ABSTRACT
While social spending and social rights lie at the core of welfare state research, financing of social protection and the ‘social duties’ to contribute to funding have received only modest attention. It is therefore not surprising that issues related to financing are seldom explicitly addressed in welfare state typologies, either. The Nordic model, for instance, is much more characterised by the origins, causes and nature of different welfare measures and their outcomes than by the pattern of financing. This chapter considers financing from a comparative and longitudinal perspective. It first explores recent discussions that question the permanence of present financing solutions and then empirically examines similarities, differences and changes in the financing of welfare states in Western Europe.
