This book explores the role the welfare state in the overall wealth and wellbeing of nations and in particular looks at the American welfare state in comparison with other developed nations in Europe and elsewhere.

• 1: Introduction


• 2: Why All Rich Nations Have Large Welfare States


• 3: The Size, Nature, And Universality of Welfare State Transfers


• 4: How Welfare State Programs Redistribute Income, Reduce Poverty and Inequality, Build and Sustain Human Capital, and Promote Opportunity


• 5: A Short American Centric History of Welfare State Programs and Outcomes


• 6: Explaining American Exceptionalism: Laggard in Public Relief and Social Insurance: Leader in Education


• 7: Explaining Us Divergence in Last Quarter of 20th Century: The Long Swing Right


• 8: The Future of the American Welfare State

Irwin Garfinkel is the Mitchell I. Ginsberg Professor of Contemporary Urban Problems and co-director of the Columbia Population Research Center. A social worker and an economist by training and a former director of the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP), he has authored or co-authored over 180 scientific articles and twelve books on poverty, income transfers, program evaluation, single parent families and child support, and the welfare state. His research on child support influenced legislation in Wisconsin and other American states, the US Congress, Great Britain, Australia, and Sweden. He is currently the co-principal investigator of the Fragile Families and Child Well being Study.
Lee Rainwater is Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Harvard University and a founder and Research Director emeritus of the Luxembourg Income Study. His books and articles have been in the field of social stratification and social policy. The most recent was Poor Kids in A Rich Country.
Tim Smeeding is the Arts and Sciences Distinguished Professor of Public Affairs and Economics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and director of the Institute for Research on Poverty (IRP).He is the founder and director emeritus of the Luxembourg Income Study (LIS), which he began in 1983. Smeeding is also co-editor of Oxford University Press' 2009 Handbook of Economic Inequality His recent work has been on inequality, wealth , and poverty amongst the children of immigrants in a cross-national context. His CV and recent papers can be found at: http://www.lafollette.wisc.edu/facultystaff/smeeding-timothy.html