Asset-based Welfare and Social Investment Competing, Compatible, or Complementary Social Policy Strategies for the New Welfare State?

More recently, two key developments have been observed in the comparative social policy literature: on the one hand, the implementation of a proactive “social investment strategy”, either alongside or in replacement of their established social security programs, and on the other hand, a concomitant shift towards the increased macroeconomic and political importance of private property assets – and homeownership in particular – in defining the economic well-being of individuals. At first glance, it seems that we are dealing with two conflicting policy paradigms here; after all, social investment relies on stable or even expansive welfare states, while the accumulation of private property wealth as a welfare resource seems to realign better with the notion of welfare state retrenchment. This contribution aims to illustrate that the fault lines between the two policy paradigms are, however, not that clear-cut. Based on comparative national-level statistics for all OECD member states in the 1995–2007 pre-crisis period and theoretical reasoning the paper argues that the two approaches may be understood as compatible welfare readjustment strategies, which have opened out into a more radical form of productive welfare capitalism, particularly in the liberal and social-democratic welfare states in North-Western Europe.