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This chapter describes in detail the three worlds, focusing on the factors—labor, race, and politics—that will best explain the differential incorporation of blacks, Mexicans, and European immigrants into the American welfare state and the scope, form, and function of relief provision across regions. On the eve of the Great Depression, the vast majority of European immigrants lived in the Northeast and Midwest, Mexicans lived overwhelmingly in the Southwest, while most blacks still lived in the South. So different were their experiences with the racial, political, and labor market systems in these regions that these groups could be said to be living in separate worlds. Each of them suffered from significant discrimination at the hands of native-born whites in the early part of the twentieth century. European immigrants were largely included in the social welfare system, blacks were largely excluded, while Mexicans were often expelled from the nation simply for requesting assistance.

This chapter details events in Josephine Roche's life from 1948 to 1956. Despite the contraction of her reforming efforts in the late 1940s, Roche had high hopes for her new work at the United Mine Workers of America Welfare and Retirement Fund. She proclaimed in fact that her goal as director of the fund was to “build new values, new realities” in America's coalfields. Remarkably, she did just that. Although initially under siege from many directions, Roche managed to build a private social welfare system that did for one group of workers what she had hoped the New Deal would do for all: guarantee world-class health care and a dignified retirement. This creative work in the private sector did not mean Roche had given up on public policy: she imagined her health program as a template for or component of a larger federal health care program that might develop somewhere down the road. But she also saw her work at the fund as a direct support to the labor movement, which she believed even more crucial now to the task of diminishing inequality.

This chapter reveals that the theoretical explanations of convergence are fragile, contradictory, or inadequate. It shows that they often disregard the contradictions in the trajectories and the power of certain divergent forces in the evolution of social welfare systems. This chapter concludes that there is a slight convergence of some socioeconomic indicators that are connected to the evolution of social welfare systems.

This chapter focuses on the short period of social evolution in France; the protests of the unemployed between 1997 to 1998, the reaction of the French government which led to the distribution of one million French franc to the claimants through the form of social relief called Fonds d'urgence sociale (FUS) and its consequences for the social welfare system. The first section of the chapter discusses reasons for the potential conflict between the French social welfare system and the unemployed. It places emphasis on the confused relationship between solidarity and citizenship. The second section discusses the history of the movements of the unemployed in France. It discusses their demonstrations, their association with other new social movements and the dissatisfaction that spurred their specific claims as a result of the Juppé plan and strikes in 1995. The third section analyses the social policy responses and the government decisions regarding the demonstrations of 1998. It specifically focuses on the creation and the management of the FUS, which affirms the shift towards a residualised model of citizenship. The chapter ends with a discussion of general lessons to be learnt on the long-term changes and the consequences of these protests.

This chapter examines the economic and political performance of three groups of high-income countries—Nordic, European continental, and English-speaking countries—with vastly different systems of social protection. It shows that highly ideological claims made against the social welfare states of Scandinavia are simply off the mark. The “euro-pessimism” in many parts of continental Europe, and the claim that Anglo-Saxon liberalization is crucial to economic well-being, is belied by the persistent high performance of the Nordic economies.