In the past few decades forces such as globalization and international competition, rising public budgets, and aging populations have caused many nations to reexamine the social programs they established at least a half century ago. Some nations have cut spending; others have reorganized priorities to provide support for dual-earner families, single mothers, or elderly people who need long-term care. The United States appears instead to be in transition from a social insurance welfare state to a “capital investment welfare state” in which the objective is to increase savings and investment. This shift in U.S. public policy is most explicit in the ascendance of a neoconservative ideology, which depicts the welfare state as an impediment to a free market. This ideology has lent credence to proposals for privatizing Social Security and is implicit in seemingly minor technocratic changes in Medicare, which nonetheless have inserted market principles into a social insurance program. Whether current trends represent the most recent manifestation of American exceptionalism or a concurrent restructuring across nations can be determined only by comparative research examining (]) how different nations are responding to contemporary fiscal pressures, and (2) if nations are redistributing the social welfare burden from the public to the private sector.
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