The history of states during the half-century prior to the onset of accelerated globalization was in good part a case of growing public-sector guarantees of nutrition, health care, housing, education, minimum income and other human welfare needs. At the same time, many states introduced regimes of progressive taxation to effect a substantial redistribution of wealth among their resident populations. Such programmes of state-centred social reform unfolded (in different ways and to different extents) across the world: North and South, East and West. A number of circumstances encouraged this trend, including the spread of universal suffrage in national politics, pressures from organized labour, the global communist movement, and promises made by governing elites to suffering masses during the world wars and decolonization struggles.