THE WELFARE STATE

Social welfare patterns OCHOLA TEACHER COLLEGE WELFARE STAT Social welfare patterns | by davis john ochola WELFARE STATE 1/1/2014 THE WELFARE STATE Davis john ochola Gone are the days when social history could be described as history with the politics left out. Social historians today are just as concerned with politics and state structures as they are with the material conditions of daily life. Indeed, those who would attempt an analysis of such pillars of social history as working-class protest or childhood would soon discover that such issues are inexorably tied to the state. This is particularly true of any study of poverty in modern society. The welfare state has thus become a central concern of social historians, who study its social, economic, and ideological roots; its role in shaping class relations and gender ideals; its economic consequences; and the strategies it fosters among the recipients of assistance. In fact, given the institutional nature of the welfare state, state, local, and private relief agency archives offer rich sources of information for social historians. In this way, the welfare state has become a staple of European social history. If the welfare state's place in the study of history is easy to determine, the same cannot be said of its definition. For many scholars, the welfare state is the combination of government programs designed to assist the needy. By providing such services as housing, monetary assistance, and health care, these programs assure a level of subsistence below which no citizen should fall. Other scholars, however, adopt actuarial concepts and define the welfare state as the set of policies devised to redistribute risk. In a capitalist society, they argue, welfare comprises the insurance programs that protect citizens against the hardships that might result from periods of economic inactivity like those caused by illness, unemployment, and old age. Some even argue that education is part of the welfare state, for it prepares recipients for a productive work life. For all that they differ, these divergent views share at least one element: they all revolve around the issue of security. For the purposes of this essay, the welfare state includes those programs and policies forged with the goal of easing life's insecurities, from elite fears of beggars to workingclass anxieties over industrial accidents. This definition underlies a history of the welfare state that begins with sixteenth-century attempts to rationalize relief and prohibit begging, and ends with early-twenty-first-century programs of national health insurance and family allocations. Many people think life without the welfare state would be chaos. In their minds, nobody would help support the less fortunate, and there would be riots in the streets. Little do they know that people found innovative ways of supporting each other before the welfare state existed. One of the most important of these ways was the mutual-aid society. Mutual aid, also known as fraternalism, refers to social organizations that gathered dues and paid benefits to members facing hardship. According to David Beito in From Mutual Aid to the Welfare State, there was a "great stigma" attached to accepting government aid or private charity during the late 18th and early 19th centuries.1 Mutual aid, on the other hand, did not carry the same stigma. It was based on reciprocity: today's mutual-aid recipient could be tomorrow's donor, and vice versa. Mutual aid was particularly popular among the poor and the working class. For instance, in New York City in 1909 40 percent of families earning less than $1,000 a year, little more than the "living wage," had members who were in mutual-aid societies.2 Ethnicity, however, was an even greater predictor of mutual-aid membership than income. The "new immigrants," such as the Germans, Bohemians, and Russians, many of whom were Jews, participated in mutual-aid societies at approximately twice the rate of native whites and six times the rate of the Irish.3 This may have been due to new immigrants' need for an enhanced social safety net. By the 1920s, at least one out of every three males was a member of a mutual-aid society.4 Members of societies carried over $9 billion worth of life insurance by 1920. During the same period, "lodges dominated the field of health insurance."5 Numerous lodges offered unemployment benefits. Some black fraternal lodges, taking note of the sporadic nature of African-American employment at the time, allowed members to receive unemployment benefits even if they were up to six months behind in dues.6 Under lodge medicine, the price for healthcare was low. Members typically paid $2, about a day's wage, to have yearly access to a doctor's care (minor surgery was frequently included in this fee). Non–lodge members typically paid about $2 every doctor's visit during this time period.7 Low prices for lodges did not, however, necessarily translate to low quality. The Independent Order of Foresters, one of the largest mutual-aid societies, frequently touted that the mortality rate of its members was 6.66 per thousand, much lower than the 9.3 per thousand for the general population.8 Lodges also had incentives to keep down costs. For instance, the Ladies Friends of Faith Benevolent Association, a black-female society, would pay members taken ill $2 a week if they saw the lodge doctor, and $3 if they didn't. A visiting committee also checked on the claimant to guard against false claims. Members who failed to visit the claimant were fined $1.9