1997/01/01 by Michael K. Brown
Social Sciences · #Capitalism #Collective bargaining #Economic system #Economics #Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics #Law #Market economy #Political economy #Political science #Politics #Retirement, Disability, and Employment #Social Policy and Reform Studies #Social Welfare #Welfare
paper · doi:10.2307/2657695
openalex publication_date 1997/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/23
The United States has long been distinctive among Western welfare states for its heavy reliance on private social policies. Private pensions, health, and disability insurance are not absent from other welfare states, but America has made a virtue of what many countries consider an unwanted stepchild. Even when compared to the less capacious welfare states of Britain or Australia, much less the comprehensive continental European or Scandinavian welfare states, American reliance on private social protection is anomalous. Payments to individuals for private or employer-provided social benefits accounted for 25 percent of total social welfare payments in 1985. The United States spends a higher fraction of GNP for private pensions (1.4 percent) than any other industrial society, and 57 percent of all U.S. health expenditures are private compared to an average of 20 percent in other welfare states.1 Most individuals receive private social benefits as an employee benefit, financed by employer supplements to wages and salaries. Entitlement to these benefits is based on employment rather than citizenship. This private safety net has mostly benefited unionized workers and middle class citizens with steady, white collar jobs. Workers not in unions or in low-wage industries have been excluded from this system of private social protection. Reliance on private health insurance has also served as one of the main impediments to the adoption of national health insurance. Yet today this system of private social protec-