Hostname: page-component-76fb5796d-vvkck Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-28T08:06:08.169Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Analyses in the Social Division of Welfare*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 January 2009

Abstract

Richard Titmuss's ‘The Social Division of Welfare’ has been neglected as a framework for assessing changes in social policy and society. The analytical, as opposed to the descriptive, value of the original essay becomes more evident, and more significant, when the relations between the social divisions of labour and welfare are examined in terms of the distribution of benefits and services through the public, fiscal and occupational systems; the growth and differential recognition of needs and ‘man-made’ states of dependency; the variations in the primary objectives of welfare including control; the interrelationship of the different systems and the ways in which they legitimate the existing social structure. This paper seeks to show that, combined with a consideration of power and the state, time and security and the institutions of capitalism, the ideas of the original essay encourage a more dynamic analysis of the impact of the three systems of welfare on society than has so far been attempted.

Type
Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1978

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Titmuss, R. M., ‘The Social Division of Welfare: Some Reflections on the Search for Equity’, Liverpool University Press, Liverpool, 1956Google Scholar; republished in Titmuss, R. M., Essays on ‘The Welfare State’, Allen and Unwin, London, 1958, pp. 3455.Google Scholar

2 Titmuss, R. M., Social Policy: An Introduction, Allen and Unwin, London, 1974, p. 137.Google Scholar

3 Titmuss, , Essays on ‘The Welfare State’, p. 44.Google Scholar

5 Titmuss, , Social Policy, pp. 136–7.Google Scholar

6 For a wider discussion of Titmuss's work see Wilding, Paul, ‘Richard Titmuss and Social Welfare’, Social and Economic Administration, 10:3 (1976)Google Scholar; Reisman, D. A., Richard Titmuss: Welfare and Society, Heinemann, London, 1977Google Scholar; Pinker, Robert, ‘Social Policy and Social Justice’, Journal of Social Policy, 3:1 (1974)Google Scholar; and Gowing, Margaret, ‘Richard Morris Titmuss’, Proceedings of the British Academy, Vol. 61, 1975.Google Scholar

7 Townsend, Peter, Sociology and Social Policy, Allen Lane, London, 1975, p. 6.Google ScholarPubMed

8 Titmuss, , Essays on ‘The Welfare State’, p. 42Google Scholar. Titmuss's quoting of Durkheim on the social division of labour should not be taken to exclude any reference to the class structure by the former, despite the neglect of class conflict; see note 64 below.

9 Titmuss, R. M., Income Distribution and Social Change, Allen and Unwin, London, 1961Google Scholar; and his introduction to Tawney, Richard H., Equality, fifth edition, Allen and Unwin, London, 1964.Google Scholar

10 Wilensky, Harold L., The Welfare State and Equality, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1975.Google Scholar

11 Dupeyroux, J. J., Evolution et Tendances des Systèmes de Sécurité Sociale, CECA, Luxembourg, 1966.Google Scholar

12 Eleven systems are identified by Roemer, Milton, ‘Medical Care in Integrated Health Programmes of Latin America’, Medical Care, July–September 1963.Google Scholar

13 Broek, Jacobus Ten, Family Law and the Poor, edited by Handler, J. F., Greenwood, Westport, 1971Google Scholar (originally published as ‘California's Dual System of Family Law: Its Origin, Development and Present Status’); and Mencher, Samuel, From Poor Law to Poverty Program, University of Pittsburgh Press, Pittsburgh, 1969Google Scholar. Sinfield, Adrian, ‘Unemployment and Inequality’, University of Essex, July 1976Google Scholar, presented at the annual conference of the Social Administration Association, compares income maintenance for the unemployed in Britain and the United States.

14 Titmuss, , Essays on ‘The Welfare State’, p. 43.Google Scholar

15 Titmuss, R. M., Commitment to Welfare, Allen and Unwin, London, 1968, p. 133.Google Scholar

16 Rein, Martin, Social Policy: Issues of Choice and Change, Random House, New York, 1970, ch. 5.Google Scholar

17 Titmuss, , Commitment to Welfare, p. 133Google Scholar; and Kapp, K. William, The Social Costs of Business Enterprise, Asia Publishing House, New York, 1963Google Scholar, especially chs 10 and 14.

18 Titmuss, , Commitment to Welfare, p. 117.Google Scholar

19 In many states in the United States recipients of unemployment insurance benefit may be disqualified for long periods, if not the duration of their unemployment, if the cause of their leaving is not ‘connected with the work or attributable to the employer’, Sinfield, op. cit. p. 15.

20 Hill, Michael J., ‘Can we Distinguish Voluntary from Involuntary Unemployment?’, Worswick, G. D. N. (ed.), The Concept and Measurement of Involuntary Unemployment, Allen and Unwin, London, 1976, ch. 9Google Scholar; and Sinfield, , The Long-Term Unemployed, OECD, Paris, 1968, pp. 3846.Google Scholar

21 Kerr, Clark, Dunlop, John T., Harbison, Frederick H. and Myers, Charles A., Industrialism and Industrial Man, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1960.Google Scholar

22 For much of the material here and below I am drawing on a working paper, ‘Transmitted Deprivation and the Social Division of Welfare’, prepared for the Department of Health and Social Security and Social Science Research Council Working Party on Transmitted Deprivation in November 1976, which I hope to publish as a book. Some of this material has been included in Deacon, Alan and Sinfield, Adrian, ‘The Unemployed, Policy and Public Debate: The Significance of the Scrounging Controversy’, SSRC Workshop on Social Security, London, 18 March 1977Google Scholar; and Sinfield, Adrian, ‘Inequalities Beyond the Fringe’, Low Pay Bulletin, no. 9, June 1976Google Scholar. For discussion of the experience of unemployment see Sinfield, Adrian, ‘The Social Meaning of Unemployment’, in Jones, Kathleen, Brown, Muriel and Baldwin, Sally (eds), The Year Book of Social Policy in Britain 1976, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1977.Google Scholar

23 For further illustrations, see Sinfield, ‘Inequalities Beyond the Fringe’.

24 For example Supplementary Benefits Commission, Annual Report 1976, Cmnd 6910, HMSO, London, September 1977Google Scholar; and Donnison, David, reported in Social Work Today, 20 September 1977.Google Scholar

25 Pinker, op. cit. p. 14.

26 See the attractive idea of ‘housing classes’ in Rex, John and Moore, Robert E., Race, Community and Conflict, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1967Google Scholar; but see also the important critique by Haddon, Roy, ‘A Minority in a Welfare State Society’, The New Atlantis, 2:1 (1970), 125–33.Google Scholar

27 Titmuss, , Essays on ‘The Welfare State’, p. 52.Google Scholar

28 ‘Never Mind the Pay, Feel the Perks’, The Sunday People, 8 December 1974Google Scholar. The widening of inequalities by fringe benefits is documented and analysed in Bevan, Philippa, The Growth of Fringe Benefit Frovision: Causes and Consequences for Social Inequality and Social Integration, D.Phil, thesis, Oxford University, submitted in August 1977Google Scholar. Jill Bernstein at the University of Columbia is at present studying the growth of non-wage employment benefits in Britain and the United States. See also note 22 above.

29 Titmuss, R. M., ‘Poverty versus Inequality: Diagnosis’, Nation, 02 1965, p. 132Google Scholar; see also Titmuss, , Commitment to Welfare, chs V and XI.Google Scholar

30 For example Titmuss, R. M., ‘The New Guardians of the Poor’, in Jenkins, Shirley (ed.), Social Security in International Perspective, Columbia University Press, New York, 1969Google Scholar. One major question for any biographer of Titmuss must be the effect on his writing of his work with the Supplementary Benefits Commission.

31 Titmuss, , Essays on ‘The Welfare State’, ch. 6.Google Scholar

32 Launay, Jean-Pierre catches one aspect of this nicely in his description of the absolute poverty measure as ‘la définition patronale’ (the bosses' definition), in La France Sous-développée, Dunod Actualité, Paris, 1970, p. 1.Google Scholar

33 See for example Bell, Daniel, The End of Ideology, Collier, New York, 1961Google Scholar; Lipset, Seymour Martin, Political Man, Heinemann, London, 1960Google Scholar; and Kerr et al., op. cit.; and, for a more carefully qualified statement, Myrdal, Gunnar, Beyond the Welfare State, Bantam Books, New York, 1967.Google Scholar

34 See for example Wilensky, Harold L. and Lebeaux, Charles N., who introduced these two terms, in Industrial Society and Social Welfare, revised edition, Free Press, Glencoe, 1965Google Scholar. For a critique of the functionalist influence on trends in social policy in the public system, see Goldthorpe, John H., ‘The Development of Social Policy in England, 1800–1914’, Transactions of the Fifth World Congress of Sociology, Vol. 4, 1962.Google Scholar

35 See for example Piven, Frances Fox and Cloward, Richard A., Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, Tavistock Publications, London, 1972Google Scholar. For a vigorous critique, see Higgins, Joan, ‘Regulating the Poor Revisited’ (pp. 189–98 below).Google Scholar

36 Goldthorpe, John H., ‘Social Inequality and Social Integration in Modern Britain’, in Wedderburn, Dorothy (ed.), Poverty, Inequality and Class Structure, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1974, p. 218.Google Scholar

37 Titmuss, , Essays on ‘The Welfare State’, p. 55.Google Scholar

38 See for example Meacher, Michael, ‘The Coming Class Struggle’, New Statesman, 4 January 1974Google Scholar; and, for a case study of pensions, see Titmuss, , Social Policy, ch. 8Google Scholar. Less evident examples can be found in certain aspects of the tax credits proposal and many other areas of policy, not only from 1970 to 1974 but also during the Labour administrations of 1964–70; see Townsend, Peter and Bosanquet, Nicholas (eds), Labour and Inequality, Fabian Society, London, 1972.Google Scholar

39 Titmuss, , Social Policy, p. 126;Google Scholar see also Field, Frank, Meacher, Molly and Pond, Chris, To Him Who Hath (a study of poverty and taxation), Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1977.Google Scholar

40 See United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Industrial Welfare, United Nations, New York, 1971, ch. 3Google ScholarPubMed, for summary and references.

41 See note 22 above.

42 Sabine, B. E. V., A History of Income Tax, Allen and Unwin, London, 1966.Google Scholar

43 See pp. 148–9 below.

44 Titmuss, , Essays on ‘The Welfare State’, p. 53.Google Scholar

45 Ibid. p. 37.

46 Ibid., quoting Gerth, Hans and Mills, C. Wright, Character and Social Structure, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1954, pp. 88–9.Google Scholar

47 Gerth and Mills, op. cit. p. 89.

48 Titmuss, R. M., ‘The Irresponsible Society’, in Essays on ‘The Welfare State’, second edition, Allen and Unwin, London, 1963, p. 221.Google Scholar

49 Coles, Robert, The Children of Crisis, Delta, New York, 1967, ch. 3 and Part III.Google Scholar

50 For example Townsend, Peter, The Social Minority, Allen Lane, London, 1973Google Scholar; Brown, Muriel, ‘Inequality and the Personal Social Services’Google Scholar, in Townsend and Bosanquet, op. cit.; and Sinfield, Adrian, ‘Poverty and the Social Services Department’, in Brown, Malcolm (ed.), Social Issues and the Social Services, Charles Knight, London, 1974.Google Scholar

51 Pinker, op. cit. p. 9.

52 See Cloward, Richard A. and Piven, Frances Fox, ‘Notes Toward A Radical Social Work’, in Bailey, Roy and Brake, Mike (eds), Radical Social Work, American edition, Pantheon Books, New York, 1975Google Scholar. For consideration of what could be done, see Plummer, Ken, ‘In Defence of the Labelling Perspective’, Wiles, Paul (ed.), Criminological Critiques, Martin Robertson, London, forthcoming.Google Scholar

53 Ryan, William, Blaming the Victim, Orbach and Chambers, London, 1971.Google Scholar

54 ‘People with advantages are loath to believe that they just happen to be people with advantages’ – Mills, C. Wright, The Power Elite, Galaxy Books, New York, 1959, p. 14.Google Scholar

55 See Robson, William A., Welfare State and Welfare Society: Illusion and Reality, Allen and Unwin, London, 1976, ch. 1.Google Scholar

56 Townsend, Peter, ‘The Social Underdevelopment of Britain’, New Statesman, 1 March 1974, p. 283.Google Scholar

57 ‘Welfare and Diswelfare’, The Times Literary Supplement, 15 August 1968.Google Scholar

58 Phillips, Andrew, untitled article in The Guardian, 2 January 1975.Google Scholar

59 Sweezy, Paul, The Theory of Capitalist Development, Monthly Review Press, New York, 1942, p. 61;Google Scholar see also Miliband, Ralph, The State in Capitalist Society, reprinted by Quartet Books, London, 1973Google Scholar. For the United States, see on ‘the big rich’ and the civil rights movement Domhoff, G. William, Fat Cats and Democrats, Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey, 1972, pp. 124–36Google Scholar; and Domhoff, G. William, The Higher Circles: The Governing Class in America, Vintage Books, New York, 1971, ch. 6Google Scholar (‘How the Power Elite Shape Social Legislation’).

60 See for example O'Connor, James, The Fiscal Crisis of the State, St Martin's Press, New York, 1973, chs 1 and 5Google Scholar; Gough, Ian, ‘State Expenditure in Advanced Capitalism’, New Left Review, 92 (1975)Google Scholar; and also the papers being produced by the Conference of Socialist Economists.

61 Myrdal, Gunnar, Asian Drama, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1968Google Scholar, Appendix 3, sections 5 and 6.

62 Titmuss, , Essays on ‘The Welfare State’ (1958), pp. 54–5.Google Scholar

63 Ibid., especially in the second half of the book; and Titmuss, , Commitment to Welfare, chs XIX and XX.Google Scholar

64 Wedderburn, Dorothy, ‘Facts and Theories of the Welfare State’, in Miliband, Ralph and Saville, John (eds), The Socialist Register 1965, Martin Press, London, 1965, p. 138.Google Scholar

65 George, Vic and Wilding, Paul, Ideology and Social Welfare, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1976, pp. 1819.Google Scholar

66 Edehnan, Murray, The Symbolic Uses of Politics, University of Illinois Press, Urbana, 1964.Google Scholar

67 Heidenheimer, Arnold J., Heclo, Hugo and Adams, Carolyn Teich, Comparative Public Policy: The Politics of Social Choice in Europe and America, Macmillan, London, 1976, p. 237.Google Scholar

68 Winyard, Steve, Policing Low Wages, Low Pay Pamphlet no. 4, London, March 1976, p. 1Google Scholar. There is a more detailed discussion in Winyard, Steve, Minimum Wage Enforcement: The Wages Council Inspectorate, M.A. thesis, Department of Sociology, University of Essex, 1974.Google Scholar

69 Edelman, op. cit. p. 28.

70 The term made familiar by Bachrach, Peter and Baratz, Morton S., Power and Poverty, Oxford University Press, New York, 1970.Google Scholar

71 Westergaard, John, ‘Sociology: The Myth of Classlessness’, in Blackburn, Robin (ed.), Ideology in Social Science, Fontana, London, 1972, p. 160.Google Scholar

72 Glasgow University Media Group, Bad News, Routledge and Kegan Paul, London, 1976.Google ScholarPubMed

73 See the thought-provoking discussion of stigma and legitimacy by Parker, Julia in Social Policy and Citizenship, Macmillan, London, 1975, ch. 9Google Scholar; Pinker, Robert in Social Theory and Social Folicy, Heinemann, London, 1971, ch. 4Google Scholar; and Dale A. Tussing, quoted in note 94 below.

74 Corwin, R. D. and Miller, S. M., ‘Taxation and its Beneficiaries: The Manipulation of Symbols’, American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, 42:2 (1972), 200 and 213.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed

75 Titmuss, , Income Distribution and Social Change, p. 188Google Scholar, quoted in Wilding, op. cit. p. 163.

76 For a brief exception, though not on social policy as such, see Toynbee, Philip, ‘The Language of Inequality’, in Blackburn, Robin and Cockburn, Alexander (eds), The Incotnpatibles, Penguin Books, Harmondsworth, 1967.Google Scholar

77 Crouch, Colin, ‘The Drive for Equality: Experience of Incomes Policy in Britain’, in Lindberg, Leon N., Alford, Robert, Crouch, Colin and Offe, Clause (eds), Stress and Contradiction in Modern Capitalism, Lexington Books, Lexington, Massachusetts, 1975, p. 216.Google Scholar

78 Corwin and Miller, op. cit. pp. 200 and 207.

79 Barnes, Peter, ‘Oil Everywhere’, New Republic, 6 November 1971, 22–3Google Scholar, quoted in Corwin and Miller, op. cit. p. 207.

80 Liebow, Elliot, ‘No Man can Live with the Terrible Knowledge that He is Not Needed’, New York Times Magazine, 5 April 1970.Google Scholar

81 Wilding, op. cit. p. 164.

82 For a very brief discussion, see Titmuss, , Social Policy, pp. 63–4Google Scholar; and, somewhat impenetrable but provoking, Gurvitch, Georges, The Spectrum of Social Time, Reidel, Dordrecht, 1964, chs V and VIGoogle Scholar; also Young, Michael and Ziman, John, ‘Cycles in Social Behaviour’, Nature, 229 (1971), 91–5.Google Scholar

83 Titmuss, , Income Distribution and Social Change, p. 68Google Scholar, even if the examination of class is sometimes limited.

84 Corwin and Miller, op. cit. p. 213.

85 Quoted in Marriott, Oliver, The Property Boom, Hamish Hamilton, London, 1967, p. 112Google Scholar; and in Counter Information Service, The Recurrent Crisis of London, London, 1973, p. 22.Google Scholar

86 Titmuss, , Income Distribution and Social ChangeGoogle Scholar; Atkinson, A. B., ‘Income Distribution and Social Change Revisited’, Journal of Social Policy, 4:1 (1975), 5768Google Scholar; and, for a discussion of the real extent of any shift from land-ownership to renting, see Rose, David, Newby, Howard, Saunders, Peter and Bell, Colin, ‘Land Tenure and Official Statistics: A Research Note’, Journal of Agricultural Economics, 01 1977.Google Scholar

87 Donnison, David, An Approach to Social Policy, National Economic and Social Council, Dublin, 1975Google Scholar, para. 27 provides very useful working definitions of these terms for application in social policy.

88 Sennett, Richard and Cobb, Jonathan, The Hidden Injuries of Class, Vintage Books, New York, 1973.Google Scholar

89 Titmuss, , Social Policy, p. 139.Google Scholar

90 See their memorandum to the Chancellor of 19 May 1976.

91 See pp. 137–8 above.

92 Titmuss, , Income Distribution and Social ChangeGoogle Scholar; ‘Taxing in the Dark’, The Economist, 31 May 1969, p. 54Google Scholar, quoted in Heidenheimer et al., op. cit. p. 241. See also notes 22 and 23 above.

93 Figures cited in Heidenheimer et al., op. cit. p. 239 show taxable income as 43 per cent of total personal income in the United Kingdom, 45 per cent in the United States, 24 per cent in France and 79 per cent in West Germany at the end of the 1960s. My own impression is that this percentage will have fallen in the United Kingdom.

94 Tussing, A. Dale, ‘The Dual Welfare System’, Society, January-February 1974Google Scholar: ‘The legitimacy of one's income and, especially, one's position in the overall distribution of income, are central preoccupations. No welfare programs are inherently legitimate where the dominant ideology of individualism still appears to reject the welfare state in: principle (while applying it in practice – a conflict of some significance). In the view of many people, job-holders are members of and contributors to society; non-job-holders are not. Job-holding legitimates one's political role, as well. In local, state and national politics, more is heard today about “taxpayers” than about “citizens”.

95 Economists should not feel deterred by Titmuss's firmly held conception of social as opposed to economic markets. It does not in my view obstruct the analysis of the political economy of welfare, but there are other problems that have received little attention here such as the exact distinction between wages and non-wage benefits in employment.

96 George and Wilding, op. cit. p. 129.

97 See especially Titmuss, R. M., The Gift Relationship, Allen and Unwin, London, 1970.Google Scholar

98 See p. 134 above.

99 For a lively analysis of the varying roles of planning, see Miller, S. M., ‘Planning: Can It Make a Difference in Capitalist America?’, Social Policy, 0910 1975, p. 22Google Scholar. Heclo, Hugh and Wildavsky, Aaron, The Private Government of Public Money, Macmillan, London, 1974, ch. 2Google Scholar, would suggest that this view may persist in the conventional wisdom of the Treasury.

100 Marshall, T. H., Sociology at the Cross-Roads, Heinemann, London, 1973, pp. 158–64Google Scholar (‘Professionalism in Relation to Social Structure and Social Policy’) illustrates the optimistic perceptions of altruism in the new professional strength resulting from the ‘welfare state’.

101 See Deacon and Sinfield, op. cit.

102 Pahl, R. E. and Winkler, J. T., ‘The Economic Elite: Theory and Practice’, in Stanworth, Philip and Giddens, Anthony (eds), Elites and Power in British Society, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1974, p. 119.Google Scholar

103 See especially Community Development Project, The Costs of Industrial Change, CDP Inter-Project Editorial Team, London, January 1977Google Scholar; and Counter Information Service, op. cit.

104 Veblen, Thorstein, The Theory of Business Enterprise, first published in 1904 and reprinted by Mentor Books, New York, 1965, p. 19.Google Scholar

105 As an indication of good faith in making such a challenge, I am attempting to respond to it myself in one way (see note 22 above), while becoming ever more aware of the wide range of opportunities that exist.

106 See p. 144 and note 57 above.