ABSTRACT
Giuliano Bonoli has identified the New Social Risks (NSR) that some citizens of advanced modern societies face, alongside the Old Social Risks (OSR), which were the focus of the policies developed by European welfare states during the post-war period (Chapter 1). NSR concern the pressures from changes in labour markets and family and household structures that are apparent in all welfare states, and also the impacts of welfare state restructuring on vulnerable groups. They contrast with the OSR, which arose in the life-course of typical citizens in industrial society and concerned needs for retirement, widows’ and disability pensions, healthcare and child endowment. The significance of NSR is twofold: first, they create demands for new services at a time when much of the debate about the future of the welfare state is about spending constraints, the substitution of private or family services for government provision and the targeting of scarce state resources on the most needy. Second, they offer opportunities to develop state provision, which enables governments to achieve other (and typically economic goals) at a time when much of the analysis sees spending on traditional welfare state services as simply a burden on the productive sector of the economy.
