The State of the Art in Welfare State Research on Social Spending Efforts in Capitalist Democracies since 19601

In the last generation, social scientists have made great advances in un-derstanding the forces behind the welfare state-or public social spend-ing and provision. Scholars have asked why those aided by the state get what they do in the ways that they do for a number of circumstances affecting income and life chances. Typically, the object of study has been the state's efforts through spending or services to ameliorate routine and foreseeable predicaments that threaten income, such as those caused by old age, unemployment, ill health, disability, and industrial accidents. Often scholars have widened the focus to include programs aiding per-sons with family obligations and citizens having served in the military. Sometimes housing, nutritional, and educational needs have been in-cluded, expanding the definition of the welfare state to encompass almost all domestic public spending. Researchers have explored many empirical settings to derive and ap-praise arguments about public social provision. Influential early wor