"Age in the Welfare State explains how it came to pass that some nations give the lion's share of social benefits to the elderly, while others do more to protect children and working-age adults. A sweeping work of historically and sociologically informed political science, Age in the Welfare State offers a surprising challenge to the conventional wisdom that welfare state policies are a result of either pressure-group politics or the ideologies of parties in power. This exhaustively documented work drawn on in-depth case studies of family, labor-market, and pension policy making in Italy and the Netherlands, as well as broader cross-sectional analysis of spending patterns in twenty OECD countries.

Scholars of social policy and comparative politics, practitioners, and policy makers will be challenged by this book's startlingly new insights about the historical roots of current welfare state predicaments."--Jacket.