Social Democracy and Welfare State

Social Democracy and Welfare State

Introduction

If, we look into the history, the discretionary provisions dominated the Britain's welfare, with friendly and mutual societies providing a whole lot of benefits to the people. Voluntary and local authorities used to run the hospitals and the health insurance contribution financed a national system for having panel doctors. These insurance contributions were determined by the state, and the source was mutually owned societies.

In 1906, the Liberal Government got huge success in the elections. The main aim of the reforms made by the Liberal Government during the period of 1906-1911 was to save the friendly societies. A point, which is noteworthy to mention, is that the modern welfare state in UK has emerged based on the legislation of the Liberal Welfare Reforms. The incident of these reforms emerged as a result of realising that the Poor Law provision needs alterations. As a matter of fact, a prime reason for the victory of Liberals was that they were the first to make poverty as an important issue during elections (Field, 2011, pp. 1).

Thus, the need for a welfare state aroused and the William Beveridge Report of 1942 predicted that the United Kingdom will soon become a welfare state. This report revealed five big evils of the society including, disease, idleness, squalor, want and ignorance. The Labour Government of 1942 assured that these evils will be eradicated from the society and for this purpose the government took various policy measures for the people of United Kingdom, from cradle to grave.

A welfare state can be defined as a model of government in which the state plays a pivotal role in both the protection and the promotion of the social and the economic well-being of its residents or dwellers. It is usually based on the principles of equal opportunity for all men and women alike regardless of their gender, race or ethnicity along with an unbiased and equal distribution of wealth as well as public responsibility of especially those citizens who are unable to avail even the minimal provisions of a good life by themselves.

According to Esping Andersen's book on “The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism” where he classified three main types of modern welfare states, the United States of America tend to follow a liberal system of organization which is purely based on the idea of market dominance and private provisions. Thus the state ideally only interferes in order to restructure or revolutionize poverty along with the provision of the basic needs of those citizens who cannot afford it themselves.

Why the Welfare State was formed?

A few basic reasons for the formation of a welfare state in the United Kingdom were reports developed by Rowntree and Booth, showing various levels of poverty prevailing within the United Kingdom during the starting of twentieth century. These reports revealed that a huge percentage of people, living in the enormous industrial cities of the north, were leading a life which was below the poverty line or the level of ...