Income Support Through the Welfare State

Abstract

The welfare state was integral to the Polanyian counter-movement against market commodification, especially in north-west Europe between the 1920s and 1970s. Welfare states typically entailed public education, health care and housing (discussed in Chapter 7) and direct income support (discussed in this chapter). The latter entailed stark de commodification as well as (often) defamilialisation, that is, citizens acquired rights to income that were independent of their position in the labour market and of their family relationships (Esping-Andersen, 1990, 1999). Decommodification underpinned ‘social citizenship’ (Marshall, 1949) and the ‘class compromise’ that reconciled the working class to a largely capitalist economy (Przeworski, 1985).