No Wealth but Life: Welfare Economics and the Welfare State in Britain, 1880–1945

Cambridge University Press, 3/22/2010
EAN 9780521197861, ISBN10: 0521197864

Hardcover, 256 pages, 22.9 x 15.2 x 1.9 cm
Language: English
Originally published in English

This book re-examines early twentieth-century British welfare economics in the context of the emergence of the welfare state. There are fresh views of the well-known Cambridge School of Sidgwick, Marshall, Pigou, and Keynes, by Peter Groenewegen, Steven G. Medema, and Martin Daunton. This is placed against a less well-known Oxford approach to welfare: Yuichi Shionoya explores its foundations in the idealist philosophy of T. H. Green; Roger E. Backhouse considers the work of its leading exponent, J. A. Hobson; and Tamotsu Nishizawa discusses the spread of this approach in Britain. Finally, the book covers welfare economics in the policy arena: Maria Cristina Marcuzzo and Atsushi Komine discuss Keynes and Beveridge, and Richard Toye points to the possible influence of H. G. Wells on Churchill and Lloyd George. A substantial introduction frames the discussion, and a postscript relates these ideas to the work of Robbins and subsequent developments in welfare economics.

1. Introduction
towards a reinterpretation of the history of welfare economics Roger E. Backhouse and Tamotsu Nishizawa
Part I. Cambridge Welfare Economics and the Welfare State
2. Marshall on welfare economics and the welfare state Peter Groenewegen
3. Pigou's 'prima facie case'
market failure in theory and practice Steven G. Medema
4. Welfare, taxation and social justice
reflections on Cambridge economists from Marshall to Keynes Martin Daunton
Part II. Oxford Ethics and the Problem of Welfare
5. The Oxford approach to the philosophical foundations of the welfare state Yuichi Shionoya
6. J. A. Hobson as a welfare economist Roger E. Backhouse
7. The ethico-historical approach abroad
the case of Fukuda Tamotsu Nishizawa
Part III. Welfare Economics in the Policy Arena
8. 'The great educator of unlikely people'
H. G. Wells and the origins of the welfare state Richard Toye
9. Whose welfare state? Beveridge versus Keynes Maria Cristina Marcuzzo
10. Beveridge on a welfare society
an integration of his trilogy Atsushi Komine
Part IV. Postscript
11. Welfare economics, old and new Roger E. Backhouse and Tamotsu Nishizawa.