devoid of causal sign or significance (Jordan 2008a). Furthermore, willingness to pay has a sacrosanct place in utilitarianism – effective demand is one of the linchpins of the approach. Another is the assumption of the infinite consumer. This, say Drover and Kerans (1993: 6), skews all subsequent debate about welfare since it delegitimises the ethical aspects of questions about redistribution and puts no moral demands on the consumers. All they need to be concerned with is satisfying their preferences. Choice is non-negotiable – people must be free to choose what they want and how to satisfy their preferences. In sum, the ruling theory in economics has a very particular understanding of welfare and leaves unexplored some of the most interesting aspects of the concept.

Welfare in Political Philosophy and Political Science

Political philosophy foregrounds many of these issues. As compared with neo-classical economics, political philosophy and political science have taken a far more reflective approach – they open windows that neo-classical economics keeps firmly shut. Welfare fits well as a concern here for it is seen to be inextricably bound up with moral precepts and discussions relating to equality, justice, freedom and rights, and how welfare as a goal of political life can be realised in public institutions and practice. Each of these streams of scholarship – the philosophical and the political – merits discussion, even if space constraints ordain brevity.

A quick route into the complex philosophical issues is through the (admittedly oversimplified) divide between liberals and egalitarians. They differ on many matters including the nature of private property rights, justifications for and implications of welfare as a focus of activity on the part of the state, the constitution of justice and equality in their own right and in regard to resource distribution, and the obligations and conditions that make for membership of the political community. The very meaning of welfare is at stake. In the liberal or individualist orientation, welfare is lodged in individual autonomy and satisfaction of desires (reminiscent of utilitarianism). Human relations are seen in competitive terms – all against all – and when people m...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Key Concepts series
• Title page
• Copyright page
• Acknowledgements
• Lists of Tables, Figures and Boxes
• Introduction
• 1 Founding Ideas and Approaches
• 2 Well-being and Other Challenges to Conventional Understandings of Welfare
• Intermezzo
• Intermezzo
• References
• Index