ABSTRACT
The scope of a country’s welfare state is often measured in one of two ways. One way is to calculate the amount of money a country commits to social welfare. Another is to examine the scope of social rights the country’s welfare state guarantees to its citizens. By either measure, the welfare states of North America are less generous than most European welfare states. In terms of social spending, the United States spent 16.2 per cent of its gross domestic product (GDP) on social welfare in 2007. Canada spent slightly more, 16.9 per cent (OECD, 2011a). All of the wealthier countries of Western Europe during that year spent more than 20 per cent of their GDPs on social welfare. This pattern has been consistent over time, and marks these two countries as among the least generous welfare states. This status as laggard also applies when North American welfare states are compared in terms of social rights. Canada and the United States are often classified among the ‘liberal’ welfare states, those that outline a limited scope for state responsibility in providing for the welfare of their citizens. This classification stands in sharp contrast to the wealthier European countries, most of which are classified as ‘social democratic’ or ‘occupational’ welfare states. When we speak of social rights, we speak of the normative principles that legitimate a welfare
state. The notion of social rights was best first articulated by T. H. Marshall, who coined the term to describe the types of rights that allow citizens to share in the material and cultural heritage of their countries (Marshall, 1981). For the purpose of examining the welfare states of North America, we focus on the liberal type of welfare state (see also Chapter 17). Here the defining characteristics are a commitment on the part of state to provide a minimal level of social support to all citizens because they are of the national community. Social rights are called universal, because they are rights held by all citizens. In addition, social rights are categorical, meaning establishing a right requires that the state take steps to guarantee that its citizens can enjoy those rights. However, beyond the minimum, citizens are expected to take care of their own welfare needs. Mexico, the third country in North America, occupies a special place. For most of the period
since World War II, Mexico has been a developing country and consequently social policy was not a priority for public funds. During the last twenty years this has begun to change, but
Mexico does not yet have a welfare state that easily compares with more developed countries. For example, in 2007, social spending in Mexico was only 7.2 per cent of GDP (OECD, 2011a). Likewise, a conception of social rights is also only beginning to emerge. The objective in this chapter is to outline the basic characteristics of the welfare states of these
three countries and to compare them with one another and with the more expansive European models. This comparison is conducted through the prism of social rights. For each country, we examine the historical debates about social rights, and the efforts to expand them. Then, especially for the cases of Canada and the United States, we examine the efforts during the past two decades to retrench welfare states and limit the scope of social rights. The basic lesson of this comparison is that each of the three countries reached a golden age for the establishment of social rights. This came in the 1970s for the United States and Canada, but only recently for Mexico. Since the golden age, however, efforts to retrench welfare systems have circumscribed the expression of social rights. A desire to contain the rising costs of the welfare state has been an important driver of change, but more importantly, these reforms have been justified with new conceptions of social rights. Instead of categorical rights that all citizens can claim, social rights in these countries are conditional on the quality of one’s conduct as a citizen.
