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The chapter will examine the strengths and weaknesses of the social investment approach before looking at how it can be enhanced by the inclusive growth framework which has been the subject of a major dialogue between the OECD itself with the World Bank. This chapter reflects on how well the social policy discipline is responding to the challenge of reintegration with economic policy identifying the key challenges which lie ahead for developed economies.

Inclusive growth has been proposed as another approach to ensuring that economic growth promotes well-being for all. At the same time, the precise definition of inclusive growth, its relation to related concepts, such as pro-poor growth, social exclusion, or inequality, is not very clear. This chapter proposes a way to define inclusive growth, differentiate from related concepts, and propose particular indicators that can be used to monitor inclusive growth in developing and developed countries.

Macro-economic policy should be evaluated and devised according to sustainability criteria alongside economic and social criteria. Economic goals, whether growth of GDP, productivity or competitiveness should not trump equity/justice or sustainability. But nor should environmental goals trump social goals. The urgent challenge addressed in this chapter is to develop a macroeconomic framework that supports ‘eco-social’ policies to pursue both goals simultaneously.

Remaking the relationship between paid work and welfare looms as the central challenge for an inclusive growth regime. Neoliberal economic policies created a legacy of high unemployment and precarity that has not been addressed by the social investment approach with its purely supply side focus. Inclusive growth insists that paid work must underpin a sustainable welfare regime. But how can this be done given the state of current labour markets? This chapter reconsiders the paid work welfare nexus.

What have learned? Are we talking about a coherent shift in social policy perspective? What have we learned about the challenges ahead for strengthening welfare systems, and for economic and sustainable growth for all. In this final chapter we will critically consider the perspectives, and ask whether they are simply saying the same thing with different accents (e.g. different disciplinary and country foci) and whether or the extent to which they have different/unique features. Summary tables will be included to summarise approaches and lessons learned.

This chapter shows how we can avoid the unwanted polarisation between ‘investment’ and ‘protection’. While certain trends in postwar social policy may have encouraged that bifurcation from economic policy, this chapter shows how nearly all social policies in fact have a dual function, i.e. both productive and protective. The chapter reasserts the importance of social protection for societies seeking to revive strategies for equality in the new model of inclusive growth.

This chapter looks at the new integration of social with economic policy from the developing economies perspective. It will highlight the key social policy instruments in what were seen as ‘pre-welfare state’ economies, before surveying the ‘social policy spring’ occurring notably in Latin America and in Asia. The chapter will draw out the main learnings for social policy research from the new productivist models associated with Inclusive Growth.

The links between health and development are complex but sufficiently well-established for policy development purposes. The whole idea that health is not a burden on the economy, but is an active partner in fostering economic growth and tackling health inequalities is widely acknowledged. Investments in improving the health of a population as a whole will have positive economic consequences resulting in higher growth; which as a consequence will improve health – a virtuous circle as this chapter illustrates.

Neoliberalism, based on laissez-faire market ideas, had reached its social policy limits long before the financial crises of 2008. The ‘new social risks’ faced by citizens in post-industrial society led policymakers to rethink what social and economic relations should look like in the 21st century. In this volume we argue that new ideas about social investment and inclusive growth could mark a turning point in social policy.

Growth which benefits everyone and to which everyone contributes has major implications for pure passive, redistributive policies which do not really result in “contribution to growth” (unless very indirectly, by spending). ALMPs (understood broadly, to encompass also in work benefits) and how they promote the notion of inclusive growth now requires a rethink of the interface between employment and benefits in a way that encourages and rewards participation in productive processes by all those who can. Inclusive growth social policies pose a range of issues and challenges for ALMPs that are discussed and examined in detail in this chapter.

Globally, policymakers are promoted social investments as a reform strategy to increase individuals’ capacities and national economic growth. This chapter establishes a framework consisting of generational, life-course perspectives on social investments and inclusive growth. The generational perspective brings out that social investments involve horizontal redistribution, underpin the productive and reproductive social contract between generations, and the increased diversity within generations. The life-course perspective demonstrates how social issues and social investments in one life stage depend on the situation in prior life stages and affect the situation in later life stages and, possibly, in multiple dimensions.

Analysts of social policy often pay more attention to the content of social policy than to its governance. It is important to assess both. Policy communities currently link the concepts of social investment and social entrepreneurship to advocate both where and how to intervene to ensure inclusive growth.The argument of the chapter is that the explicit linking of these two notions by policy-makers at several scales of authority constitutes an emerging policy paradigm. Despite variation across countries and levels (a characteristic of any paradigm) policy communities proffer the quasi-concepts of social investment and social entrepreneurship in combination as the appropriate ways to govern financing and delivery of social investments and ensure inclusive growth.

High investment in human capital is the signature of the social investment approach embracing both education and skills. This chapter expands the conventional perspective taken up in the social investment literature by systematically discussing the potential contribution of vocational education and training and lifelong learning to promoting inclusive growth and social investments.

One of the biggest challenges for developing a new more productivist social policy approach has been the apparent absence of a new, post-neoliberal, economic model even after the global financial crisis. This chapter explores the social policy implications of the official ‘pragmatism’ of the new economic model with its ‘institutionalist’ emphases on nation states finding what works best in their own contexts rather than looking to the one size fits all approach of recent decades.

The inclusive growth agenda prioritises a broad based, employment centred pattern of growth as a foundation of social development. Welfare goals cannot be pursued solely through taxes and transfers ‘after the economic event’. The focus must also be upon the predistribution of economic endowments such as human capital, on the distribution of opportunities within the labour market as well as the wages and conditions of the workforce. This means raising the general level of education and training in the workforce, promoting inclusion of marginalized employees, encouraging transitions between various employment relationships over the life course, and ensuring the potential of social mobility.