Two important dimensions of the Swedish social insurance system are those of universality (encompassing the entire population) and of compensation for loss of income. The decisions basic to the Swedish social insurance system and thus to the Swedish Welfare State were made during the 1910s. A universal pension insurance system was decided upon in 1913. This was the world's first universal public insurance system. Pensions were provided both in cases of disability and of a person reaching the age of 67. Important factors explaining this decision were that Sweden had the oldest population in the Western world and thus high expenditures for poor relief, and that as the reporting and taxation of individual incomes had just been introduced it became possible to finance a universal pension system by means of compulsory contributions by the individual (a special earmarked tax).

The establishment of a pension insurance system provided the basis for a system of insurance for work-related injuries, in 1916. It included the entire workforce and was the most modern of its kind. The presence of a pension insurance system and insurance for work-related injuries pointed to the need for a sickness insurance system. This was designed to deal with simple cases of injury as well as with more serious cases of illness or injury that could lead to disability. A proposal was presented in 1919. A serious deflationary crisis after the First World War and high levels of unemployment during the period between the two world wars made it impossible to introduce a sickness insurance system.

In 1997 the Irish government adopted the National Anti-Poverty Strategy (NAPS), a global target for the reduction of poverty which illuminates a range of issues relating to official poverty targets. The Irish target is framed in terms of a relative poverty measure incorporating both relative income and direct measures of deprivation based on data on the extent of poverty from 1994. Since 1994 Ireland has experienced an unprecedented period of economic growth that makes it particularly important to assess whether the target has been achieved, but in doing so we cannot avoid asking some underlying questions about how poverty should be measured and monitored over time. After briefly outlining the nature of the NAPS measure, this article examines trends in poverty in Ireland between 1987 and 1997. Results show that the relative income and deprivation components of the NAPS measure reveal differential trends with increasing relative income poverty, but decreasing deprivation. However, this differential could be due to the fact that the direct measures of deprivation upon which NAPS is based have not been updated to take account of changes in real living standards and increasing expectations. To test whether this is so, we examine the extent to which expectations about living standards and the structure of deprivation have changed over time using confirmatory factor analysis and tests of criterion validity using different definitions of deprivation. Results show that the combined income and deprivation measure, as originally constituted, continues to identify a set of households experiencing generalised deprivation resulting from a lack of resources.

In contrast to most other welfare states, the development of the Israeli welfare state has occurred in the shadow of an ongoing military conflict. This study examines one of the consequences of this development by focusing on the impact of benefits for disabled war veterans upon the country's social security system. Not only are the benefits for Israeli disabled veterans more generous and expensive than those in other welfare states but they have also had a significant impact upon the nature of other social security programmes. In particular, we identify the differential impact of the policy legacies of this programme on benefits and services for other ‘deserving’ groups in Israeli society and on programmes for those disabled from natural causes.

Pensions are a controversial issue in Britain. During the past fifty years, pension reforms have been challenged by the competing policies of the Conservative Party and the Labour Party. There were differences in the nature, scope and extent of pension policies between them: the Conservatives encouraged private pension provision while the Labour Party promoted state provision. Based on core principles of freedom and personal responsibility, the Conservatives persistently over time implemented policies in line with these beliefs. This article explores this transformation of the post-war pension regime. An attempt is made here to sketch out a new explanation of this transformation in drawing on recent theories of the role of ideas and ideology in the policy process. The recent apparent convergence in policy thinking on pensions between the Labour Party and the Conservative Party highlights the importance of core ideological principles.

This article suggests that the literature on care, which originally was heavily influenced by a gendered perspective, has now taken on other important variables. However, it is argued that if we look at the particular impact of the marketisation and privatisation of long-term care, we can see that gender is still a useful perspective on the production of care, especially paid care. The reordering of the delivery of domiciliary care within the ‘mixed economy of welfare’ is having important effects on the labour market for care and is likely to lead to further inequalities between women, both now and in old age. The article proceeds to look at the impact of these inequalities on the consumption of care in old age, particularly by elderly women and considers factors that may provide women with the resources to purchase care and/or pay charges for care. The article argues that gender does still matter, but that its impact has to be understood within a context of growing inequalities between women, and an analysis that takes account of wider social and economic relations within kin networks and between generations.

In recent years, the dynamics of poverty and unemployment have come under increasing scrutiny, but another of the risks with which the welfare state concerns itself – disability – is still largely understood only in a static sense. This article uses longitudinal data from the British Household Panel Survey to investigate the complexity behind a cross-sectional snapshot. First, a breakdown is given of the working-age population who are disabled at any one time by the ‘disability trajectories’ they follow over a seven-year period. Second, the expected duration of disability for those who become disabled during working life is examined. The results show that only a small proportion of working-age people who experience disability are long-term disabled, although at any one time, long-term disabled people make up a high proportion of all disabled people. Over half of those who become limited in activities of daily living as adults have spells lasting less than two years, but few who remain disabled after four years recover. Intermittent patterns of disability, particularly due to mental illness, are common. Failing to distinguish the different disability trajectories people follow has led to policies which marginalise disabled people and are costly to the state.

Contents

1 Social security and income maintenance

2 Health (formerly Health care)

3 Education

4 Housing and environment

5 Personal social services

6 Law and the treatment of the offender

7 Unemployment and the labour market

8 Race relations

9 The voluntary sector

10 Government (formerly Local government)

11 Gender

12 Demography