Introduction

This book seeks to describe, compare and analyse a fundamental change in the way social assistance is provided. The requirement that people who are judged able to work and available for work must seek and accept work in the regular labour market is an inherent part of the contract within social assistance programmes. This contract is changed through introducing a requirement for recipients to work as a condition of receiving benefits. While developments of this kind in some parts of the United States (US) have received considerable attention, the introduction of work requirements within European countries has generally been less comprehensively observed outside of their respective national spheres.

This book describes the new work requirements within social assistance programmes on both sides of the Atlantic and presents a systematic comparison of policies in six European countries, two US states and New York City. This chapter defines the subject of comparison, ‘workfare’, and identifies the factors that are likely to determine whether the new contracts result in governments providing more or doing less to help people who are presently excluded from self-reliance through regular work.

Within the countries considered here, welfare provision underwent incremental growth over most of the third quarter of the 20th century. During this time policy debates relating to welfare were mainly over spending priorities, either with regard to the needs of different groups within the welfare population or with regard to levels of expenditure on welfare provision as opposed to other functions of the state. In line with this, the proclaimed ‘crisis of the welfare state’ in the 1980s sparked debate that was also primarily about spending priorities.

The last decade of the 20th century witnessed the development of a more fundamental challenge to welfare as a modern project. Attention shifted from debates about the level of welfare expenditure to questions about the desirability and usefulness of welfare payments (although the former contributed to the latter). This new orientation was applied to a range of welfare programmes, but was particularly focused on social assistance provision for able-bodied people who were judged to be available for work. While until recently the policy ambitions of most Western governments have been towards a reduction in overall levels of social assistance payments, selectivity and targeting within social assistance are now being restored as desirable features of welfare provision (Lødemel, 1997b).