How are groups constituted through social policy legislation? Exploring temporal sequences of inclusion into old-age protection in a global perspective

Social policy-making is essentially about granting social rights to different groups, and analyses of which social rights are granted to which groups constitute a long-standing research tradition in comparative welfare state research (Esping-Andersen 1990). However, the question how groups are constituted through social policies in the first place has received less attention – although this is an important question that is directly related to power relations, perceptions of deservingness and ideational dynamics (van Oorschot et al. 2017). Against this background, this paper analyses how groups come into being through social policy legislation in the field of old-age provision. We adopt a historical perspective, focusing on social policy legislation from 1880 to 2020, and a global perspective, analysing 20 countries from the Global North and the Global South (Sweden, Germany, France, Spain, Russia, China, South Korea, India, Iran, Turkey, Algeria, Morocco, Kenya, South Africa, United States, Mexico, Chile, Uruguay, Australia). More specifically, we aim to understand 1) which groups were included into social security, 2) how these groups were defined in different national contexts and 3) in what temporal sequence this inclusion unfolded from 1880 to 2020. Through a wide-ranging comparison of a diverse set of countries that includes both welfare state pioneers and laggards, we aim to identify global patterns in the temporal sequences of social security inclusion. The historiography of the European welfare state traditionally located the beginnings of modern social security in the protection of industrial workers and showed how coverage gradually broadened to include the whole population (Alber 1988). Yet, from a global perspective, this is only one possible pathway. For Latin America, for instance, an alternative trajectory starting with the protection of the state apparatus and followed by different occupational groups has been revealed (Mesa-Lago 1978). What these hypotheses have in common is that they assume that the social construction of groups is based on one’s position in the labor market. That is, groups are mainly occupational groups, such as workers, civil servants or self-employed. Nevertheless, in social legislation there is much more variety in terms of groups, going far beyond occupational status. In modern societies, diverse groups can be identified, based on different ascribed characteristics. Based on a new framework, we differentiate nine dimensions according to which groups can be constructed. More often than not these dimensions are combined in social security legislation: Employment; age- and life course; gender; cohabitation or family; merit or burden; need; place of residence; religious, ethnic, caste or race; migration, citizenship, residency. Through this conceptual framework, we aim to arrive at a comprehensive profile of group constructions in social security legislations. We then compare the inclusion profiles of 20 countries over time and ask: Are there common patterns in the inclusion sequences into old age protection?