The Really Big Trade-Off: Home Ownership and the Welfare State in tne New World and the Old

This paper focuses on the role of private home ownership as an alternative means of accomplishing the horizontal, life cycle redistribution that is one of the primary functions of the welfare state. The analysis uses cross-national evidence to examine the proposition that there has been an inverse relationship between the level of home ownership and the degree of welfare state provision in the advanced nations during the post-war period. The paper also utilizes a comparative approach to demonstrate that widespread home ownership may reduce the need for generous income maintenance for the aged and may redress the overall extent of inequality amongst that population. On the basis of these findings, it is suggested that extreme contrasts between the outcomes of European welfare state leaders and supposedly more laggardly New World countries may need to be somewhat modified

Colonialism, postcolonialism and the liberal welfare state

This article addresses the colonial and racial origins of the welfare state with a particular emphasis on the liberal welfare state of the USA and UK. Both are understood in terms of the centrality of the commodified status of labour power expressing a logic of market relations. In contrast, we argue that with a proper understanding of the relations of capitalism and colonialism, the sale of labour power as a commodity already represents a movement away from the commodified form of labour represented by enslavement. European colonialism is integral to the development of welfare states and their forms of inclusion and exclusion which remain racialised through into the twenty-first century

The inversion of the ‘really big trade-off’:Homeownership and pensions in long-run perspective

The hypothesis of a trade-off between homeownership and welfare state provision, first proposed by Jim Kemeny around 1980, is a foundational claim in the political economy of housing. However, the evidence for this hypothesis is unclear at both macro and micro levels. This paper examines the link between welfare and homeownership at the macro level using new long-run data and a multilevel modelling approach. It shows that the negative cross-sectional correlation between homeownership and public welfare provision observed in the earliest available data disappears and becomes neutral by the 1980s and possibly positive subsequently. Within-country trajectories vary, but are significantly positive in more countries than significantly negative, suggesting that in some contexts welfare and homeownership are complements rather than competitors. The paper posits a dual ratchet effect mechanism in both pension benefits and homeownership capable of producing this inversion, and further suggests that rising public indebtedness and the debt-stabilising effects of welfare states may account for the emergence of complementarity in the pension‒homeownership relationship. The latter supports the hypothesis that some countries have avoided the trade-off by ‘buying time’ on credit markets.Abstract Literature and theory Data and methods The trade-off in the long run: descriptive findings Multivariate analysis Country trajectories: buying time? Conclusion Supplemental material Reference

The Really Big Trade-Off: Home Ownership and the Welfare State in tne New World and the Old

This paper focuses on the role of private home ownership as an alternative means of accomplishing the horizontal, life cycle redistribution that is one of the primary functions of the welfare state. The analysis uses cross-national evidence to examine the proposition that there has been an inverse relationship between the level of home ownership and the degree of welfare state provision in the advanced nations during the post-war period. The paper also utilizes a comparative approach to demonstrate that widespread home ownership may reduce the need for generous income maintenance for the aged and may redress the overall extent of inequality amongst that population. On the basis of these findings, it is suggested that extreme contrasts between the outcomes of European welfare state leaders and supposedly more laggardly New World countries may need to be somewhat modified