of these expectations is striking. Some of these differences are presented in Table 1.1.
Thus, while general trends for longer life, even in the poorest countries, do indicate, as the UNDP (2010) has suggested, that progress has occurred, the beneficiaries of this progress can easily be contrasted with those whose life expectations, both in years lived and the possibilities during those years, remain little different to those of a century ago. What is also apparent is that differences in expectations are shared transnationally, stratified across groups and geographies and not simply the problem of particular countries or regions. A second important theme emerges from the example of life expectancy, which is that progress may not necessarily be a good in itself. Living longer presents its own challenges for maintaining health, income and social participation. Thus the extension of life, both a desire and an outcome associated with development (in human and economic terms), is accompanied by the emergence of related needs. A substantial body of literature exists on the subject of ‘need’ (see Dean, 2010, for a summary of the debates), and what the basis should be for the provision of guarantees that needs are met. From the psycho-social hierarchy developed by Abraham Maslow and conditions of social citizenship outlined by T.H. Marshall in the mid-twentieth century, to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) agreed by the UN in 2016, the answer to the question of what is needed for a decent human existence centres on the development of social policy.
Table 1.1: Differentiated life expectancy at birth
| Black or African American women in the US (2016) | 77.9 | White women in the US (2016) | 81.0 |
| Women and men born in Central African Republic (2017) | 52.9 | Women and men born in Hong Kong (2017) | 84.1 |
| Women in Sierra Leone (2017) | 52.8 | Women in Australia (2017) | 85.0 |
| Boys born in the north-east of England (2012–14) | 78.0 | Boys born in the south-east of England (2012–14) | 80.5 |
| Increase between 1970 and 2010 in Norway | 7 years | Increase between 1970 and 2010 in the Gambia | 16 years |
Sources: UNDP (2010); US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, https://www.cdc.gov/nchs/hus/contents2017.htm#Figure_001; UNHDP, http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/HDI and http://hdr.undp.org/en/composite/GDI; Office for National Statistics, https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/lifeexpectancies/bulletins/lifeexpectancyatbirthandatage65bylocalareasinenglandandwales/2015-11-04#regional-life-expectancy-at-birth.
In its tracking of trends in human development, the UNDP (2010) identified improvements in health and education as being the key drivers of progress.1 On a practical level, the notion that health and education are essential propellants for human development has underpinned the emergence of social provision throughout history, driving household strategies, the actions of social collectives and public intervention in state development. In theory and research, the significance of health and education is at the core of generalized theories of ‘need’ (for example Doyal and Gough, 1991) and in expanded debates on basic/human needs and capabilities (for example Sen, 1985), as well as measures of need satisfaction developed to improve and expand on the HDI (see Klugman et al., 2011, for a discussion of these). Education and health represent the core of the earliest welfare measures in the longest-established welfare states (i.e. those whose welfare arrangements have become determined by formal national politics and institutionalized bureaucratic structures). In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, public sanitation and compulsory schooling, alongside health insurance to meet needs related to illness and incapacity, laid the foundations of modern Western welfare states. In countries such as Brazil, South Korea and South Africa, publicly funded provision for health and education is similarly significant. These two needs represent an obvious intersection between conditions (‘health’ and ‘understanding’) that are essential for human flourishing, and potential (‘capacity’ and ‘ability’) that are essential to economic growth (and where national interests are concerned, competitiveness). What this intersection highlights, is the way in which social progress is coupled with both economic development and the role of the state.
There is an additional element of need that is directly associated with the interests of states: that of security. Security as a condition is usually conceptualized as concerning the absence of harm or the threat of harm. In broad terms, security incorporates physical, psychological and social dimensions of harm and extends beyond the personal security of individuals to the collective interests in security that pertain to states and, at their most universal, global security. For social policy, the significance of civil rights in guarantees of ‘security’ are essential (although they still remain only partially realized from a global perspective), but guarantees of security of livelihood are far more political. In essence, this difference has its roots in philosophical beliefs around the nature of human rights and freedoms, and while freedom from harm has gradually been recognized formally as something that sovereigns have the duty to protect over many centuries, the freedom to participate fully in society is much more contested. As industrialization – and, in the advanced economies, deindustrialization – takes place, pre-existing systems of householding and exchange are supplanted or reshaped, and this socio-economic change generates new needs, new demands for meeting those needs and the expectation, if not the reality of new responses to those demands.
The emergence of citizenship in the global North has rendered states important guarantors of both the rights and the freedoms associated with autonomy, health and security, the last of which Doyal and Gough (1991) argue is a prerequisite for the first two. However, even in countries that are regarded as well-established democracies in the global North, these rights and freedoms are fragile, and currently in both Europe and North America they are threatened by retrograde political forces (Szikra, 2014; Buzogány and Varga, 2018). Looking back less than a century, it is clear that even in established democracies, states also have the capacity to oppress people, limit freedoms and rights and control populations. Historically social policy has been an important tool by which social harm has been inflicted as well as a means to achieve social progress (King, 1999). There are instances where social policy has been used to deliberately disadvantage certain groups, but it is also the case that even where social policy is intended to guarantee rights, it operates in a world structured by many forms of social division, and while policies may seek to redistribute resources and opportunities, there are always risks that policy will effect no change, displace advantage or aggravate existing inequalities.
The many international declarations which now exist to commit states to guaranteeing rights in the realms of health, labour standards, gender equality and the treatment of citizens, refugees and children for example, act as both the political acceptance of need, and the basis for legitimate claims on collective resources. Nevertheless, while the world’s welfare is better served by having them than not, being a signatory of an international declaration is a relatively soft option for national governments, which weigh the political costs of meeting obligations against other competing interests. States can therefore be unreliable actors, irrelevant in practice and, at worst, destructive powers that produce greater diswelfare than welfare.
Given that
