The Rise or Decline of Work in the Welfare State? Equality and Efficiency Revisited

Abstract

There are two basic positions on the question of how work fares in the modern welfare state: one emphasizing the rise of work and the other predicting its decline. The first sees the mixed-economy welfare state as striving, in the spirit of John Maynard Keynes and William Bever idge, toward the goal of full employment in a free society. The welfare state is assumed to cherish this goal to a greater extent than more market-oriented societies. It is also assumed by many to succeed better in its task of alleviating the problem of unemployment and giving all able and willing citizens opportunities to find suitable employment. The other position warns against negative effects of the welfare state on the economy in general and on work in particular. The welfare state is in this perspective assumed to infiltrate the self-regulating market mechanism and thereby disturb and distort its beneficent functioning. The programs of the welfare state and the means of financing them are also seen as imposing disincentive effects on individuals, eroding their incentive to work.