The welfare state - Inequality of opportunity

• Civics
• Middelbare school
• vwo
• Leerjaar 4

How succesful are welfare states?

Today's lesson

Aim of today’s lesson is for you to be able to

• judge welfare state models based on their results;
• name different alleged consequences of inequality in 
    society;
• explain the existence of inequality using the ideas of
    meritocracy and social reproduction.
  

The models

• Nordic model: Iceland, Norway, Finland, Denmark, Sweden
• Continental model: France, Germany, Austria, Belgium, 
    Luxembourg
• Anglo-Saxon model: UK, Ireland, Australia, US
  

Security: poverty rate (= how many people fall below the poverty rate of their country?)

How do the models score on the item security?

Service: health expenditure

How do the models score on the item service?

Social uplifting: years of education

How do the models score on the item social uplifting?

Relationship success and inequality

A succesful welfare state has less inequality between its citizens

Why is this important?

Consequences of inequality

Consequences of inequality

Reasons for inequality

• Meritocracy = a system in which you can climb the social
    ladder by using your talents and working hard
  
• Social reproduction = because of societal structures,
    inequality is transmitted from one generation to the next
  

How do meritocracy and social reproduction explain inequality?
'People who believe in meritocracy think that....'
'People who believe in social reproduction think that...'

thewireless.co.nz

Is the cartoonist a believer in meritocracy or social reproduction?

1. Meritocracy
2. Social reproduction

Recap

Aim of today’s lesson was for you to be able to

• judge welfare state models based on their results;

• name different alleged consequences of inequality in
    society;
• explain the existence of inequality using the ideas of 
    meritocracy and social reproduction.