Cash transfers for income maintenance have been central to all systems of public social protection in the industrialised west, and have been of particular significance to women because of their economic vulnerability. Programs differ in criteria for initial and ongoing eligibility, levels of benefits and duration, and, in the context of distinctive labour markets and gender divisions of labour, contribute to the varying gender effects of policy regimes. In this chapter, we assess these effects of the main income maintenance programs on gender relations in the four countries using our analytic framework. The dimension of social organisation of income and services considers the ways countries organise the provision of welfare and income through families as well as through states and markets; the stratification dimension considers the effects of social provision on gender inequality through evaluating the treatment of paid and unpaid labour and of men and women (and subgroups of men and women), and also its effects on the extent to which gender differentiation is affected by processes of claiming benefits and by the existence of different programs for family and labour market needs; the social citizenship rights dimension assesses the quality of social rights as this contributes to decommodiflcation, or protection vis-à-vis the labour market, and to the capacity to form and maintain an autonomous household.

Following are profiles of the income maintenance systems in each of the four countries based on data from the 1990s. These profiles are not intended as comprehensive descriptions of the welfare states of the four countries, but rather as sketches of the features of social provision relevant for assessing policy effects on gender stratification and power relations. The analytic dimensions do not correspond neatly to specific features or programs of income maintenance.