Jnl Soc. Pol.

, 38, 1, 1–18 
C 2008 Cambridge University Press

doi:10.1017/S0047279408002523 Printed in the United Kingdom

Remembering and Rethinking the Social

Divisions of Welfare: 50 Years On

K I R K MAN N

School of Social Policy and Sociology, University of Leeds, Leeds, LS2 9JT
email: K.Mann@Leeds.ac.uk

Abstract
This article revisits Titmuss’s essay on the Social Divisions of Welfare (SDW) and reflects
on its continuing relevance. Titmuss first presented the SDW in an Eleanor Rathbone Memorial
lecture at Birmingham University in 1955, but it is best known from his Essays on the Welfare
State published in 1958. Titmuss challenged the stereotype of ‘welfare’ as simply public welfare
dependency and illustrated the different elements of the SDW. Some limitations of Titmuss’s
approach are identified, notably in relation to how he saw dependency arising, and revisions
offered. The article provides a number of examples from the UK but also highlights some
significant parallels with the SDW in the USA and Australia,1 the so-called ‘liberal welfare
regimes’ (Esping-Andersen, 1990). Finally, it is claimed that 50 years on we need to be reminded
of the insights and analytical potential of Titmuss’s essay.

Introduction: Titmuss’s account

This article revisits Titmuss’s account of the Social Divisions of Welfare (SDW)
roughly 50 years after it was first published (Titmuss, 1958). However, it is difficult
to explain the significance of the SDW without acknowledging Richard Titmuss’s
particular influence on the development of social policy as an academic subject.
Titmuss was the first Professor of Social Administration to be appointed in
the UK at the highly influential London School of Economics. He trained a
generation of social policy scholars, aka the ‘Titmice’ (Lee and Raban, 1988: 72–8),
who themselves went on to distinguished academic careers. Despite being
‘quintessentially British’ (Reisman, 2003: 782) or arguably peculiarly English
(Rose, 1981), there can be little doubt that his influence was felt internationally
(Deacon, 1993; Esping-Andersen, 1990). As David Reisman (2003) points out,
Titmuss was following in the footsteps of Charles Booth, the Webbs and a British
tradition of using empirical evidence (or ‘facts’, as Jeremy Bentham and Dickens’s
Mr Gradgrind might have said) to make the case for social policies that would
promote a ‘good society’. He was not particularly forthcoming on what ‘the
good society’ might consist of, but social solidarity, unconditional and universal
welfare benefits, equality and social justice, and an organic sense of reciprocity
and social responsibility, are some of the recurring themes (Deacon, 2002).

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Although he was not a religious person, it is reasonable to suggest that ‘a

half-forgotten Christianity’ (Reisman, 2003: 782) informed his thinking. John
Offer (1999) makes a compelling case for locating Titmuss’s thinking within
an ‘idealist’ tradition that presumed social policies represented the collective
consciousness, or general will, of society as a whole. Just as importantly, however,
his normative approach was framed by the experiences of economic depression in
the 1930s, witnessing mass long-term unemployment, his work as an insurance
clerk, the rise of totalitarianism in Europe, and the sacrifices of the civilian
population that he observed during the Second World War (Alcock and Oakley,
2001). His work in general, but the SDW essay especially, is intended to identify
divisive social practices, social injustices and hypocrisy, in order to promote social
solidarity.
The SDW was first set out by Titmuss in a lecture in 1955. It was initially
published in 1956 but the essay is perhaps best known and usually cited from
his collected Essays on ‘The Welfare State’ in 1958. From the first, Titmuss places
‘the welfare state’ within quotation marks to indicate reservations about the idea
of just one, unitary, system of welfare. Instead, he identified three systems of
welfare: social/public, fiscal and occupational. The essay needs to be read as a
response to critics on the political ‘right’ of the British Conservative Party who
saw the post-war welfare reforms as expensive for the middle classes, unnecessary
for many of the working classes and potentially debilitating for all social classes
(Titmuss, 1958: 34–7). Titmuss claimed these views were promoting a misleading
stereotype of ‘the’ welfare state and the people who relied on it:
Such is the tyranny of stereotypes today that this idea of a welfare society . . . may, paradoxically,
widen rather than narrow class relationships.

And, quoting Gerth and Mills (1953: 88–9), he added:

if the upper classes monopolise the means of communication and fill the several mass media
with the idea that all those at the bottom are there because they are lazy, unintelligent, and in
general inferior, then these appraisals may be taken over by the poor and used in the building
of an image of themselves. A second [danger] emanates from the vague but often powerful
fears that calamity will follow the relaxation of discipline . . . Such fears inevitably conjure up
a demand for punishment and reprisal; the history of public opinion in recent years on the
subject of juvenile delinquency [is but one example]. (Titmuss, 1958: 37–8)

With the Freud report (2007) in the UK focusing exclusively on public welfare
dependency, a continuing debate about dependency and family breakdown in
the UK and the US (Cameron, 2007; Gillies, 2007; Neubeck, 2006), and the media
magnate Rupert Murdoch (BBC Radio 5live, 22 January 2006) suggesting that
Tony Blair had presided over a nanny state that had simultaneously overtaxed the
middle classes and sustained an ‘underclass’, the continuing significance of the
SDW essay might be self evident. In the UK all this has occurred despite a raft of
policies to tackle anti-social behaviour, reduce passive welfare dependency and to

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 remember ing and rethinking the so cial div isions of welfare 3

ensure there will be ‘no rights without responsibilities’. Creeping conditionality

(Dwyer, 2004) may now typify social policies in the UK, the US and Australia,
but Murdoch’s newspapers continue to call for more cuts to public welfare
programmes, with feckless fathers and lone mothers identified as the usual
suspects promoting crime, moral decline and welfare dependency (for example,
The Sunday Times, 21 February 1993, 3 September 2006).
Titmuss was determined to show that the stereotypes of welfare were wrong
and that critics of public welfare operated with a definition of welfare that
conveniently ignored the benefits that went to all social classes. The failure to
see that everyone is welfare-dependent, or interdependent, in contemporary
developed societies is portrayed by Titmuss as either intellectual naiveté or
political mischief. The SDW essay left no excuse for naiveté and described the
politically mischievous as a self-serving clique. The essay should be read,
therefore, as an evidence-based polemic and not as a fully developed sociological
theory, although it has considerable potential for development and synthesis,
as Adrian Sinfield (1978) and Hilary Rose (1981) have demonstrated.2 Moreover,
the stereotypes of welfare and dependency that Titmuss challenged appear to
be more entrenched and more frequently asserted by journalists, politicians and
academics than they were 50 years ago (Bauman, 2007).

Public/social welfare
Social welfare is the public face of ‘the’ welfare state and is seen by the public
at large as what welfare ‘really’ is. Following Adrian Sinfield (1978), it is more
straightforward to refer to social welfare as public welfare given that the other
categories are also ‘social’. Public welfare refers to all those services and benefits
that have been associated with ‘the’ welfare state. For many people it is the
benign hand of the state helping the unemployed, pensioners, school children,
the sick and the poor to attain a standard of income, education and health
commensurate with society’s wealth and development. The focus is on direct
payments, universal services and targeted benefits such as the state pension
system, local authority/state schools, care services for older people, and publicly
funded health services such as the National Health Service in the UK. These are
often seen as ‘the’ welfare state, rather than one form of welfare among others.
This narrow focus on public welfare encourages the idea that ‘the’ welfare state
simply provides benefits for the poorest at the expense of the middle classes.
But while some of these services do provide more benefits to the poorest, some
are used by all social classes, and the middle classes have often been more adept
in accessing some public welfare services than the poorest. For example, in the
UK the ability to buy a home close to the ‘better’ local authority/publicly funded
schools is facilitated by a higher income thereby giving middle-class parents more
choice (Reay and Lucey, 2003).

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Knowing how to access ‘gatekeepers’ to resources (particularly in the health

service) and being able to engage with welfare professionals in a manner that they
find amenable is likely to influence service provision (Rummery and Glendinning,
1999). Thus, a middle-class academic, for example, is likely to know what they
want from public welfare providers and how to get it in a non-confrontational,
engaging manner. Consequently, even public welfare is not reserved for the poor
(Deacon and Bradshaw, 1983). But this was not Titmuss’s main point; rather,
he emphasised the benefits of fiscal and occupational systems of welfare and
demonstrated that these were skewed towards the middle classes.

Fiscal welfare
A good example of the welfare that the middle classes receive are the tax incentives
(fiscal welfare) for pension saving. Successive governments in the UK, Australia
and the USA have tried to promote pension saving by making the contributions,
the pension itself and/or the funds’ investments tax free or partially tax free.
In Australia in 2001 the Federal government provided fiscal concessions for
superannuation schemes that amounted to Aus$ 8.7 billion per annum, and this
was projected to rise to over Aus$ 23 billion by 2009/10. Remarkably, within a
year these substantial sums had to be rounded up to over Aus$31 billion for 2008
(a 36 per cent increase), with future fiscal subsidies also being adjusted upwards by
similar proportions (Rothman, 2000; Costello, 2006; Australian Treasury, 2006:
Table B1, 172, 2008: Table B1, 188).
Tax relief on non-state pension contributions in 2005/6 was estimated by
the British government to cost £14.3 billion, but this too was acknowledged to
be an underestimate the following year when the figure was revised up to £17.4
billion for the year (HMRC, 2006, 2007: Table 9). Some observers believe that
the real cost is much higher and could be as much as £28.9 billion per annum
(Silver, 2006: 54). These sums need to be seen in the context of the Institute for
Fiscal Studies (Brewer et al., 2007) report that concluded that £15.2 billion spent
on raising the value of the public pension (basic state pension) would tackle
pensioner poverty. They believed their proposals to be expensive, but in contrast
to fiscal welfare their proposals are attempting to address the needs of the poorest
retirees.
The benefits of fiscal welfare are, however, skewed to the better off: those
whose tax liabilities are the greatest get the greatest subsidy. Of course, the benefit
to any individual will vary depending on their tax band. The effect is patently
regressive, meaning that more resources go to those in the higher-income quintile
(the richest taxpayers), and people in the lowest tax band get the least. For people
whose income is so low that they are not liable for tax there is of course no benefit
at all. In the UK in 2005 it was acknowledged that 60 per cent of this form of
fiscal welfare went to taxpayers in the top tax band (Hansard, 2005, col. 52W).

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 remember ing and rethinking the so cial div isions of welfare 5

Earlier work by Agulnik and Le Grand (1998: 410) estimated that a quarter of
this subsidy went to the richest 2.5 per cent of taxpayers, while the poorest 10
per cent of income taxpayers got just 1 per cent of the total tax/fiscal handout.
Subsequently, this benefit was given to only one in ten of all taxpayers below state
pension age and used, in effect, by many of them to avoid the higher rate of tax
to build up their retirement savings at the cost of lower-income earners (Sinfield,
2007: 136).
Similarly, in 2004 in the USA top-rate taxpayers were getting a subsidy of
US$350 for every US$1,000 they contributed, with middle and low earners in
the 15 per cent tax band getting only US$150 for their US$1,000, but for those
with an income so low that they are not liable to pay tax there was no subsidy
(Wasow, 2004). From 2006, pension plans in the US have been ‘liberalised’ to
enable participants to add ‘a Roth feature giving plan participants the advantage
of paying no income tax on the earnings in their Roth account established within
the plan’ (Vaughan, 2006: 52). These plans add another layer of complexity to
the US pension and tax system and are once again regressive in their effects.
It has been estimated that the total cost of private pension tax breaks between
2005 and 2010 will be US$330 billion in lost federal revenue (Wasow, 2004; Gale
et al., 2006): this at a time when public welfare for the poorest US citizens was
increasingly conditional on behaviour or was being cut (Neubeck, 2006).
It is worth noting that while fiscal welfare is generally regressive it can, and
has, been used to address the needs of low-income groups. Since 1999, the British
Labour government, albeit with a keen eye on developments in the USA and
Australia, introduced fiscal welfare policies that targeted low-income groups.
These have attracted less media and political criticism than public welfare has
in the past. For example, the 1999 Working Families Tax Credit (WFTC) was
administered by the Inland Revenue and drew little criticism in comparison to
earlier policies with similar goals (helping working families on low incomes).3
By 2003, WFTC had been replaced by the Working and Child Tax Credits
(WTC and CTC) that extended fiscal support to additional low wage and income
groups. Shifting responsibility from the DSS and the system of public welfare to
the Inland Revenue and fiscal welfare has seen the number of individuals getting
support increase from roughly 199,000 in 1985 to over 1.5 million by 2004 (Dilnot
and McCrae, 1999; Adler, 2004). The key point here is that targeting via fiscal
welfare can be used for progressive purposes and this may be a more attractive
option than public welfare for both politicians and recipients. Furthermore, as
Adrian Sinfield notes, these policies break the:

traditional link of the social division of welfare with the social division of labour. For the first
time tax welfare has been redistributive downwards and not regressive. Only the best-off do not
qualify for CTC although WTC is confined to the poorest-paid. The new tax credits also mean
a transfer of resources, often significant, from men to women. (2007: 135–6)

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Fiscal welfare has been justified by the British government (DWP, 2002; Inland
Revenue, 2002) on the grounds that it provides an incentive: a carrot for a change
in behaviour. It is intended to promote paid work and prudent saving (Curry
and O’Connell, 2004; Emmerson, 2005). The UK system of Mortgage Income
Relief at Source (MIRAS) offered similar carrots for private home purchases until
2001. MIRAS made mortgage contributions tax-privileged; although there were
limits placed on these, many observers acknowledge this subsidy, and the sale of
public/social housing, played a key part in the growth of owner occupation in
the 1980s. With a boom in property prices over the last 30 years, many owner
occupiers have subsequently also benefited from the fact that their property is
exempt from capital gains tax: a benefit that is clearly regressive given that the
increase in property values has been greatest for those who could afford to invest
more of their income in their home and for those who can buy in affluent areas
(Mullins and Murie, 2006: 92–3).
There have also been fiscal allowances in the UK in the past for private school
fees, private medical expenses and numerous employer-provided perks (occu-
pational welfare is described fully below) that were, or remain, tax-privileged
to some degree. Indeed, a great deal of time is spent by accountants trying to
minimise the liabilities and maximising the tax relief that affect high earners.
These regressive forms of welfare have been criticised and not just by
‘the left’. One criticism is that it is unclear whether fiscal welfare does in fact
change behaviour and activate the low paid. Instead, ‘tax incentives tend to
be driven by the vocal middle classes. [And] are a good example of middle
class welfare’ (Littlewood, 1998: 63). Second, and again a criticism accepted
by some on the ‘the right’ of the political spectrum, fiscal welfare is not only
‘upside down’ – giving more to those that have the most – but may also distort
market behaviour. For example, the mis-selling of pensions in the late 1980s
and early 1990s was prompted in part by a £6 billion tax subsidy for those who
bought private pensions. In offering the carrot of tax relief/fiscal welfare the
government simultaneously appeared to endorse private pensions, subsidised
the products and helped to create a ‘sellers’ market’. Subsequently, many of
those who purchased private pensions found that they had been misled and that
the images used by sales staff and the TV ads of retired couples enjoying their
retirement on yachts, riding Harley Davidsons, or sipping champagne on sun-
drenched beaches were unlikely to be realised (Mann, 2001). Having been bitten
once by the sales sharks, consumer scepticism in the UK may now act as a brake
on private pension saving (Ring, 2005).

Occupational welfare
Occupational welfare was another key feature of the SDW, according to Titmuss.
Again, it is rare for those who discuss ‘welfare dependency’ to acknowledge

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 remember ing and rethinking the so cial div isions of welfare 7

occupational welfare, despite its tremendous significance. For example, the

advantages of being in an occupational pension scheme are well known but
are rarely seen as part of ‘the’ welfare state. Yet the state plays a crucial role
in facilitating and for many public employees providing occupational pensions
(Hannah, 1986; Shalev, 1996; Sass, 1997; Turner et al., 2005).
In both the USA and UK, employer contributions to pensions are tax-
privileged and believed to be an important employee retention and recruitment
tool. In the UK, Australia and the US occupationally related pensions are
profoundly regressive. In the UK, company directors have continued to maximise
their benefits while claiming a ‘pensions crisis’ means they cannot offer employees
access to ‘their’ defined benefit schemes. Thus the TUC (2006) found that of
362 directors, the average director’s pension would be more than £168,000 a
year, almost 24 times the average occupational pension. The average employer
contribution to all directors’ defined contribution (DC) schemes was £103,000
a year. While most employees in DC schemes get little or no employer
contributions, directors can expect their employers to contribute the equivalent
of almost 19 per cent of their annual salary, in addition to any (tax-privileged)
contributions they make themselves. In 2004 the British government claimed
that many people who ‘failed to save’ for their retirement ‘do not engage with
the choices they have’ and ‘are likely to end up with severe under-provision
purely because of inertia’ (DWP, 2004: 1). Quite why company directors need
such generous incentives to save, both from their employers and the tax system,
is not addressed by either the DWP (2002, 2004) or the Inland Revenue (2002).
Other forms of occupational welfare range from minor perks to what
many people would regard as luxuries. These can include childcare vouchers,
maternity/paternity leave, workplace nurseries, having telephone bills paid by
their employer, travel subsidies, company clothes and clothes allowances, the
‘loan’ of a computer, entertainment ‘expenses’, sports and gym club membership,
paid leave for sickness and holidays, use of company vehicles, the provision of a
chauffeur-driven car, company/employer-provided accommodation (which can
range from a simple B&B to an executive city centre apartment, or overseas
property that can serve as a holiday home), ‘concierge services’ (including dog
walking), the provision of company credit (discounted mortgage rates being
commonplace in the finance sector) and company-issued credit cards, discounts
on company goods and services, air travel schemes (including the various frequent
flyer bonuses and access to airport VIP lounges) and a host of other ‘fringe
benefits’ (FRS, 2005: Table 7.6: 150; Brunsden and May, 2007).
Although some of these benefits may be taxed and individuals will need
to carefully assess their liabilities, occupational welfare can often be arranged
by employers and accountants to minimise this. For example, performance-
related bonuses and ‘golden handshakes’ can be paid into ‘top hat’ pension
schemes, company shares or over a long time period to reduce tax liabilities.

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Fiscal welfare and occupational welfare are, therefore, often closely related and
mutually compatible. The value of these benefits varies enormously, depending on
the employment sector and status of the individual, but social class is once again a
reliable guide with the poorest-paid workers faring much worse than the richest.
An important development in all three countries considered here, that
was touched on above, is the privatisation of occupational welfare and, most
significantly, employer-sponsored retirement pensions. In short, employers are
closing their final salary defined benefit (DB) schemes and moving to defined
contribution (DC) schemes but usually with lower contributions, if any, from the
employer. DB schemes are widely acknowledged to be more generous, replacing
a proportion of former salary, than DC schemes that rely on stock market
performance and contribution levels. The shift began in the US in the late 1970s
and was led by large corporations, many of whom operate globally. Those covered
by a DB plan in the US fell from 38 per cent in 1978 to 21 per cent in 1998, and
private sector workers with a DC plan rose from 7 per cent to 27 per cent during
the same period. This trend has continued in the last ten years, albeit not at the
same pace (Shalev, 1996; EBSA, 2004, in Weller and Wenger, 2005).
Between 1997 and 2005, full-time employee membership of DB schemes in
the UK fell from 46 per cent to 35 per cent. The number of active members of DB
schemes in the private sector has more than halved, from just over 5 million in
1995 to between 1.6 and 1.8 million in 2005, while membership of DC schemes rose
from 10 per cent of the full-time paid labour market in 1997 to 15 per cent in 2005.
There were an estimated 12,000 private sector DB schemes in 2005 compared with
34,700 in 2000. The overall number of DC schemes increased from an estimated
62,600 in 2000, to 70,900 in 2004 (Pension Trends, 2006; Turner et al., 2005). In
both the US and Australia some significant public sector employers (including
some universities) have closed or reduced the benefits of their DB schemes to
new employees. There is considerable speculation in the UK over the future of
public sector DB schemes, with some observers believing that they are untenable
in their current form (Clark, 2006).

Informal welfare
The three systems of welfare Titmuss identified, and illustrated above, provide
a powerful retort to those who speak only of public welfare. However, this still
leaves some vitally important forms of welfare unacknowledged, and a fourth
category – informal welfare – is called for (Rose, 1981; Lewis, 1997). Care for
children, partners, family and friends, and the host of informal, unpaid and
often taken-for-granted activities that address our daily needs hardly feature in
Titmuss’s work generally and not at all in his SDW essay (Offer, 1999). Since care
is recognised as public welfare when a nurse cares for a sick child in hospital, it is
clearly a form of welfare when a mother cares for a sick child at home; the main

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 remember ing and rethinking the so cial div isions of welfare 9

difference between the two being that care provided by the paid nurse is formally
organised and the care provided by a mother is informally organised.
As Hilary Rose (1981) made plain, the question of who provides care has to
be addressed, along with the consequences this can have for the carer, particularly
in later life. However, the concept of ‘informal welfare’ could be misleading and a
note of clarification is required. The term informal welfare should not be confused
with the idea that it is unstructured, casual or ad hoc. Indeed, and despite the
apparent chaos in many households and the recurring negotiations that may
take place, the pattern of caring responsibilities has demonstrated considerable
continuity over time and between countries (Lewis, 1986; Morris, 1990; Skinner,
2005). Despite some evidence of men taking more responsibility for care of late,
particularly childcare, women still undertake the bulk of the caring tasks within
households (Breen and Cooke, 2005; Sayer et al., 2004; Craig, 2006). This will
often impose a ‘pension penalty’ (Ginn and Arber, 1993) in later life for taking on
this commitment. Time out of the paid labour market affects access to pension
rights and, in conjunction with lower incomes and contributions (among other
factors), has produced a situation whereby millions of women pensioners in the
UK have to rely on means-tested public welfare (Turner et al., 2005).
Rose’s revision of Titmuss’s essay demonstrates both the descriptive
durability of the SDW and its flexibility. Rose focused on the provision of care,
advocated a detailed (micro rather than macro) analysis of resource allocation and
distribution systems – both formal and informal – and located these within their
historical context. For example, the establishment in the nineteenth century of the
male ‘breadwinner’ and female carer had profound implications for subsequent
public welfare provisions (Rose, 1981; Williams, 1989). The point that stands out
above all else is that caring for children and elders, and working part-time, restricts
women’s access to public, fiscal and occupational welfare (Ginn, 2003). Thus
every aspect of the SDW described by Titmuss is gendered and simultaneously
the concept of informal welfare has to be included as a specific form of welfare
provision and dependency (Arksey and Glendinning, 2007).

Dependency
Central to the SDW for Titmuss was the role of dependency in developed societies.
What the SDW demonstrated was that everyone was welfare-dependent, but that
different social groups rely, more or less, on different elements of the SDW. In
fact, it may be more appropriate to speak of inter-dependence given the ‘labyrinth
of gifts and transfers’ (Reisman, 2003) and complex web of informal welfare that
typifies contemporary society. For Titmuss: ‘All collectively provided services are
deliberately designed to meet certain “needs”; they are manifestations, first, of
society’s will to survive as an organic whole and, secondly, of the expressed wish
of all the people to assist the survival of some people’ (1958: 39).

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He subsequently claimed that the various divisions of the SDW are designed
‘to meet the needs of the individual and/or to serve the wider interests of society’;
and that the different forms of welfare perform similar functions. Social divisions
arise as a consequence of previous ‘culturally determined dependencies [but]
the dominating operative factor has been the increasing division of labour in
society and, simultaneously, a great increase in labour specifity’ (1958: 43). He
refers to Durkheim’s The Division of Labour in Society (1933) and the potential
for ‘uncertainty and conflict about the roles’ people ‘are expected to fulfil’ in
‘complex individuated societies’ (1958: 42–4). In line with the functionalism that
dominated sociology in the 1950s, there is a tendency on Titmuss’s part to play
down questions of power, politics and the state (Giddens, 1977: 235–72).
In short, the negative effects of the division of labour are seen to be
isolation, social exclusion and estrangement (anomie) and at the same time
a decline in traditional forms of social cohesion. This occurs because the moral
and ethical principles that are believed to govern traditional societies, and
which are largely taken for granted, are undermined by competition, personal
fulfilment and the pursuit of self-interest. It is worth noting that there are also
some parallels in this account of dependency with more recent sociological
approaches to the individuating effects of risk and consumerism in competitive
market economies (Bauman, 2007). Thus, despite higher standards of living,
with improvements in health, housing and welfare generally, there are now new
social risks that undermine wellbeing. Among others, the new risks include
divorce, ‘flexible working’, globalisation, an ageing population, ecological and
environmental change, the challenges of mass migration, ethnic and religious
diversity, along with the fragmentation of traditional communities and political
constituencies (Beck, 1992; Giddens, 1998; Kemshall, 2002). For these observers of
post-modernity/post-traditional societies, the new risks and challenges require
individuals to confront uncertainty and to anticipate their own needs. Thus
we must all make active choices in a consumer society about how we plan our
lives. The restraints on meaningful choice for the poorest 20–30 per cent of the
population may, however, reinforce their sense of exclusion as they are portrayed
as passively dependent (Lødemel and Trickey, 2001; Bauman, 2007).
By telling public welfare recipients that they must do more to avoid
dependency while ignoring the dependency of those who can access generous
fiscal and occupational welfare provisions, academics, politicians and journalists
may reinforce the misleading stereotypes and social divisions.
By contrast, universal public welfare services were, for Titmuss, the moral
glue that would ensure social cohesion. If everyone relied on the same system of
welfare, there would be both a political constituency for improving it (as in the
case of the NHS) and a moral dividend because it would be a testament to social
solidarity. Altruism was therefore the antidote to anomie. For Titmuss, society
had to find organisational mechanisms that promoted altruism and social justice

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 remember ing and rethinking the so cial div isions of welfare 11

to counter the debilitating effects of a competitive, individuating, hedonistic

market (Reisman, 2003).

Revising Titmuss
Titmuss had a benign view of ‘society’ (Offer, 1999) and a rather blinkered view
of power, vested interests and market forces. These weaknesses will be addressed
briefly below but, as Hilary Rose (1981) noted, they have meant that his account has
often been seen as ‘merely descriptively useful’, a view she robustly rejected. And
with Paul Spicker (1995, cited in Powell, 2002) describing the SDW essay as possi-
bly the most influential piece of work in social administration, it is remarkable
that the analytic potential of the essay has not attracted more attention.
Along with Rose’s (1981) article, the most notable exception is Adrian
Sinfield’s (1978) essay that makes a powerful case for considering the close
correspondence between class, power and the SDW. His central point is that
the power to influence the allocation of resources, the desire to ‘buy’ good
workplace relations and the resulting distribution of resources via the SDW are
neither random nor meritocratic. Social groups, consumers of welfare and classes
organise to protect and extend their relative privileges and in so doing exclude
others. Titmuss clearly believed that this situation should, and could, be tackled
by the state to prevent wider social divisions. Whereas Titmuss believed that the
general will of society would in some way be manifest through universal welfare
measures, Sinfield suggests that the SDW reflects the ability of vested interests
to influence policy. Thus, and despite Titmuss’s detailed examination of official
statistics on income distribution that challenged the idea of greater equality in the
1950s (Titmuss, 1962), he paid less attention to the way that the political economy
of capitalism promotes inequality.
However, it was not simply the economic power and privileges inherent
within a capitalist market that Titmuss under-estimated. He also overlooked the
way that private market welfare providers can influence public policy (Farnsworth
and Holden, 2006). Moreover, market providers may on occasion meet needs
in innovative ways that provide a challenge to universal public welfare by, for
example, offering greater flexibility or being designed to address the needs,
or risks, that specific groups confront. In the case of retirement income, this
can mean that some people will successfully negotiate the risks associated with
private and occupational pensions. They will have saved for their retirement,
ploughed their earnings into their homes and complied with the criteria of the
new deserving. They will in turn have more options in later life than there were
50 years ago. They will have assets and these will mean they can make constrained
choices that will not be available to the poorest 30 per cent of the population who
have none on retirement (Rowlingson, 2006; Mann, 2001; Castles, 1997).
In these circumstances, universal public welfare can do little to resolve
the inequitable distribution of opportunities over a lifetime. While an assets

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 12 kirk mann

test might ensure that those who had previously benefited from fiscal and/or
occupational welfare were not able to ‘double dip’,4 it seems unlikely that there
would be a sizeable political constituency in the UK for such a policy. The point
here is not that this is inequitable, although it clearly is, but that any attempt to
address the inequities would confront political problems. The voice of the (mainly
but not exclusively) middle classes, rather than the general will of society, would
surely prevail. Because the benefits of fiscal and occupational welfare rarely attract
attention, and are more usually seen as earned and therefore deserved, the case
for equity between the different forms of welfare is rarely heard.
Public welfare recipients are more frequently the focus of political and media
attention and, in the USA for example, lone mothers and their children have
been identified as the main problem. Kenneth Neubeck (2006) has illustrated
the obsession that powerful elites have had with lone mothers over the last
15 years or so. Lone mothers who are dependent on public welfare are portrayed
as demoralised (literally) by the experience. Whereas tax handouts are given to
wealthier groups as incentives, lone mothers have been pushed off public welfare
and into low paid work. Neubeck suggests that the imposition of Draconian
conditions on lone mothers is part of a broader concern on the part of US welfare
policies to stigmatise those who are dependent on public welfare. But while this
concern is presented as paternalistic, it reflects class, gender and racial systems of
inequality in US society (Neubeck, 2006: 30–2). Such views are in marked contrast
to Titmuss’s account. To test them it would be necessary to undertake research
into how powerful interests and groups articulate their views and if these have
any effect. Thus patterns of collective consumption, business interests, political
and interest lobby groups, supra-national organisations such as the OECD (1998;
Minns, 2001) and World Bank (1994, 2005) and established elites might need to
be the focus of social policy research (Blackburn, 2002; Hacker and Pierson, 2002;
Farnsworth and Holden, 2006).
The greater visibility of public welfare and public welfare dependents is
not simply due to media and political attention. Public welfare recipients
are first made visible by administrative and technical mechanisms. They are
classified, monitored and observed by public welfare professionals and providers.
The mechanism by which they are made visible and monitored corresponds
closely to changes in ‘the mode of information’ (Poster, 1990). The history
of social administration illustrates the way that the mode of information
subjects the welfare recipient to the scientific gaze of the provider. Thus in
the nineteenth century the Charity Organisation Society developed casework in
order to monitor behaviour (Fido, 1977) and the workhouse ‘test’ was intended
to deter entry, while those that did enter were trained by meaningless tasks
and the discipline of the workhouse clock. Similarly, the dole queue of the
1930s registered the unemployed in a highly visible manner, and more recently
activation policies, computer information systems, advisors and counsellors try

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 remember ing and rethinking the so cial div isions of welfare 13

to promote a cultural change in behaviour (Henman and Adler, 2003; Dean,

2006).
Social researchers are not immune from ‘watching the defectives’, usually
paying much more attention to those who rely on public welfare than to the
privileges that occupational and fiscal welfare dependents receive (Mann, 1994).
For example, simply trying to establish the cost of fiscal welfare in lost revenue is
extremely difficult. Adema and Ladaique (2005) have made some comparisons of
‘tax breaks for social purposes’ across the OECD states, but these are limited and
the most significant of these (pensions) are excluded. The Australian Treasury
is rather more forthcoming than the UK but, as they explained in 2006, ‘unlike
direct expenditures, tax expenditures once legislated become part of the tax
law with a recurring fiscal impact and do not receive regular scrutiny through
the budget process’ (21 December 2006, Content ID1211).5 Moreover, as Hacker
observes of the US, fiscal welfare policy appears to be made in a ‘subterranean
world’ in which accounting procedures hide the ways in which governments use
the tax system for policy purposes (Hacker, 2002).
Similarly, occupational welfare tends to be treated as ‘non-wage labour costs’
by employers and this is not disaggregated in a manner that enables researchers
to find out precisely who gets what. And of course, there are no queues for
fiscal welfare, no counsellors enquiring into the behaviour of those who get
occupational welfare, and no stigma attached to being dependent upon these
forms of welfare.
Finally, power is significant in relation to questions of control and how the
SDW impacts on people’s ability to express their needs or seek redress. Informal
welfare differs, qualitatively, in respect of power and ‘voice’ to other aspects of
the SDW in that it is generally provided by ‘significant others’. Care also often
involves a high degree of intimacy, both emotionally and physically. This in turn
can make it difficult for the cared for to question or challenge the carer. While the
other systems of welfare have some formal mechanisms of redress, albeit often
ineffectual, informal welfare is arguably less amenable to formal mechanisms and
prescriptions. Ensuring that both the informal carer and the cared for can, to
some degree, negotiate their relationship is by no means easy, but nevertheless
vital (Williams, 2000).

Conclusion
Looking at ‘welfare’ through the lens of the SDW illuminates the fact that some
forms of welfare are themselves exclusive and that there are different assumptions
made about the recipients of each type of welfare. Governments seek to change the
behaviour of public welfare recipients by imposing conditions and a requirement
that they accept responsibilities (Dwyer, 2004). Occupational and fiscal benefits
in contrast provide incentives to the recipients and there are few expectations

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 14 kirk mann

regarding their responsibilities, whereas providers of informal welfare appear to

‘choose’ to care and in so doing penalise themselves in later life (Ginn, 2003).
Interestingly, the SDW in the three countries considered here is being
transformed and in similar, if not exactly the same, ways. The pattern of informal
welfare is changing but very slowly. There is a move to individuate the risks
associated with all forms of welfare, with occupational welfare being reined back
as employers attempt to divest themselves of responsibility. The phenomenal
increase in fiscal welfare and its highly regressive nature goes unnoticed by the
media who persist in producing the sort of stereotypes that Titmuss condemned.
In this context questions of visibility, power and voice still need to be asked of
those involved in the policy-making processes (Hacker, 2002).
Most importantly, the SDW highlights the welfare dependency of everyone,
including the rich. Titmuss subtitled the SDW essay ‘the search for equity’ and it
appears that either the search has been called off, or it has been recast in terms of
opportunities. As two former British Ministers asserted: ‘The guiding principles
for . . . Europe should therefore be: active inclusion, not passive welfare: The
national welfare state should be a ladder of opportunity not a safety net’ (Blunkett
and Johnson, 2005). The search for equity needs to reveal the hidden benefits
associated with some forms of welfare and find ways of extending these to all.
The focus is not only on income inequalities, as significant as these may be, but
also the mechanisms and processes of welfare delivery that reinforce negative
stereotypes, social divisions and insecurity. As Titmuss made clear, there is an
assumption that ‘by a natural process of market levitation, all classes and groups
will stand expectantly on the political right as the escalator of growth moves them
up’ (1964: 16). However, the disparities of power, visibility and stigmatised forms
of dependency entrenched within the SDW mean that while the rich zip by on
the escalator of growth, the poorest must try to clamber up a precarious rope
‘ladder of opportunity’.

Acknowledgement
I am grateful to Adrian Sinfield, Alan Deacon and Malcolm Harrison for their comments and
observations on various drafts of this article. I must also thank Pete Alcock for inviting me to
the SPA one-day seminar on the SDW held at Birmingham University in December 2005.

Notes
1 All the policies referred to here are national policies unless otherwise indicated.
2 There are similarities between the SDW and the idea of the mixed economy of welfare
as Powell et al. (2007) have clearly demonstrated. However, these cannot be dealt with
adequately here.
3 There are also tax credits for disabled and older workers that are intended to promote paid
work as the route out of ‘passive welfare dependency’ (DWP, 2004). It should also be noted
that the Inland Revenue did attract criticism when it sought to recover overpayments (Adler,
2004).

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 remember ing and rethinking the so cial div isions of welfare 15

4 ‘Double dipping’ is a phrase used in Australia to refer to people who get fiscal concessions
for their superannuation pensions and then arrange their finances so that they qualify for
public welfare via the means and assets tested Age Pension.
5 An excellent exception to the rule that the media generally ignore fiscal welfare is Peter
Martin, Economics editor for the Canberra Times (26 December 2006, 25 January 2008).
He points out for every Aus$4 the Federal Government collects, it now hands out Aus$1 in
fiscal concessions. He also notes that releasing the tax expenditure report a few days before
Christmas 2006 (and a few days into the New Year 2008) ensured they received little media
or public attention which, given the regressive nature of fiscal welfare, may be a deliberate
strategy.

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