2: The Emergence of the Welfare State Flashcards
What 2 reasons are why the Welfare States Develop?
Process of Modernisation
Changing Needs
What does the ‘Process of Modernisation’, in terms of helping welfare states develop, include?
The development of… • nation states • industrialisation * • capitalism • political democracy
What does ‘Changing Needs’, in terms of helping welfare states develop, include?
Needs of…
• states (social order, bureaucracy, defence/expansion)
• industry (education, health including public health)
• capitalism (labour)
• people (income security)
In terms of ‘Process of Modernisation’ what does the development of industrialisation mean?
- Depending on the speed of industrialisation, the welfare state policies can change
- Cities plus working class industrialisation creates a politics demanding certain goods & services
In the 17th century, which 2 key pieces of legislation came through?
1601 Act for the Relief f the Poor (43rd of Elizabeth)
1662 Settlement Act
What 2 themes surrounded the 1601 At for the Relief of the Poor (43rd f Elizabeth)?
- Themes: ‘scroungerphobia’; work incentives; ‘earning’ benefits; training for unemployed people; social assistance
Distinguished between classes of poor according to their ability to work
Parish ‘overseers’ responsible for ‘setting the poor on work’
‘a convenient stock of flax, hemp, wool, thread, iron and other necessary ware and stuff to set the poor on work and also competent sums of money for and towards the necessary relief of the lame, impotent, old, blind and such other among them being poor and not able to work’
- Themes: family support obligations; private provision and contracting-out of services
Established liability for support of dependents
‘And be it further enacted that the father and grandfather and the mother and grandmother and the children of every poor, old, blind, lame and impotent person or other person not able to work being of sufficient ability shall at their own charges relieve and maintain every such poor person’
Aimed for ‘management’ of poor people: ‘farming the poor’; poor houses and correction houses
What were the Themes of the 1662 Settlement Act?
Themes: Spatial dimensions of obligation; gender inequality and discrimination; parental obligation; social control; stigma; forced resettlement
Settlement depended on paternal birthplace, or birthplace of husband, or where you had been employed for previous 365 days
The ‘problem’ of lone mothers and ‘illegitimate’ children (for parishes: most expensive = most unwelcome)
‘Badging’ paupers to identify settlement
What are some examples of Key Changes to the Welfare System?
- Agricultural revolution during 18th Century (enclosures, new farming methods)
- Does put massive pressure on the system
- Labourers forced off land into growing towns
- Encouraged by early industrial revolution
- Falling wage rates after Napoleonic Wars
What are some examples of Policy Continuities?
Themes we can trace through history to the present:
- The moral separation between the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’ poor
- Workfare and ‘dependency’
- Relationship between poverty and low wages
- Family obligation
- Settlement (spatio-political responsibilities)
- Stigma and social control
- The role of popular ‘myths’ in shaping attitudes and policy
What problems arose in the 16th - 17th century?
Vagrancy: the state of living as a vagrant, a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging
Issues of social control (crime), and economic control (wage levels)
What is Vagrancy?
The state of living as a vagrant, a person without a settled home or regular work who wanders from place to place and lives by begging
Who were the Intellectual Influences of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act?
Edwin Chadwick Jeremy Bentham (Punishment) Thomas Malthus (Peverse incentives) David Ricardo (Economics) Samuel Smiles Self-help
What are the Practical Concerns of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act?
Cost of poor relief @
Approx. 20% of expenditure in 1832
What does the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act have Modern Parallels in Debates on?
Dependency
Moral decay
Causes of crime
What are the Three Key Ideas of the 1834 Poor Law Amendment Act?
- Centralised administration of poor relief under the authority of the Poor Law Commission
- Poor Law ‘Unions’ established and encouraged to build workhouses - The ‘Workhouse Test’
- Indoor poor relief to be offered according the the principle of
less eligibility - that the situation of those in receipt
of relief ‘shall not be made really or apparently so eligible
as the situation of the independent labourer of the lowest class’ - Moral separation of ‘paupers’ and ‘the poor’
- ‘Poverty had been regarded by many writers as a necessary
element in society, since only by feeling its pinch could the labouring poor be inspired to work. Thus it was was not poverty, but pauperism or destitution which was regarded as a social problem’ (Rose, M. (1972) The relief of poverty 1834-1914, p10)
