Time Matters

Abstract

Western welfare states were built during the postwar years, with one key objective: to protect family (male) breadwinners against the consequences of losing their ability to extract an income from the labor market. Structures of social risk, however, have changed dramatically since then, so that current social risks include precarious employment, long-term unemployment, being a working poor, single parenthood, or inability to reconcile work and family life. Changes in structures of social risk have resulted in the adaptation of welfare states only in the Nordic countries but much less in continental and southern Europe. To account for this divergence in social policy trajectories, this article argues that the reorientation of the Nordic welfare state was possible because new social risks emerged before the maturation of the postwar welfare states. The argument is demonstrated through comparative statistical analysis relating the timing of key socioeconomic developments to current levels of spending in relevant policies.