World war and welfare legislation in western countries

Abstract

This article examines the impact of the two world wars on welfare legislation in 16 Western countries. We use Poisson regressions to test our hypothesis that war was a catalyst of welfare legislation especially in countries that were heavily exposed to the dreads of war. By welfare legislation we mean the inaugural adoption and major reforms across four programs (old age and disability benefits, sickness and maternity benefits, unemployment compensation, and family allowances). Our findings suggest that both world wars are key factors for explaining the timing of comprehensive welfare reforms and outweigh the significance other factors such as regime type or level of economic development.