Introduction

What connects the hundreds of millions of people in India who have received biometric ID cards, the hundreds of thousands marching on the streets of cities like Paris to protest about pensions reform and the millions of families receiving conditional cash transfers in Latin America?

All are experiencing the rapid pace of change in welfare states that are adapting to new conditions. The pressures for change vary greatly. In some parts of the world welfare is in crisis. The German chancellor Angela Merkel regularly repeated a stylised fact that summarises the problem for some parts of the world: Europe accounts for 8% of world population, 25% of GDP and 50% of welfare spending. The well-rehearsed challenges of ageing populations, disappearing jobs, welfare dependency and possibly declining willingness to pay in more diverse societies now combine with shorter-term pressures to cut deficits. As a result, the most prominent accounts of the future of welfare emphasise only retrenchment, salami-slicing cuts and a shift of responsibility from the state to citizens.

But in many countries welfare is expanding. Every developing country has had to build up new welfare rights – to healthcare, pensions and unemployment insurance. Some have done so very fast, like South Korea and Thailand. Others are doing so from a much lower base, including India and China. So long as economies continue to grow, there is no obvious reason why welfare can't grow too. The perspective of the richest 10% of the world, experiencing a time of crisis, can distort the bigger picture in which risk is being socialised and managed at larger scales than ever before. It can also disguise some of the bigger trends – including the ways that 100-year lives and 70-year careers will mean a big increase in how much time each individual can work, even if they also take much more time out for leisure or for volunteering.

But how welfare is organised is bound to change. Needs have changed, as have the available tools. A huge concentration of wealth has widened inequality, coinciding with growing returns to capital relative to labour, and often ferocious destruction of jobs.