The transition to self-reliance in welfare in the 21st century
Peter Saunders
Social Research Director, Centre for Independent Studies
Contact Email:   psaunderscis.org.au

As real incomes rise, so greater numbers of people can potentially afford to buy services which their parents and grandparents could never have purchased. Moreover, as incomes rise, popular expectations and aspirations start to outstrip what governments can offer, so the demand for private sector alternatives escalates. The result is the gradual demise of the twentieth century mass welfare state and its replacement with a variety of privatized forms of provision, grounded in norms of self-reliance, and backed up by a much more limited scale of government regulation and finance.

This paper outlines this trend to privatized provision in areas such as retirement pensions and non-government schooling and draws on evidence about tax-welfare churning to demonstrate the huge potential that exists for further privatization of core areas of the welfare state including health care and income insurance. It considers and rejects arguments that private sector alternatives to state welfare are less efficient, less equitable, or prone to ‘market failure,’ and it analyses the extent to which a combination of savings, insurance and loans could deliver personal security and choice for all Australians in future decades, replacing the increasingly expensive and anachronistic welfare state institutions and practices that still exist today.

Paper Download Information (if available):

Paper120.ppt

Copyright © 2007 Social Policy Research Centre.