ABSTRACT
This chapter provides a critical analysis of "social investment" perspective both at the ideational level and in terms of the policies that have been implemented in some of the most affluent countries in the world. The main aim of the social investment approach was to minimize the intergenerational transfer of poverty but also to promote the intergenerational transmission of knowledge. To begin with the core features of a successful social investment approach, it is necessary to clearly distinguish the social investment perspective from neoliberalism. The social investment perspective has been developed with the dual ambition to modernize the welfare state so as to better address the new social risks, such as lone parenthood and long-term unemployment, as well as needs structures of contemporary societies with ageing populations, to ensure the financial and political sustainability of the welfare state and to sustain a knowledge-based economy. Central to the social investment perspective is the attempt to reconcile social and economic goals.
