What is the Welfare State?
Welfare state is a term that was apparently first used in the English language in 1941 in a book written by William Temple, Archbishop of York, England. For many years after, postwar British society was frequently characterized (often pejoratively) as a "welfare state," but by the 1960s the term commonly denoted an industrial capitalist society in which state power was "deliberately used (through politics and administration) in an effort to modify the play of market forces." For Asa Briggs, the author of this definition in an article appearing in The Welfare State (1967), there are three types of welfare state activities: provision of minimum income, provision for the reduction of economic insecurity resulting from such "contingencies" as sickness, old age and unemployment, and provision to all members of society of a range of social services. Under this definition, Canada became a welfare state after the passage of the social welfare reforms of the 1960s (see Social Security).