An ongoing conflict between two incompatible criteria for distributing income – need and the market – continues to shape the evolution of the welfare states of Europe and North America. The widely varied systems of social services exhibited by these states reflect uneasy compromises between market criteria for distribution and state efforts to temper market extremes, compromises that are partly shaped by ideological foundations, implications and impacts of welfare, the role and capabilities of governments, and individualist versus communal values. The conservative view is that social welfare is “associated with wasteful aid for the (undeserving) poor” and creates a drag on economic efficiency. This view is dominant in some countries, particularly the United States. However, the universalism of social service provision, exhibited mostly in the Northern European social democratic states, is not only apt to be more equitable, but also more efficient, especially when the tendency of these systems toward fiscal excess is contained.
