Let us narrowly define the welfare state as a repertoire of state-led policies aimed at securing a minimum of welfare to its citizens – that is, protecting them against the risks of unemployment, sickness, maternity, and old age – and providing an adequate accumulation of human capital through public investments in health and education. As such, the importance of the welfare state can hardly be overstated. Welfare states are a fundamental part of advanced modern capitalism in the West. They affect income inequality and poverty rates, they shape labor markets, they change public perceptions of how citizens perceive what the role of the state in the economy should be, and they influence the long-term prospects for economic growth through their investments in human capital and their legitimizing role for the political system. It is therefore not surprising that in recent years there has been a proliferation of studies related to the origins, development, and crises of the welfare state.

Researchers have focused on the economic and demographic transformations related to the expansion of welfare effort; on the effects of state structure; on the importance of policy legacies; on how the distribution of power among political parties and interest associations generates different “types” of welfare states; on the connection among economic openness, domestic vulnerability, and the establishment of social safety nets; on the relationships among deindustrialization, technological change, and welfare state expansion; and on the impact of aging on the sustainability of the welfare state.