This article and its commentaries examine some of the difficulties that confront supporters of the welfare state as they encounter critical opposition which has evolved in the US in recent years. Attention is directed to trends in popular attitudes which seem to produce a more narrow vision of welfare than that usually advanced by advocates and social policy makers, the changing nature of dependency and the unexpected consequences of universal benefit programmes. Different views are presented about how to approach welfare state developments in the US in the late twentieth century.

Within the political arena, most sharply articulated by the new Right, the family and welfare state have been counterposed as ideological opposites with implications for the relative responsibility each should be accorded in respect of a policy of community care. On the basis of evidence from a survey conducted in three locations in Scotland, this paper examines the extent to which the ideological positions of Left and Right are reflected in public attitudes towards these issues. The results show that with the exception of certain groups of ‘ideologues’, individual citizens tend not to structure their attitudes in accordance with overarching ideologies, nor are their attitudes in any consistent way organized along partisan lines. In respect of the family/state polarity, there is only a faint echo of the broad rhetoric of political parties and on more concrete issues like care for dependent persons none at all. The overall picture supports the view that the family and welfare state as they are confronted by people in their everyday lives are much less ideological opposites than intermeshed in an overlapping complex of values, needs and interests.

Industrialization, technological change and overall economic development are often cited as important factors in the development of welfare states. This article examines the importance of cycles in economic activity and cycles in technological innovation to enhancing our understanding of welfare. The history of technological change in health-care services is used to illustrate the argument.